Ron Wyden: “Thank you very much, Mr. President. I am going to talk first about the devastating fires that are pounding my State, and…”

“Thank you very much, Mr. President. I am going to talk first about the devastating fires that are pounding my State, and then I am going to talk about the new legislation introduced earlier today by our colleagues Senator Graham, Senator Cassidy, and Senator Heller. With respect to the fires, I spent much of last weekend essentially going from one base camp to another, visiting six counties to get updates at fire camps and emergency operation centers. In these travels, I saw major fires burning in Oregon from our northern border with Washington State to our southern border with California. Two of these fires were so large that they covered more than one county. So I believed it was important to visit both their eastern and their western fronts. Doing so in each case took almost 2 hours of driving from just one side of the fire to the other. Of the 1.5 million acres burning in the West last weekend, almost 500,000 were burning in my home State alone. Now, there are 17 fires burning in Oregon. Thousands of Oregonians have been evacuated this summer, and thousands more are facing the prospect of evacuation. Thousands of firefighters from Oregon and all over this country have been putting themselves in harm's way to help Oregon battle these infernos.…”