Jim Matheson: “once again the Science Committee brings to the House floor a bill that makes sense, that was developed in a bipartisan…”

“once again the Science Committee brings to the House floor a bill that makes sense, that was developed in a bipartisan way. It's a great tradition of this committee, and I think Members on both sides of the aisle on that committee know what a great committee it is to work on. And I want to thank Congressman Mitchell, in particular, for taking the lead on this issue, because his approach really fits into the Science Committee approach about how we look at issues, and we try to work together in a bipartisan way to make progress. And that's why I'm happy to stand up and offer my support for this bill today. In the grand scheme of things, one of the reasons why I think this is incredibly important is that the United States has one of the highest fire-related death rates among all industrialized nations. Think about that. With all the technology we have in this country, all the safety measures, we still rank so poorly among industrialized nations in terms of fire-related deaths. And this legislation takes a step in terms of trying to address that problem. Now, I come from a western State, the State of Utah; and in the West, we have particular danger in terms of forest fires. This legislation fully funds the National Fire Incident Reporting System, which is going to help the U.S. Fire Administration prevent future forest fires. Currently, we're only able to capture data from 50 percent of wildfires, which just is not enough.”