Sponsors (9)
Introduced January 29, 2025 by Maria E. Cantwell · Last progress September 11, 2025
The bill would substantially strengthen wildfire forecasting, data sharing, and responder capacity — improving safety and planning for many communities — at the cost of significant federal spending, expanded data‑sharing (and related privacy/cybersecurity risks), and added administrative burden that could slow near‑term deployments and alter local authority.
Residents of fire‑prone, rural, tribal, and urban communities — and the local, state, and tribal emergency planners who serve them — will get more accurate, timely, and impact‑based wildfire forecasts, smoke/air‑quality warnings, and situational awareness that improve preparedness, evacuation decisions, and public health outcomes.
Firefighters, first responders, and federal weather personnel will receive strengthened workforce support — including a formal incident meteorologist service, training, hiring/staffing plans, mental‑health resources, and targeted premium pay — improving operational capacity and deployment reliability during wildfire events.
Researchers, universities, and operational agencies will gain broader access to standardized, redistributable datasets, metadata, and interoperability standards plus guidance to avoid duplicate projects, improving research reproducibility, modeling, and research‑to‑operations transitions.
Taxpayers and federal budgets will face substantial new and recurring costs to implement upgrades, pilots, data acquisitions, computing capacity, staffing, and interagency coordination — potentially increasing federal spending or crowding out other priorities.
Broad data‑sharing, open publishing of datasets, and purchase/aggregation of private or community‑sourced data raise privacy, proprietary, and compliance concerns for private partners, local governments, and individuals.
Increased coordination, reporting, GAO studies, and new processes create administrative burden and require staff time at federal, state, and local levels, which could delay implementation, strain smaller partners, and divert resources from front‑line operations.
Based on analysis of 28 sections of legislative text.
Establishes and funds a NOAA-led national fire weather program, testbed, incident meteorologist service, data standards, and interagency coordination to improve wildfire forecasting and response.
Creates a NOAA-led, coordinated national fire weather services program to improve wildfire prediction, observation, forecasting, data sharing, operational modeling, and decision support. It sets up a temporary interagency Fire Science and Technology Working Group and a permanent Fire Weather Services Program and testbed, requires data and computing modernization, new incident meteorologist staffing and support, interagency coordination and GAO reviews, and authorizes phased funding from FY2026–FY2030.