The American Property Casualty Insurance Association testified on Capitol Hill Jan. 3 in support of the Fix Our Forests Act.
The legislation, led by Reps. Bruce Westerman, R-Ariz., and Scott Peters, D-Calif., was passed by the House following the January 2025 destructive wildfires in Los Angeles and then another version () was passed by a Senate committee last October.
The bill prioritizes treatment of forests at the highest risk of wildfire and coordinates grant programs for community mitigation efforts. It also promotes research on wildfire resilience and land management, and supports the adoption of fire-resistant building methods, codes, and standards.
“Wildfire events impacting communities have grown in severity and number over the past several years, and Congress must act to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires in the U.S.,” Robert Gordon, APCIA’s senior vice president of policy, research and international, told the House Subcommittee on Federal Lands Oversight.
“Communities need a durable federal framework that accelerates risk-reduction and strengthens built-environment resilience and improves the tools agencies use to anticipate and respond to extreme fire conditions,” he said. “The Fix Our Forests Act would help break the cycle of increasingly destructive fires by supporting community-scale mitigation, advancing modern technology, and reducing fuel loads that turn small ignitions into catastrophic events.”
As of early January, insurance payments from the LA wildfires stood at about $22.4 billion, and the final tally of insured losses for the wildfires are estimated to be between $30 billion to $40 billion. Costly fires have also occurred in recent years in Colorado, North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, and Hawaii. Gordon said wildfire losses over the last decade were more than five times higher than prior decades, with eight of 10 of the costliest U.S. wildfires since 2017. The risk is intensifying as “man-made and natural environmental conditions” make many regions more prone to burn.
Last October, Jimi Grande, senior vice president of federal and political affairs for the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies, said, “The risk of wildfire can no longer be ignored or underestimated. We need action to start addressing it, and the Fix Our Forests Act is a vital step in doing so.”
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