Schumer: Send more Forest Service personnel to aid Canada against wildfires
As wildfires continue to rage in Canada, the U.S. should send more personnel to help prevent a repeat of last week’s dangerously smoky conditions in New York City, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Sunday.
He called on the U.S. Forest Service to double the level of personnel it’s sent to Canada to help contain the fires, to 600.
“Last week, New Yorkers stepped outside feeling like they were living in a chimney,” Schumer, a New York Democrat, said at a Midtown press conference.
“To prevent another chimney-like experience from happening, we need to take action, we need to get at these fires at their source so that we don’t suffer another wave next week or the week after of the kind of wildfire air pollution that we suffered from this past week,” he added.
Hundreds of wildfires raging in Quebec and other parts of Canada have generated shocking levels of smoke that made New York City look like an apocalyptic movie set last Wednesday.
While the smoke diminished over the following days, with about 400 fires still blazing in Canada as of Sunday afternoon, the murky menace could come back, Schumer said.
To send more Forest Service personnel to our northern friends, the feds could tap $7 billion set aside for forestry and forest fires in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, according to the senator.
“We are the Big Apple, not the big chimney, and we don’t want to be like that ever again,” he said. “Stopping it at its source is the most effective thing that we can do and the way to do that is send more U.S. firefighters” and forest rangers.
Leaders including President Biden have blamed the wildfires and other recent extreme weather events on climate change.
With legislation to address climate change long stalled in Congress, Schumer made a passing reference to the big picture.
“We all know that climate change is with us,” he said. “These fires are an example and in the long term, we have to do all we can to prevent our climate from getting worse. And that means preventing (carbon dioxide) from going in the atmosphere.”