HR178-119

1. Suppression of wildfires With respect to covered National Forest System lands, the Secretary of Agriculture, acting through the Chief of the Forest Service— shall— use all available resources to carry out wildfire suppression with the purpose of extinguishing wildfires detected on such lands not later than 24 hours after such a wildfire is detected; and immediately suppress any prescribed fire that exceeds prescription; shall not inhibit the suppression efforts of State or local firefighting agencies that are authorized to respond to wildfire on such lands; may only use fire as a resource management tool if the fire is a prescribed fire that complies with applicable law and regulations; may only initiate a backfire or burnout during a wildfire— by order of the responsible incident commander; or in instances that are necessary to protect the health and safety of firefighting personnel; and shall use all available resources to control any such initiated backfire or burnout until extinguished. In this section, the term covered National Forest System lands means any area— located within National Forest System lands; and that— the U.S. Drought Monitor has rated as having a D2 (severe drought) intensity, D3 (extreme drought) intensity, or D4 (exceptional drought) intensity; the National Interagency Fire Center declares has a National Wildland Fire Preparedness level of 5; or the Forest Service has identified as being located in a fireshed ranked in the top 10 percent of wildfire exposure (as determined using the most recently published models of fireshed risk exposure published by the Forest Service).