Community Protection and Wildfire Resilience Act
Analysis under review: This bill has generated analysis that may be too generic or incomplete. Clause-level evidence remains available below.
Summary
What This Bill Does
This bill creates a new federal wildfire resilience grant program run by FEMA through the United States Fire Administrator in coordination with the Forest Service. It would fund both planning and implementation work for communities facing wildfire risk, while also requiring new federal reports, updated at-risk community maps, and changes to an existing wildfire-defense grant program so structure hardening can be funded.
Who Benefits and How
Wildfire-prone communities, tribes, local governments, and fire departments could receive up to $10 million for resilience projects or up to $250,000 to build a qualifying wildfire plan. Homeowners and operators of critical infrastructure could benefit from home hardening, defensible space, evacuation, and communications improvements. Local contractors, AmeriCorps, and conservation corps could gain work because grant recipients are told to prefer local hiring and local partners where practicable.
Who Bears the Burden and How
FEMA, the United States Fire Administrator, the Forest Service, and GAO would take on new program-design, mapping, study, and reporting work. Communities seeking implementation grants may also need to satisfy detailed planning requirements and provide a non-federal cost share unless FEMA reduces or waives it.
Key Provisions
- Authorizes $1 billion per year for fiscal years 2025 through 2029 for a new community protection and wildfire resilience grant program
- Funds both implementation projects and community wildfire resilience planning, with local hiring preferences and optional cost-share relief for low-income communities
- Requires GAO reporting on federal wildfire protection programs and a study on wildfire survivability certifications and insurance incentives
- Requires recurring federal maps of at-risk communities, including Tribal at-risk communities
- Requires a report on wildfire radio-frequency interoperability and available technology fixes
- Expands the community wildfire defense grant program to cover structure hardening and nearby defensible-space work
Evidence Chain:
This summary is generated from the full bill text using AI analysis. Expand "Detailed Analysis" below for identified beneficiaries/burden bearers with clause-level evidence links.
At a Glance
What This Bill Does
Creates a FEMA-administered community wildfire resilience grant program, updates wildfire-risk mapping and reporting, and expands existing wildfire-defense grants to cover structure hardening.
Key Policy Areas
Disaster Response, Environment, Housing, Local Government
Primary Purpose
Creates a FEMA-administered community wildfire resilience grant program, updates wildfire-risk mapping and reporting, and expands existing wildfire-defense grants to cover structure hardening.
Policy Domains
Wildfire Resilience Grants and Oversight
Identified Gains
- Wildfire-prone communities, tribes, and local fire agencies
- Homeowners and infrastructure operators in high-risk wildfire areas
- Local contractors and conservation corps supporting resilience projects
Identified Costs
- FEMA, the United States Fire Administrator, and the Forest Service
- Grant recipients responsible for planning requirements and non-federal cost share on implementation projects
Sponsors
Alex Padilla
D-CA | Primary Sponsor
Legislative Progress
In CommitteeMr. Padilla (for himself and Mr. Sheehy) introduced the following …
Read twice and referred to the Committee on Homeland Security …
Introduced in Senate
Stakeholder Effects
cui bono?How this legislation distributes effects. Mention counts reflect frequency, not effect magnitude.
At-risk communities and Tribal communities seeking recognition on wildfire-risk maps, FEMA and Forest Service officials administering wildfire resilience grants, FEMA and Forest Service officials responsible for wildfire-risk mapping
Positive-direction: At-risk communities and Tribal communities seeking recognition on wildfire-risk maps, States, tribes, local governments, and fire departments seeking wildfire resilience grants
Negative-direction: FEMA and Forest Service officials administering wildfire resilience grants, FEMA and Forest Service officials responsible for wildfire-risk mapping, FEMA and the United States Fire Administrator, FEMA, the United States Fire Administrator, and the Forest Service, Government Accountability Office
Construction and retrofit contractors providing wildfire-hardening work, Local contractors, AmeriCorps, and conservation corps working on resilience projects
Bill Structure & Actor Mappings
Who is "The Secretary" in each section?
- "chief"
- → Chief of the Forest Service
- "administrator"
- → Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency
- "fire_administrator"
- → United States Fire Administrator
- "comptroller_general"
- → Comptroller General of the United States
Key Definitions
Terms defined in this bill
A state, Indian Tribe, local or regional government unit, fire protection district, municipal or volunteer fire department, or a collaboration of at least two such entities.
Public safety, health, education, transportation, communications, water, power, and private infrastructure needed to preserve community safety, resilience, or continuity during wildfire threats.
A vegetation-management project within 100 feet of a structure, or a stricter state-law equivalent, that reduces wildfire fuel and exposure around homes, businesses, or administrative facilities.
A coordinated local plan developed with governments, tribes, responders, utilities, nonprofits, and state agencies that covers detection, warnings, evacuation, vulnerable populations, hardening, defensible space, land use, local capacity, and existing wildfire plans.
We use a combination of our own taxonomy and classification in addition to large language models to assess meaning and potential beneficiaries. High confidence means strong textual evidence. Always verify with the original bill text.
Learn more about our methodology