A bipartisan effort is underway to make permanent a program that allows rural fire districts to call in aircraft early during wildfires. An Eastern Washington lawmaker leading the effort on the newly filed House Bill 2104 says the policy has already proven its worth.
Representative Tom Dent of Moses Lake says a temporary law allowing rural fire districts to request early aerial firefighting support is saving money and stopping fires before they explode into major incidents”
“These small rural fire departments can call, and they can request air asset support to come in on a — when a fire begins, and quite often we can knock these fires down really fast.”
Dent says early aircraft response can prevent costly state mobilizations – which often run well over a million dollars – while a quick aerial hit might cost only a fraction of that. He says the policy has strong support from fire chiefs and rural districts across the state:
“We’ve done a lot of fires, we’ve knocked down quickly, and we’ve kept our rural fire departments economically whole. Everybody loves it because it works.”
Dent says the goal this session is simple: remove the sunset and keep the program in place before it expires. The 2026 session begins January 12th.