H.R. 1923 — Modernizing Wildfire Safety and Prevention Act of 2025

This section directs the Chief of the Forest Service, in coordination with the National Wildfire Coordinating Group, to create a Middle Fire Leaders Academy not later than one year after enactment of this Act. The academy, open to federal and nonfederal wildland fire response workforce employees, provides (1) rapid training and certification for emerging wildfire and beneficial fire leaders and (2) expanded training for managers and decision makers responsible for wildfire incidents and prescribed burns to enable informed decisions on beneficial fire use, including managing local fire regimes. It authorizes appropriations of $10 million for each of FY2026 through 2035.

This section establishes a competitive grant program administered by the Secretary of Education to support eligible entities—including junior or community colleges, institutions of higher education (as defined in 20 U.S.C. 1002), accredited regional training programs, accredited local academies, and experienced nonprofits—in carrying out educational or vocational programs leading to degrees, certificates, or credentials in wildfire emergency management fields such as agricultural landscape planning relating to wildfire resilience, natural resource management relating to wildfire resilience, emergency management, emergency medical technician services, paramedic services, fire science, firefighting, community planning relating to wildfire resilience, post-fire recovery training for structural firefighters, and other wildfire mitigation, response, or recovery training. The Secretary must award grants not later than 6 months after enactment. Authorizes $10 million annually for FY2026 through FY2035.

This section revises the definition of "firefighter" under the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS, chapter 84 of title 5, U.S. Code)—which provides enhanced retirement benefits (i.e., retirement after 20 years of service at age 50 or 25 years of service at any age, with 1.7% higher employee contributions for those hired after 2012)—to include wildland firefighters whose duties involve controlling and extinguishing wildland fires and are sufficiently rigorous to limit employment to young and physically vigorous individuals (as determined by the Office of Personnel Management Director); employees transferred to supervisory or administrative positions after at least three years in such duties (with no break in service for nonwildland firefighters or up to 24 months total breaks for wildland firefighters); and treats certain pre-enactment service performed from October 1, 2003, through the day before enactment as firefighter service for FERS purposes if the employee was in a covered break in service, submits a written election, and remits additional employee deductions plus interest under 5 U.S.C. 8422 (with the employing agency remitting matching contributions plus interest under 5 U.S.C. 8423). This section further amends the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act (25 U.S.C. 5323(e))—which allows certain federal employees moving to tribal organizations or specified Alaska entities to retain federal workers' compensation and retirement coverage under chapters 83 (Civil Service Retirement System) or 84 (FERS) of title 5—to require that federal wildland firefighters retain enhanced retirement benefits under those chapters during such non-federal service. (Thus, wildland firefighters may accrue special retirement credit while employed by tribal organizations.) This section authorizes federal wildland firefighters (as defined in section 201(d) of the Modernizing Wildfire Safety and Prevention Act of 2025) and wildland fire support personnel to occupy both a federal civil service position and a tribal government position under a job-share agreement.

This section directs the Secretary of the Interior to develop, not later than six months after enactment of this Act, a Wildland Fire Management Casualty Assistance Program to provide assistance to next of kin of firefighters and wildland fire support personnel who suffer illness or are critically injured or killed in the line of duty. The program must address (1) initial and subsequent notifications to next of kin; (2) reimbursement of next-of-kin travel expenses; (3) qualifications, training, duties, supervision, and accountability for casualty assistance officers; (4) relief or transfer of such officers; (5) centralized case management procedures; (6) no-cost provision of benefits information via website and other means; (7) complaint and assistance request mechanisms; (8) liaison with the Departments of the Interior and Justice and the Social Security Administration; and (9) data collection on casualty assistance. The section authorizes appropriations of $1,000,000 for each of FY2026 through 2035; defines next of kin by priority (e.g., surviving legal spouse, children age 18 or older, parents); and specifies that the program does not affect existing line-of-duty death benefits authorities.

This section establishes a nationally consistent smoke monitoring and alert system, led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) through the National Weather Service (NWS) in coordination with the Forest Service, Interior Department, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), to provide real-time information and forecasts on wildfire smoke air quality impacts, including in the built environment. To implement the system, the section directs: (1) EPA to increase availability of air monitoring devices, including speciation monitors and nonregulatory monitors to distinguish wildfire smoke, and to explore satellite use; (2) NOAA through NWS, within one year of enactment, to establish a public county-resolution smoke alert system based on particulate matter levels (in addition to existing visibility-based Dense Smoke Advisories); (3) NWS to collect and disseminate federal, state, local, Tribal, and territorial air quality forecasts and alerts (including via AirNow) through weather networks to support Wireless Emergency Alerts; (4) Forest Service, within one year of enactment, to expand personnel and smoke monitoring equipment to assess wildfire smoke and conduct prescribed fires; (5) Agriculture and Interior Secretaries, within one year of enactment, to expand personnel (including air resource advisors) and equipment for the Interagency Wildland Fire Air Quality Response Program; (6) EPA to expand emergency response capacity for measuring air pollution from wildfires involving hazardous materials and communicating during smoke events; and (7) EPA to improve and modernize the AirNow framework and related tools (i.e., AirNow.gov, AirNow-Tech, Fire and Smoke Map, Forecast Submittal System, and mobile app). The section authorizes $32 million annually for FY2026 through FY2035.

This section directs the Director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), in consultation with the Administrators of the Environmental Protection Agency and United States Fire Administration, the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Chief of the Forest Service, and the Director of the Office of Wildland Fire, to complete a human health risk assessment for worker exposure to wildfire smoke—including in the built environment—not later than two years after enactment. The assessment must address (1) health problems caused by such exposure, (2) probability of health problems at different concentrations, (3) chemicals exposed to, along with levels and duration of exposure, (4) differences in worker susceptibility, and (5) effectiveness of measures to mitigate acute and cumulative exposures. Not later than six months after completing the assessment, the NIOSH Director must develop and publish best practices to mitigate such exposure, informed by the assessment. Authorizes $1 million to NIOSH for each of FY2026 through 2028 to carry out this section.

This section expands qualifying fire events in the Livestock Forage Disaster Program—which provides payments to producers for livestock forage losses due to fire or drought—and the Emergency Assistance for Livestock, Honey Bees, and Farm-Raised Fish Program—which provides payments for eligible livestock losses due to adverse weather or other emergencies. (1) revises Livestock Forage Disaster Program eligibility to include prescribed fires, beneficial fires, and wildfires managed for resource objectives (previously, wildfires); and (2) revises Emergency Assistance for Livestock, Honey Bees, and Farm-Raised Fish Program eligibility to cover wildfires, beneficial fires, prescribed fires, and wildfires managed for resource objectives (from wildfires).

This section amends management cost provisions in section 324 of the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (42 U.S.C. 5165b) to authorize the President to make excess management costs—defined as the difference between authorized specific management costs under subsection (b)(1) and (b)(2)(B) and actual expenditures as of grant closeout—available to grantees and subgrantees receiving assistance under sections 403, 404, 406, 407, or 502 for (1) capacity-building activities to prepare for, recover from, or mitigate major disasters or emergencies and (2) management costs associated with major disasters, emergencies, disaster preparedness, or mitigation under sections 203, 204, 205, or 404, with such funds remaining available for five years after the date made available. These amendments apply to major disaster or emergency grants declared on or after enactment and funded with amounts appropriated on or after enactment. It further requires the Government Accountability Office to submit a report to specified congressional committees within 180 days of enactment assessing the appropriateness of management cost set-asides post-enactment and detailing management costs, set-asides, uses, disaster lengths, and reasons for lengths for major disasters over the prior five years; states that no additional funds are authorized; and directs the FEMA Administrator, within one year of enactment, to recommend regulations or guidance for the fire management assistance program under section 420 (42 U.S.C. 5187) to make assessments and emergency stabilization eligible irrespective of the incident period and to amend the Public Assistance Program and Policy Guide. This section also amends section 401 (42 U.S.C. 5170) to add subsection (d) providing that an initial wildland fire major disaster declaration includes any stemming landslide, mudslide, flood, or other natural disaster event occurring within the three-year period beginning on the wildland fire's first date; makes parallel amendments to section 501 (42 U.S.C. 5191); with such changes applying to events after enactment.

This section directs the NOAA Administrator, not later than three years after enactment and in coordination with NASA, USGS, U.S. Fire Administration, universities, and national laboratories, to develop dynamic risk and hazard maps for U.S. wildland and built environments and to update those maps each wildfire season to reflect changes in natural conditions (e.g., post-flood or fire alterations), rapidly changing environmental conditions, temporal changes in fuels moisture, using remote sensing and ground monitoring. It authorizes appropriations of $15 million annually to NOAA for FY2026 through FY2030.

This section directs the Secretaries of the Interior, Agriculture (acting through the Chief of the Forest Service), Homeland Security (FEMA Administrator), SBA, and EPA—not later than 90 days after enactment—to improve accessibility and reduce administrative burdens for their respective grant programs supporting community wildfire risk reduction and postfire recovery efforts, including by (1) increasing program accessibility; (2) simplifying application processes through reduced information requirements and auto-populating online fields to the maximum extent practicable; (3) aligning applications across programs and developing common sections to minimize duplication; (4) reviewing statutory and administrative barriers to rapid fund access; (5) increasing technical assistance for applicants, recipients, and subrecipients; and (6) enhancing outreach through dedicated staff assistance and notifications of eligibility and application periods.

This section establishes within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) the Joint Office of the Fire Environment Center not later than one year after enactment of this Act. (As background, the office coordinates federal, state, local, Tribal, and private entities to improve wildfire prediction, response, mitigation, and recovery through advanced technology, data, and analysis.) The office comprises five branches—(1) Technology and Engineering, for modeling and testing technologies including via public-private partnerships; (2) Data Services, for artificial intelligence and machine learning to support firefighters, managers, and public health officials, including data sharing with state, local, and Tribal entities; (3) Analysis and Prediction; (4) Education and Consultation, for incident management; and (5) others as determined by the office's board. The office must make its products and information available to geographic area coordination centers, incident management teams, land managers, air quality and water agencies, state, local, and Tribal governments, and public health agencies; provide real-time scientific and technical services for prefire mitigation and risk assessments (i.e., climate, fuels, home ignition, structure spread, values at risk), public health protection (i.e., evacuation mapping, smoke forecasts), fire response and management (i.e., initial attack, resource deployment, firefighter decisions), and postfire activities (i.e., vegetation recovery, debris flows, watershed protection, ecosystem health); coordinate with specified federal agencies; and develop a technological common operating environment for risk mitigation, prescribed fire, response, and post-disaster activities that incorporates public health data such as air quality forecasts and built environment information. The office is governed by a 12-member board consisting of one career employee each from NOAA, United States Fire Administration, Federal Emergency Management Agency, National Weather Service, Forest Service, Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Indian Affairs, National Park Service, and United States Fish and Wildlife Service, plus two non-federal members.

This section directs the Administrator of the United States Fire Administration (USFA) to expand the National Emergency Response Information System, not later than one year after enactment, to include real-time information and analytics tools on prescribed fires and wildfires not impacting structures or infrastructure, with compatibility to the Fire Environment Center. The section also requires USFA to create the Wildfire Digital Data Center as a public repository and catalog for wildfire research data sharing that (1) provides a data and modeling collaboration environment across agencies and disciplines; (2) complies with open access policies per the August 25, 2022, Office of Science and Technology Policy memorandum; (3) includes repository data on wildfire outcomes and management impacts, real-time fire starts, mitigation effectiveness, and public health research related to wildland and built-environment fires; and (4) features a public website, coordinated with the Forest Service, covering post-wildfire impacts and related state and federal programs and funding, best practices for wildfire mitigation, and information on ecological recovery, assessment science, and emergency declaration processes. Additionally, the section requires the Department of the Interior Library, National Emergency Training Center Library, and National Forest Service Library to make federally funded wildland and structural fire research data findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR) through the Wildfire Digital Data Center, integrated with the National Emergency Response Information System; preserves agency ownership of data sources; and authorizes $15 million annually for FY2026 through FY2035.

This section establishes 90-day timelines for disbursing approved payments, loans, grants, and assistance under multiple USDA and FEMA programs to address wildfire damages, including for owners of nonindustrial private forest land (i.e., privately held forest land not used in industrial wood processing) conducting emergency restoration measures. Specifically, the section requires: (1) payments under the Emergency Forest Restoration Program (16 U.S.C. 2206(b)) within 90 days of application approval; (2) payments under the Emergency Watershed Protection Program (16 U.S.C. 2203) within 90 days of approval for wildfire-related watershed impairments; (3) direct loans and grants under the Community Facilities Program (7 U.S.C. 1926(a)(1), (19)) within 90 days of approval; (4) Stafford Act assistance under predisaster hazard mitigation (42 U.S.C. 5170(m)), post-disaster hazard mitigation (42 U.S.C. 5170c(h)), debris removal (42 U.S.C. 5203(e)(3)), and individual assistance (42 U.S.C. 5174(i)) within 90 days of approval or, for debris removal and individual assistance, the wildfire's last day; and (5) SBA disaster loans (15 U.S.C. 636(b)(18)) within 90 days of approval. (Thus, these timelines expedite recovery for wildfire-affected landowners and communities previously subject to standard processing delays.)