What you can expect from the Do-Nothing Congress
Congress took a five-week summer break without deciding whether to provide $615 million in additional money to fight wildfires this year, punting the debate into the fall.
Senate Democrats were unable late Thursday to secure 60 votes to advance a $3.6 billion emergency spending bill for a vote.
The bulk of that money was for the Obama administration to handle the influx of unaccompanied minors along the Southwestern border but it also had $615 million for the U.S. Forest Service and the Interior Department to fight fires. That would have eliminated the need for “fire borrowing,” or transferring money from other activities including efforts to prevent fires
Senate Republicans blocked the $3.6 billion measure, arguing blah, blah, blah, blah, blah!…
Last month, along with requesting emergency money, President Barack Obama asked Congress to add wildfires to the list of natural disasters eligible for disaster assistance. That move would eliminate the need for the government to dip into wildfire-prevention programs to pay ever-increasing firefighting costs.
The right-wing clown show running the Republican Party won’t respond to that request until they sort out appropriate guidance from the Old Testament, the ghost of Joseph Goebbels and someone who channels Ayn Rand.
Conservative ideologues contribute as little of use to society as an epoch of plague.
Eideard 
More than 200,000 Colorado homes are highly vulnerable to wildfires, according to a proprietary scale developed by CoreLogic, a California-based provider of real estate and financial information. That represents more than one out of 10 Colorado homes, the highest ratio found in any state. The value of those high-risk homes is estimated at $38.2 billion. The next-most-exposed states are Montana, at 9.1 percent of homes, and Oregon, at 8 percent {New Mexico ranks 4th @ 7.10%}. In dollar terms, Texas and California have the most property vulnerable to wildfire. http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_26247559/colorado-leads-country-share-homes-most-vulnerable-wildfires (click chart – see also CoreLogic report @ http://www.corelogic.com/research/wildfire-risk-report/2013-wildfire-hazard-risk-report.pdf …note Albuquerque page 32
…see also LANL study: “Wildfire smoke’s effect on climate underestimated” http://www.abqjournal.com/440827/news/lanl-study-wildfire-smokes-effect-on-climate-underestimated.html and http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo2220.html Details of the bipartisan legislation that would have overhauled how the government funds its fight against the ever-increasing number and cost of wildfires in “House GOP Stall Wildfire Funding Overhaul” @ http://magicvalley.com/news/local/house-gop-stall-wildfire-funding-overhaul/article_68b4ed88-1d23-11e4-9fc7-0019bb2963f4.html
“Amid California’s drought, many wildfires but no disasters — yet” http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-sierra-fires-20140821-story.html#page=1 With the more than 1,000 days of drought across California, and nearly 5,900 wildfires already ignited in the state, there has yet to be a catastrophic one like the Rim fire that raged across 400 square miles last year, and other states in the West have dodged similar catastrophic fires this season as well.
Two decades of drought in California’s landscapes set the stage for the unprecedented wildfire behavior firefighters are now experiencing on the firelines of the King and other wildfires burning in the state. http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-north-wildfires-20140919-story.html More than 66,000 firefighters are battling 10 major fires in California this week, and resources have been stretched across the state in an effort to contain more than 200 smaller fires a week and prevent outbreaks like the King fire, which officials said is now costing $5 million a day to fight.
Drought: July 20, 2011, Green Bridge over full water levels at a section of Lake Oroville near the Bidwell Marina in Oroville, California, followed by a photo of the water levels on Aug. 19, 2014. http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/california-drought-ba-900-3.gif – wait for both images to fully load
Wildfire crews battle PTSD, much like soldiers at war http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/09/06/climate-fires-firefighters-ptsd-strain/14061659/
The U.S. Forest Service now has more firefighting personnel than it has land managers, and more than half its budget is spent fighting wildfires, leaving less money for clearing trails, which ultimately narrows public access to forest lands. http://missoulanews.bigskypress.com/missoula/howling-mad/Content?oid=2093261 Reportedly the USFS is currently burdened with more than $500 million in backlogged maintenance costs.