§551d Wildland Firefighter Safety

Summary

The Secretaries must send Congress a yearly report about wildland firefighter safety for the previous calendar year. "Secretaries" means the Interior Secretary (through the leaders of the Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, and Bureau of Indian Affairs) and the Agriculture Secretary (through the Chief of the Forest Service). A "wildland firefighter" is anyone who fights wildland fires under those Secretaries' direction or under a contract or compact with a federally recognized Indian tribe. The report must be sent by March of the year after the year covered. It must describe safety rules and any changes, including training and activities for fire suppression, prescribed burns, and managed fire; include statistics and trend analysis; estimate federal money spent on these safety efforts; report progress on following recommendations from the Inspector General, the Government Accountability Office, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or agency reports tied to a firefighter fatality in the past 10 years; and explain safety rules in contracts with non-federal providers, actions taken to make sure those rules are followed, and the results.