Current status (as of July 2026): H.R. 6387, the FIRE Act, passed the House on April 26, 2026 by a vote of 220–198, largely along party lines, with 3 co-sponsors. It awaits Senate action.
H.R. 6387, introduced by Rep. Gabe Evans (R-CO-8), would require the EPA to issue revisions to its Clean Air Act exceptional events regulations within 18 months of enactment, and would extend them to cover "actions to mitigate wildfire risk" — defined in the bill as a prescribed fire or similar measure undertaken in accordance with State approved practices to reduce the risk and severity of wildfires. Sponsors argue that communities in wildfire-prone regions are being penalized under Clean Air Act enforcement for air-quality exceedances driven by wildfire smoke — pollution they say is outside local control. The recorded House vote split largely along party lines.
The NAAQS and Exceptional Events
The Clean Air Act requires EPA to set National Ambient Air Quality Standards for six major pollutants including particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10) and ozone. States must demonstrate "attainment" with these standards — maintaining air quality at or below the NAAQS thresholds. Monitoring data showing exceedances can trigger requirements for states to develop or tighten their State Implementation Plans, potentially forcing costly regulatory changes on local governments and industry.
The "exceptional events" rule (40 CFR Part 50, Appendix A) provides a pathway for states to exclude air quality data from attainment calculations when the exceedance was caused by an "exceptional event" — including wildfires — that was not reasonably controllable or preventable, and that caused an exceedance that would not otherwise have occurred. If the exclusion is accepted, the monitoring data for those days doesn't count against the state's attainment record.
What Sponsors Say Is Wrong With the Current Process
The existing exceptional events demonstration process is time-intensive and complex. States must submit detailed documentation — meteorological data, fire location data, dispersion modeling, and statistical analysis — demonstrating that the fire caused the exceedance and that the exceedance would not have occurred absent the fire.
Each wildfire season can generate exceedance events requiring individual state demonstrations, and a community previously in attainment can later be designated non-attainment — a designation with significant regulatory and funding consequences — after wildfire smoke pushed their PM2.5 readings above NAAQS thresholds on specific days.
What the FIRE Act Would Change
The bill requires EPA to revise the exceptional events rule to:
- Require EPA to model multi-State events itself — when more than one State notifies EPA that it intends to petition over the same air quality event, or EPA determines such a multistate event has occurred, EPA must conduct regional modelling and analysis sufficient to satisfy the required demonstration
- Recognize prescribed burns as exceptional events eligible for the same exclusion pathway, when those burns are conducted as part of an approved fire management plan. Under current rules, prescribed burns occupy an uncertain status — they're human-caused, which creates ambiguity about whether they qualify as "exceptional events."
- Publish the status of every petition — within 12 months of enactment EPA must stand up a public website, updated monthly, describing the status of all petitions submitted under this section
The Prescribed Burn Problem
Land managers — the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, state forestry agencies — use prescribed burns to reduce fuel loads and lower the risk of catastrophic wildfires. A controlled burn of a few hundred acres conducted under safe conditions produces localized, short-duration air quality impacts. Under the current rule, prescribed burns occupy an uncertain status because they are human-caused. That regulatory exposure is the disincentive the bill is addressed to.
Under the bill, states that use prescribed burning as wildfire mitigation would not face Clean Air Act non-attainment consequences for short-term air quality impacts from burns conducted within approved management frameworks.
Drafted from primary source documents by LegislationPatch's automated research pipeline, then reviewed, verified, and edited by James Shearn, Editor. Every figure and citation is checked against the official text before publication. See our editorial standards and AI disclosure.