OLYMPIA — Rep. Tom Dent presented his bill to assemble state firefighting resources faster in a Public Safety Committee hearing on Thursday.

House Bill 1019 would modify the language of an already existing law. That law, passed in the session last year expanded the resources offered beyond firefighting assistance to include all emergency service resources in the case of a fire, or natural disaster. This bill changes the meaning of the word mobilize from an action the state would take once local fire crews are exhausted, to one they may take in areas that are predicted to have fires that will get out of control.

“Quite often in Eastern Washington,” Dent, R-Moses Lake, said, “ee have a good idea when we’re going to have a fire. The quicker we’re on a fire, the better chance we have of extinguishing a fire before it becomes a catastrophic event.”

Rep. Roger Goodman, D-Kirkland, the chair of the Public Safety Committee, cosponsored the bill. Dent and Goodman see this bill as a way to be proactive and save money by bringing in state aid sooner and hopefully, reducing the amount of wildfires that burn out of control.

“We’ve been talking for a long time about the need to pre-position resources in the locations where we know the fires are taking place,” Goodman said. “It just makes sense to bring the personnel and the equipment to the scene as soon as we know a fire is about to start or has already started so that we can extinguish it sooner.”

Capt. Monica Alexander, legislative liaison for the Washington State Patrol testified at the hearing. She said the State Patrol was not opposed to the bill, but budget was a concern.

“We aren’t opposed to it, because of course we don’t want wildfires out there spreading faster than what we can handle,” Alexander said. “If we can help to stop that, we are in on that. At the same time, it is the chief’s responsibility to watch the budget.”

State Fire Marshal Chuck Duffy said pre-positioning would bring firefighting resources from western Washington to eastern Washington and would shorten the response time to use those resources. He said the unknown cost could be an issue.

“The issue with pre-positioning, it’s hard to know the exact cost, simply because pre-positioning works on the assumption that we will be able to prevent larger fires,” Duffy said. “We don’t know to a certain fact what that’s going to look like. It has potential, but we don’t know for a fact.”

Loren Torgerson, wildfire policy advisor for The Department of Natural Resources, also testified in support of the bill. He said the department had a long history of pre-mobilization and he sees supporting local fire districts as a way to reduce the long-term cost.

The bill has the support of several key figures in the house who sway wildfire legislation and Dent is optimistic about its progress.

“I think we’ve got some solid support and we’ll be able to move this,” Dent said.