Press Releases

Air quality and smoke produced by the wildfires present a significant health threat for individuals with underlying health conditions such as asthma or lung conditions, and threaten to make the COVID-19 pandemic worse.

This year, more than 1 million acres of land in Oregon have been burned, and at least ten Oregonians have tragically lost their lives to the fires, with the death toll expected to increase. For comparison, an average total area of approximately 500,000 acres have burned each year of the last decade during a typical fire season.

Tens of thousands of Oregonians have been placed under evacuation orders, and hundreds have already lost their homes.

My Oregon colleagues and I supported this federal emergency disaster declaration to bring critical resources to our state’s wildfire response, and I’m glad to see it was approved so quickly.

Given the severity and speed in which these fires are spreading across the state, we urge you to expedite the declaration process to ensure that local communities have the resources they need to respond to and recover quickly from these devastating wildfires.

These are very challenging times. Parents wrestle with how to juggle remote learning for their children while they struggle to find safe and affordable child care options and work or run a business.

I’ve been meeting regularly with parents, child care providers, educators, and advocates to discuss what needs to be done about the child care crisis, and their feedback has been vital.

Evictions risk lives, drive families deeper into poverty, further burden overstretched health care systems, and make it much more difficult for the country to contain the coronavirus.