Congress has agreed to spend nearly US$3bn to combat and prevent wildfires.
The funding, believed to be the biggest fire-fighting allocation in history, was given the go-ahead as devastating fires cut a swathe across California.
The money includes US$289m for fire suppression, US$11m to log trees in overgrown or diseased forests and US$9m in state and community fire assistance. It also repays US$400m which the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management borrowed from other programmes to fight fires during 2003.
