Transcripts For CSPAN U.S. 20240704

The committee will come to order. Wildfires are an increasing threat to our country. They have burned more land and put more communities in danger. Last year alone, wildfires affected americans from hawaii to the great smoky mountains. This year, it is likely to get worse. As we sit here today, communities in texas just finished fitithat state. It burned almost 1. 4 million acres of land, taking lives, damaging houses, devastating agriculture, displacing families, leaving property across the Northern Edge of the state in ruin. The last wildfire in maui was it took the lives of over 100 people and shouter countless communities. It was the deadliest wildfire in our country in over a century. The council of native american advancement and the mayor of the county has submitted testimony regarding the ongoing testimony from malley and we offer them into the hearing record with no objection. These are just a few of the examples of a new crisis, one that is putting even more americans at risk. The effects of thesfires are only physical danger and property damage, and they also brina host risks to our communities, even in locations hundreds of miles from the fire. Last year, thea by wildfire smoke from canada, causing unhealthy air quality from detroit to washington, d. C. To austin. Inhaling such smoke causes lung disease, heart problems, as well as cancer. As wildfires grow more common in urban communities, they can burn dangerous synthetic materials. Even after the fire is remains. Aftereffect like floods, mudslides, and buried land can threaten Public Safety for years. But it doesnt stop there. Wildfires are also unbelievably asked pensive. They amount to billions of dollars of risk bonds and ■wv recovery costs, as well as economic losses every single year. Our state and local governments resources on these disasters, often much more than they can afford. Businesses lose money. Properties lose value. Infrastructure gets damaged, and industries are changed for good. This is it just a Land Management issue anymore. Its also an emerging crisis of Public Health, and economic security. That is partly do to development. We are building more in the wildland urban interface, a term for the transitional zone between unoccupied land and settled property. And that brings us closer to wildfires. In the past, it couldve contained within uninhabited land. This problem is also exacerbated by Climate Change. We have eratures, more droughts, and a host of other ecological factors that make wildfires more dangerous. They are one of the gravest consequences of Global Climate change. In short, this is a serious problem. Climate change is making it worse, and we have to improve our response and mitigation efforts. We have a few key tools for that work. Fema is a Government Agency tasked with disaster relief, and wildfires affecting communities falls under their purview. Fema gives out Key Resources to communities affected by wildfires. But the increasing danger as revealed ■wgaps in this agency infrastructure. For instance, many of its programs were designed for other hazards like floods and hurricanes and do not adequately meet the needs of wildfires. I look forward to hearing from our panel of witnesses on what the money to do in order to properly mitigate this threat. Eyewitnesses also provide valuable insight and mitigation and commission. I want to thank senator romney for championing, who is parked up in this committee and signed up as part of the infrastructure law. As part ofa sweeping review of what our government does to respond to wildfires. Department of agriculture of the department of interior. They released their 150 recommendations this past september. The rertyou can fight fires, modernize the tools we use, and adopt a proactive approach so that our communities can be better prepared to face this problem in the future. Our committee has taken some key steps related to the recommendation. Last year, the Senate Passed the disasters of a vacation act, which makes it easier for people to get help they need after wild fires, as well as other serious natural disasters. This Congress Help . When the workforce and expand firefighters all across america. This community has also passed the wildland firefighter protection by senator cinema to establish a permanent needed pay scale for to advance this Bipartisan Legislation to prevent a pay cliff for wildland firefighters th end of this school year. But there still so much more we need to do. Wildfires have become a crisis for the country, and when the colts were old and comprehensive solutions. This threat is and just want to go away, and this committee must play a central role in our federal governments response. So todays discussion with our expert witnesses representing meaningful step. I would now ■like to invite senator romney to share some opening remarks. Thank you for holding this hearing. This is a national priority. It is tragic that we continue to have wildfires in the nation. There is been massive loss of life, and this is a problem from hawaii to canada to the southern border across the country. More and more states are being affected by wildfires. Its not just a few states in the american west, as we sometimes think. It is a natial concern. Jimmy barnes for being here and being willing to share her expertise with this committee. Ldfires per year just in utah. When you think about the impact of these fires, going back to 2018, we had one called the dall ridge fire. What was unusual is a dramatically impacted the watershed going into rivers and streams and lakes, killed wildlife and fish, the ngpengui utah. So the challenge is not just, we are putting co2 and smoke in the air and threatening structures and life, but we are also affecting our Drinking Water and the life of wildlife. In 2021, the parlay canyon fire forced the evacuation of 8000 residents along the wasatch front for an extended period of time. I went and met with people there and they were angry, asking why couldnt we do a better job to prevent these things from happening . I didnt have a of answers. We were actually even considering closing down interstate 80 as a result of that fire. So back in 2021, editor mark kelly of arizona and i introduced the wildland fire mitigation and commission act. It put together some 50 individuals from federal, state, local, privet sector, publicsector, fema. They had put together a report as of september last year with 148 different recommendations, and senator kelly and i are working on legislation to take these recommendations enter them into law. Wanted to hear this hearing today, to get your perspective on what things we might want to turn into law. I appreciate very much what you are doing. I recognize we cant keep on going the way we have in the past. This is going to require additional funding. We might need additional fixed wing aircraft, different modern systems, different prescribed burns processes, there are a lot of things that we are would have to do differently than we have in the past. I look forward to the testimony today, particularly from director barnes and the rest of you, and appreciate the willingness of Community Members to come together and focus on this and or issue. I would now like to invite. Thout while buyers and think about the episode of tall timber. We do have tall timber as well on the eastern side of our state, and we have great areas of prairie grass on the west. February 26th was just a few weeks ago. We had 152,000 acres that were burned just in february 26 in the days that followed that red hot fire danger day, even yesterday, as that has continued with 19 homes destroyed and with four injuries over there. A lot of livestock and a lot of fence line to that area. Our neighbors in texas, where one of the fire started and moved into the panhandle of oklahoma, lost over 1 million acres. This is wildfire season in oklahoma. This is where we see wildfires take off quickly. We see vegetation and high winds coming through. We continue to talk to the other issues that we can to try to resolve as many issues as we can. We do have ■cs of mitigation. Removal of have hazardous fuels. The fuel for us in oklahoma is actually the red cedar, which actually just loads when fire gets near them as well. What is a good issue for us, and if they are not actually mitigated, when a wildfire breaks out, it becomes a major issue for us to be able to spread the fire and accelerated. You may not know this, but occasionally, oklahoma has severe weather. Occasionally, when you have severe weather, that has become a longterm issue for us as well. A lot of vertical infrastructure continues to do with how they can manage those issues. We also have fires the breakout. It happens at times the derelict power grid. That is an issue that still got to resolve and will hopefully be part of our conversation toy. As well as occasionally a lightning strike, whatever it may be. Maybe just something the cast will be it comes from the federal bureaucracy should not. We do have some general contracting issues, so for instance, in oklahoma, the welfare assistance begins on march 1st. Did i mention that i wildfires came in on the end of february come in for our wildfires that happen the commitment for the contract dates said created additional problems for us. We bless the red tape that we have to work through. We should be able to bond to those. One of the issues that we are working on is on hiring issues. Every bill called direct hire act to make sure that we are able to actually get to some of these smart fighters faster and to be able to resolve some of the hiring issues so youre not going to have those delays just as we get people on the ground. This is a big issue for us nationallythe taxpayer. But its an even bigger cost to those impacted by the fire on the ground. If each of you would please stand and raise your right hands. Do you swear that the testimony you will give before this committee will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you god . You may seated. Our first witness she is the u. S. Fire administrator for fema. She oversees efforts to strengthen emergency medicaserv prevent, mitigate, and respond to all hazards. Prior to that role, she served at the helm of the international Public Safety data in the tooth and worked as a Senior Executive in the International Association of firefighters. Since beginning her career as paramedic at the city of Memphis Fire Department 37 years ago, she has become the renowned expert of Public Safety and fire service. You are now recognized for your opening remarks. Certainly, thank you for your wellinformed Opening Statements. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today and to discuss the continuous and evolving wildfire threat. Before we can effectively examine the impact on the nation, we must clarify terminology. Historically, theres been a propensity for decisionmaking to refer to wildland fire in laws intended to reduce the effect on communities. To clarify, wildland is a location made up of vegetation. The intermix communities are referred to as the interface, and the s where Human Technology mixes with vegetative fuels that are both buyer dependent and fire prone. This confusing technology has led to limited resources to address the threat of wild fire before it occurs in the environment. Throughout much of the states and globally, wildfires are growing in intensity, is also c risk you face. It is imperative that the states and local officials adopt and implement and enforce a wild urban interface codes. Fema and the u. S. Fire administration, the u. S. Department of agriculture, the department of interior, were directed by congress, as you know, throh the bipartisan infrastructure law to win the commission. The wildfire mitigation and Management Commission is charged with recommending improvement on how federal agencies manage wildfires across the land. The commissions final report of 148 recommendations covering several themes, including significantly more focus on resources towards prefire and postfire planning to break the current cycle of increasingly severe wildfire risk. Damage and loes. Another theme of the report was modernizing tools to inform decisionmaking, including several measures that strategic fire related data science and technology. A major recommendation for the United States Fire Department is that we provide expensive training and an expansion of the nations non to build Community Resilience and terror improve coordination in the interface. These recommendations and actions have been particularly valuable to address the maui fire before the fire broke heard. I talked to them 48 hours after. My goal is to get an indication of how the fire moved, likely wind impact, the fuel load that enabled rapid and extensive fires bread, indications of human haber beer and overal firefighter wellbeing. They face opportunities to the fema Mitigation Assessment team and increasing resilience during the billback. To assist with billing resilience, is deploying several wildfire sensors on maui, along with the other fire prone islands in the state. Since technology is incredible part of the effectiveness wants providing realtime and Accurate Information on these fires as early possible, the resources can be quickly deployed to engage in suppression. However, we need updates on existing firefighter models, as well as additional trading. The increasing incident of wildfires that affect communities means a more municipal Fire Departments or is possible for firefighting in the wildland and the interface. Local firefighters must add suburban conflagration, welfare strategies and taxing, to their operational skill set. They cannot safely and effectively respond for the interface fires without proper protective admit. With the federal state and local partners, they are actively participating in preparedness and Community Risk reduction where we engage with individuals in their communities through tors across the nation. Its a goal to prepare all structural firefighters and communities bring it in in the suburban communities. We anticipate challenges ahead. Fema and the u. S. Of a looks forward to working with members of this committee, and this nation. E to build i look forward to your questions. I would like to now recognize senator rosen. Thank you, chairman peters. It is my distinct honor and pleasure to introduce nevada zone david fogelson, chief of the division of management and the office of homeland purity. Welcome, chief. The chief has over 30 years of experience in Public Safety, serving in a number of different roles including as a firefighter hymns self, and his deputy fire chief and executive manager for nevada. In our state of nevada, the changing climate, the allowed land owned by the federal go way make mitigation and recovery all the more challenging. Thats why we need strong leaders with Collaborative Partnerships and encourage innovation in our approach of addressing wildfires. Weare so lucky to have someone with as much insight and asked. Leading the response to devastating wildfires. In workinwith leaders across the country to increase challenges the wildfires are now presenting. We must be the table in these important conversations. Its why im pleased that she fogelson represented date at the wild li commission that was charged with making these important recommendations to congress. And i think you wont find a state in the nati anymore that is immune from wildfires. I am so glad to have you here today testifying before this committee. We thank you for their service to our state, and i think the chairman will recognize you for your opening remarks. Chairman peters, nevada senator rosen, and distinguished members of the community. This is my 30th nevada wildfire season. As a deputy fire chief responsible with the service of Land Management based upon the reciprocal form act of 1964, as with all managers, the wildfire continues to be my lifes work. I am before you today as a member of the wildfire commission. I believe we were envisioned to believe that the path on mmissi agreed on 148 recommendations with complete consensus. We want to buy our risk. With the whole community approach. This occurs when we support partnershi has a seat at the table. We realize we are no longer having a fire season, but a fire year. Hr 77. We dont care who owns the hurricane. During projected landfall, coker will move resources for state and local reese wants his. Operation centers are open with the mindset of protecting the wildfires and different. A red flag warning did not trigger coordination of care. When we hear the stories of the zephyrs in northern nevada, theres no operation center. No collective movement of resource is. Segregated by propertyne and jurisdictions. We need an outcome based view, one of consequence management, as we do by hurricanes. The coordination effort currently being led by Fire Administration, the fact that theyre holding a bistate workshop on this issue in two weeks. Our responsibility includes wildfire brakes. We know floods follow fire. Tying fled to the fire is essential for resource poor communities. Collaboration is key, given wildfire response. Structural firefighters are a primary wildfires once. Federal grant help local governments fight the fire. Administrator chris wells looking to increase. No one wants fraud waste. We want to create the best outcomes in the shortest amount of time. Theres a fine balance between those two needs, a balance point which we continually seek. They need our support to support their whole community. They must be sufficiently resourced and funding for the Response Recovery mitigation. Our amc partners spend their entire careers dedicated to wild fire. They have salary, benefit, and respect in the workforce. Mitigation activities outside a fire center lasting from may to october, we see a fire season with the largest loss of life. When our federal partners are not staffed to support response. ■6 inter wildfires asking for air support, only to be reminded, it is out of season and the government is at the depth of u yearround, the same firefighter that was on steve difficulty breathing call, to your structured fire, to Motor Vehicle test. We must allow for rapid remake the government pull their efforts. This will allow them to pull their capabilities and remain d government partners. I think you for this opportunity to testify today. It is an honor and highlight of my career. My passion is to show we are learning from experience and improving our systems. To those to whom much is given, much as ask acted. Before we introduce our next witness, we recognize senator carpenter for 1 minute for a brief remark. Excellent. I represent the state of delaware. We dont have a lot of of firefighters. We have contaminant from the ocean as the sea level rises. Beaches there from land along the coast, just all st coast an as well. I would like to see in my state, its not enough just to address the symptoms of a sharp rise in the devastation. We all know what the root cause is Climate Change. Too much carbon in the air. The good news, i think we are leaving the world in addressing that we need to do more of that. We have great beaches in places like delaware and we want to make sure that we wildfires to fight across the thank you. I will be passing the gavel over to senator romney and senator romney will be chairing this hearing while i away. I will be a good boy. I want to anything to embarrass you, mr. Chairman. I promise. I have a tremendous amount of trust in you, my friend. We are to hear from director barnes. He is currently serving as a utah state worchester and director of utahs division of forestry, fire, and state lands. Prior to this, she was responsible for the Sovereign Lands Program interest rate. She got her masters degree at the university of idaho. A little stray from our northern border, but her undergraduate is from weaver state universe the. Director barnes, we are happy to have you here and listen to test money. Good morning, thank you, chairman peters and members of the committee. I am pleased to be here with you today to discuss wildfires. We are no stranger to the development occurring in our wildland urban unities. With urban growth comes an increased risk of devastating wildfire. Many of these areas contain an overgrowth of fuels. We are seeing fires burn hotter and more severely than ever. Many now refer to fire season as fire year. The increase in severity also leads to days of increased smoke in our communities. The increased severity and intent of the a fires outside of the typical fire season is demonstrated by the recent disruptive wildfires asked variance in places like it is the new normal. St in addition to states being faced with the increasing cost of altar fire measurements, private landowners are now being pressured to reduce the amount of fuels on the landscape. While this may introduce the risk of firefighters, there is little control of wildfires on their property boundary. We do have tools in the toolbox that we can use to mitigate hazardous fuels and manage our lands, and prescribed fire is one of them. However, it becomes complex. And when dealing with air quality standards and mechanical treatment across boundary landscapes. The majority of the focus wq■u around airquality is out of proportion to the frequency and ferocity of wild fires. Wildfires can negate any improvement of air quality in f single in the event. Utah spends the majority of its summer months inundated with smoke from wildfires of other states. With this in mind, we must remember the true cost of wildfires. Each year, wildfire suppression dollars are used widely to bring in the context the severity of wildfire season. In reality, suppression is only eight fragment of the cost. We must consider thof life, safety, ecosystem services. Utahs collaborative relationships lead to our successes. We believe in strong interagency collaboration, shared stewardship, and fire sense are examples of how the utah way achieves goals. The shared stewardship approach rings partners together and stakeholders together to focus on doing the riwork at the righ since 2019, the program in utah has invested 30 million in active worst management, treating over 80,000 acres. This is improved utahs watersheds through a collaborative approach. A statesponsored campaign with interagency collaboration to educate utah citizens and visitors they wild prevention campaign. We produced wildfires by over 60 in the last three years. That is absolutely amazing. Wildfire mitigation released a report with key findings that are important to utah with regard to mitigating, managing, and recovering from wildfires. Utah has seen large wildfires and scene projects impact our watersheds. Were finding ways to make planning more effective and efficient. This is one approach that utah has been very proactive with and stared sure ip, with limited funding. Do to litigation challenges, the need for permitting reform and the lack of mechanisms for Forest Management. Also, limited funding is available for post wildfire restoration at the state level, and providing additional funding would help the recovery from a significant wildfire event. We evaluate the state of utah wildfire risk by considering resources and values of risk in area to determine fire risk. The same metrics should be used to and not just the number of acres treated. Current mance metrics you slowly on metrics around acres treated. Lastly, prioritizing investment in a building of workforce important throughout the nation. Firefighter pay has been at the center of discussions for years now. Utah recently addressed legislation having an equally paid interagency work force should be a priority. We need to learn to live with fire being e i new normal. We need to fight fire with fire, putting more fire in the landscape to prescribed burning with lower intensity burning and less impact to quality. Increasing funding at capacity along with finding ways to strengthen relationships is the key to successful Forest Management and reducing the number of wildfires throughout the nation. Thank you for your time. The chair recognizes senator cinema introducing the fourth witness. I am pleased to be able to introduce my friend and member of the wildland fire medication commsion, lucinda on johnny andreotti. She serves as in arizona where we have worked together on Many Political project for the people of northern arizona. Resiliency planning to delivering resources, to seeing flagstaff devastated by post fire flooding, lucinda has been a champion for rethinking the ways we plan or and respond to wildfires in our country, and her testament to the dedication of northern arizona. I cannot think lucinda enough for exemplary work cochairing the working group with another witness we have at todays hearing. I look forward to her testimony and continuing her work to arizonans affected by the growing threat of wildfires. Thank you. Senator romney, and distinguished members of the committee, i am honored to testify. From the shores of hawaii to the panhandle of texas, wildfire ravages tens of millions of acres in thousands of communities. Even once the wildfires are extinguished, secondary impact threaten the health and safety of affected communities for years. I serve as arizonas deputy county manager of Flood Control administrator. Im responsible for mitigating the impacts of wildfires and post wildfire flooding and leading the forced restoration initiative. I can tell you firsthand the scale of these crises rapidly overwhelms the capacity of local governments. While there are opportunities for federal support, much must be done to improve accessibility, immediacy, and effectiveness of the federal risk wants to the wildfire crisis. I also was privileged to represent counties across the country as i served on the wildland fire mitigation and Management Commission. It is counties that generally bear the brunt of wildfire disasters. I want to think her continuing leadership and significant contributions to improving wildfire prevention, response, and recovery. Her response to the countys efforts have been steadfast and are deeply appreciated by the county and her residence. And me personally, as well. Since 2010, the county has endured nine major wildfires, issued over 25,000 evacuation orders, lost over 130 buildings, including 63 homes, and wildfires released 4. 1 Million Metric Tons of carbon. Id like to focus on them issues relative to how we can improve the wildfire processes. Advocates for amending the stafford act to reflect the cascading repetitive nature of post wildfire flooding. While cumulative impacts usually exceed the minimum for a declaration, the disaster events are separated by 72 hour windows. As a result, the county is lost access to millions of dollars in fema reimbursements and is virtually no access to the public assistance program. Commission recommendation 79 calls for protecting taxpayer investments by ensuring that fema funds can be applied to infrastructure improvements, not just inkind replacements. We have seen wildfire impact with up to 26 times more floodwater than they did in pre wildfire conditions. Congressional action is needed to allow fema to reimburse for up front, shortterm flood mitigation and infrastructure preparation costs for post wildfire flooding. While some areas may qualify for the exigency program, fema should reimburse local government and tribes that do not qualify for exigency, and t the dramatically increased flood flows. Furthermore, exigency funding through fema provide a tangential benefit to the National Flood insurance program. Now i want to quickly turn to increasing the resilience of wildfires. While the bil and ra funding i. R. A. Funding has significantly improved federal investments in Forest Restoration, additional funding will be needed across the west to reduce the threat of catastrophic wildfires as called out in commissioner recommendation 126. Improving the resiliency of the build environment is also important, as is identified in commissioner recommendation 6. Programs are now focusing on reduction within communities. However, streamlining things is greatly needed. Our county received a fuels use the slow processes, it will take over five years to implement. The wildfire crisis cannot be dealt with business ept at navigating the systems and forming the partnerships to secure aid, to address post wildfire impacts. But this is not the case for most areas, such as a neighboring state of new mexico. The conditions recommendation 60 calls for major improvements at federal agency coordination. Thank you again for the opportunity to providst, unifie all levels of government is needed. Thank you. Thank you. We appreciate that testimony. Im just going to note, you may wonder why it is that people are coming in and out of this row here. Thats because there are other hearings going on that we have a responsibility to attend. I would also note that the people that are going to be drafting legislation and implementing recommendations from the commission, they are sitting behind us. So the workers are the one sitting in this back row here, and they are not leaving. They are here to make sure that we actually turn into loss with the recommendations that are being made. Our final witness, he serves as director of Human Security and justice at the accountability office. He leaves the Emergency Managementwants and evaluates t efficiency of certain programs within dhs, including fema. He has served since 2002 and we have seen him a number of times before. Mr. Curie, you are now recognized for your opening statement. Thank you very much. Its an honor to be here today to talk about wildfire preparedness response and recovery. Im not going to repeat all the challenges, we cover that pretty well in the 150 or so wildfire mmlem this is. What i want to do is get into some nuts and bolts and really lay out three key points based on the support weve done in this area and talking to almost every state in the country as well. The first point is that the hasnt really caught up to the modern threat of wildfires. It is very think we were facing with katrina when we were ready for those disasters. The Current System focuses on suppression and mitigation of ruanfederal lands. What weve seen is that wildfires are now affecting very Populated Areas over the last 10 years. Fema is becoming a lot more involved because more people and infrastructure are being affected. So traditionally, Land Management agencies like the Forest Service and interior have had a separate mission from fema. Now that this is changing, there needs to be better coordination between the two. There needs to be a much more holistic approach from start to finish. Some examples i love to throw t for example, if a wildfire starts on federal land, you cant actually access certain fema grants and programs until that wildfire crosses into state or city land. And that is just an archaic process that is tied up in how these programs have been applied for other types of disasters. Wildfires smoke is another example. As you can imagine, the epa and the Forest Service have very different priorities. The Forest Service wants to use prescribed burns to mitigate fires. Epa wants to stop smoke to increase air quality. These are the types of things we have to work out as we changed the dynamic with wildfires. The second point is federal assistance has struggled to really help individuals and communities with wildfires. As was mentioned, a lot of these programs were developed for hurricanes, floods, and other tornadoes and other types of disas,a huge challenge in th areas, but its even more difficult, because wildfires are very unique. The best example i like to fema trailer on a burned out house. The soil is toxic. The debris has to be actually removed, and the fire completely destroys the house or community. Other unique aspec this, is that often the entire structure of community is gone. It takes much longer to rebuild. You have to completely redesign and build up to current code. When more difficult than just rebuilding a house in a neighborhood after flood or it is hit by a hurricane. The other challenge just short of disaster housing for survivors afterwards. We seen this in maui, in california. These things tend to hit places that are extremely expensive for housing. Theres not a lot of hotels and other things to put disaster survivs in. Recently, when i was in maui, a local official says the average home price is 1 1 2 million dollars. They do not have temporary housing for survivors. Fema and its state and local partners will have to Work Together to figure out before fires happen what we are going to do with the survivors when they are taking years to rebuild their homes. The last point id like to talk about is just federal disaster systems in general. What we hear consistently everywhere we go around the country is these programs are way too complicated. Recovery programs, ey long time. They are very frustrating to navigate. When you are trying to use multiple federal programs together for recovery, it becomes almost close to impossible in some peoples view. This is something we will have to change. We made recommendations on how we can do this. We actually suggested that we have specific commissions set up to handle this in general. Many things need to take place to change the way we look at wildfire preparedness was wants and recovery. Thank you for the chance to be here, and we look forward for questions. Thank you, we appreciate all the work you do and all of our Panel Members do to our land. Im going to direct my first question to director barnes, but others are free to comment as well. You noted the importance of Forestry Management but said that there are regulatory barriers that make it difficult for us. What are the barriers that the commission identified, or just based on your own experience, whbe able to make it more likely that we will be able to effectively manage the forest prior to a wildfire . Yes, thanks, senator romney. I think some of this is the process we are going th■÷rough. Permitting reform is something that we definitely need to be focusing on. Also, efficiencies across agencies is something we should be focusing on and how we n do better planning efforts. Honestly, in utah, we do things very well with our interagency partners. I often tell people, if everybody could do it utah way, the world would be a lot better. We worked on that very hard through shared stewardship, but i think breaking down those barriers, the litigation issues that we the are very costly, and then also, the alignment, getting everything aligned to have a project happen, that is a tricky thing for things to happen. If you are doing prescribed fire, permitting, everything lining up altogether to make things work, it becomes complicated and complex at times. Im going to add to this question. Just personal observation, having driven through a number of the forest in our state, i was astounded to see that in as two thirds of the wood, of the trees, are dead. And if there are harvesting, im told within three years or so they can be used for chip ward and so forth, but the process of getting a permit to harvest this deadwood takes so long it is no longer useful and therefore has no economic value and we cant get loggers to come in and take out the deadwood. Does the commission make any recommendations that would actually allow us to use some of the deadwood and to get sector participants to come in and remove some of the fuel that adds to the danger of these wildfires . Absolutely. Thats an important piece of the puzzle in utah. Through shared stewardship, thats one of the approaches that we have taken. We have invested in a position of wood utilization specialist within the division, and having that person to determine what is out there, how could we utilize that would, and how can we get that wood off to the forest to be an economic benefit in this date is something that we are very focused on, and we are starting to build success in that area. Its a very important topic. Thank you. I would be happy to hear from any other member of the panel that would like to address us as well. Thank you. One of the Commission Recommendations does point to the needed continuing an additional needed investment in biomass utilization technologies, and investments in those businesses, because much of this, you know, the wood in the west, particularly the Ponderosa Pine area, is very low value. We need to look at other ways that we can create value out of those product. So continuing investment in those areas will be critical. Thank you. Let me turn to another topic that you raised, which is the rce and the pay period again, director barnes, you indicated a desire to provide the appropriate hey between state and local individuals, but theres been discussion about the difference in pay with federal as well as state and local, and how those compare, and the conflicts that may exist. Likewise in this regard, theres some discussion about fulltime versus parttime. At the federal level, we are parttime individuals. Who wants to take a job thats when direct hire you to have provide a salary for you maybe five or six months of the year, but the rest of the year you get no pay. Are there solutions in this regard that you all have that we need to , a couple of years ago, utah passed hb 65 which increased wildfire paid. We increased that and brought people up to the level which we felt was comparable with federal pay of federal wildfire fighters. Right now, we feel that utah is in a good place compared with our federal partners, but there is still that compensation bracket with regard to benefit. Some of our timelimited firefighters to fight just throughout the season do not receive a benefits package, so that is also an important piece of that puzzle, bringing people on. Fire season is not just fire season anymore, it is fire year. So compensating is very important. It is also very important to not have a swift difference in firefighter pay from agency to agency. When a fire happens, it knows no boundary. We are working together, we are working to put that fire out. If you are a state firefighter or a federal firefighter, we should all be making an amount that is the molar so that there is no difference in what these people are doing out there is leaving our resources. Thank you. Thank you, senator. If i may, transition just a bit to our local firefighters. As you noted, there is a shortage of wildland firefighters, but certainly, we structural side as well. Its up for them to often cover on state and federal lands and regardless, they are the first ones on the ground. So our local firefighters, id like to rest my gratitude to the senate for having already passed the safer act. Were making sure we continue to recruit structural firefighters across the nation, because we are on the edge of a shortage nationwide. Thank you. Any comments . If not, im going to turn to senator butler and let her aware of the tragedies of the wildfires that have occurred in california in recent years. We appreciate you being here and turn to questions you may have. Thank you, senator romney, and thank you to all of the witnesses and colleagues who are here. I appreciate you marking the moment, senator romney, for our colleagues who are having to do multiple things all at the same time, because dont see it as a reflection. Of the commitment of this body to this incredibly important issue. I think its important to note for those who are watching, to understand what is here. I would love to pick up on this conversation about firefighters, because i think that they are just a critical asset to the entire sort of complex puzzle that you all are managing as it relates to Community Safety and environmental dangers as well as land preservation. As was noted, dr. Morell director morell, the Senate Appropriations package last week that extended what is the temporary pay increase for federal wildland firefighters. I think it is important for us to note, at least the data that i have seen in president bidens fiscal year 2025 Budget Proposal that Congress Must now pass a permanent increase to the base pay to give our nations firefighters the certainty that everyone here has spoken to. Dr. Morell, i have heard estimates in congress that had we not extended the pay increase, 30 to 50 of federal wildland firefighters might have left their jobs. Id love to hear your thoughts about how a reduction of the scale might impact the federal governments ability to be the kind of partner that is required in order to meet this crisis that we are dealing with. Absolutely. Thank you for the question. I will address your initial question about what would be the impact if we lost that many firefighters across the nation. It is huge. Because in a default to the state. If we dont pay the federal firefighters and pay them year round to take on what is their responsibility on federal lands to be there first initially, the burden is still falling on our local firefighget there. And then when they can deploy from the federal wildland or other agencies, they arrive minutes later. Weve already noted the impact. If we dont get to these quickly, we must have resources. The other thing is sustainability of the pay for our land federal firefighters. Not just bonus pay, not just a one time that is not pensionable. Right now, they can go and apply and make almost double what they are making an hour here. Im certainly going to defer to the forrester here in the room to answer this, but this is something that we must address as a workforce across the board. Thank you so much for making that point. We are relying on the people we have to do this work and it is critically important. Im going to turn to you for my next question, which was noted and is widely known and reported. California has been sort of ground zero for so much of the accelerated experience of wildfires that we are experiencing as a country. 85 people, destroyed 19,000 homes, 153,000 acres, and cost nearly 17 billion in damages. In the immediate aftermath of the fire, impacted individuals h ruadequate shelter. Those who did access shelter faced an outbreak of norovirus and crime. Nearly six years after the fire, many of the affected areas have yet to rebuild. Further, elderly individuals made up a majority of the 85 fatalities. Demonstrating the disproportionate impact of wildfires on vulnerable populations. In your testimony, you highlight the ongoing struggle of being county and the towns of paradise, galea, and creek canyon to recover and rebuild. You noted in your testimony of the reins unimportant watermark in the context of the whole community recovery. Can you elaborate your takeaways from the campfire and what you would suggest that we as Congress Take as action . Thank you for the question. Those fires are the first time we really saw the huge impact of loss of jor homes in ce poor resource poor communities, rural Frontier Community just like ones in Northern California and nevada, when we look at it from the Southern States with a hurricane, were able to put a fema trailer out and do those rings. Everyone has the mindset that that is how we are going to do that, we cant do that on the west coast. You cant just go put a trailer on a burnout section of land, and so the takehome that i taken from it is how are we to house these not just going to b day, but how do we figure out how to make encampments or something along those lines to takecare of these people for longerterm periods of time. I have a neighbor that lives in gardnerville, nevada, anme he had his house burned down. He was unable to actually rebuild his house and had to relocate to another community. How do we look at those things, how do we fix that and say, we have that in our pocket . Thats racy fema as being a big partner in this as treating the wildfire as we do hurricanes and not as a Land Management issue. Thank you so much. I have lots of questions for all of you and a limited amount of time. I would love to just end with a commentestimony, refer to disas recovery. And i think that is an incredibly important focus and i appreciate you for highlighting it. One of the topics that we havent touched on yet is the recovery of industries. That are not explicitly covered under the fema programs. In particular, i am concerned with the recovery of the Agricultural Community and industry in california. Wildfires have become increasingly worse, having extreme impact not just on californias farmers, but on the food supply. It drives up costs for groceries of everyday families. I just want to urge my colleagues as we can enter and do our work that we Work Together on a bipartisan way to not only ensure that fema has the resources it needs to address disaster recovery, that we are also providing funding for the department of agricultures Emergency Relief Program so that we are ensuring agriculture providers and producers can have robust and timely recovery so that we can all Work Together to continue to bring down costs for working families. Thank you. Fascinating. We fight forest fires, but generally not the extent we have out west so i do find this fascinating. Whether you are on board, i dont think i even heard that word used. I am thinking of the practical things we can do. I went to focus on that. You talked about the postfire. And the flooding afterwards. Is it because these things are caused by huge thunderstorms or is there something is there a lack of education . Just describe what is happening geologically that you have post fire floods. I am fascinated by that. We, in the southwest, and actually utah anareas of the west experience what is called a monsoon traditional monsoon in the summer. Traditionally anywhere from the end of june through september. And then certainly in california, the atmospheric rivers. You have seen other types of rainfall events. Mountain thunderstorms that can create postwifire. So that is a dynamic. What you see on the ground is when a wildfire occurs, particularly if it is a severe wildfire with very severe impacts to the soil, the soil actually becomes it acts like class. And that will typically take place through an initial season. Maybe even longer depending on the circumstances. And so you get this massive increase in flood flows. We have seen in an area recently that was burned up to 26 times the prefire flood flows in those areas. So you are getting massive removal of sediment in many of these areas. We have deep slopes that have burned very severely. You are getting a wasting of sediment and debris coming from the wooded area. You no longer have foliage to deflect the rainfall. And so you see these catastrophic events after the fire. Yeah. It is coincidental. The massive flooding is caused by the fact you had a fire before hand. But it often occurs within less than 72 hours and it is a problem for funding. The pipeli fire in 2022, we had 45 major flood events that summer. But, you know, once you have■< flood event, then it creates a 72 hour window in which you are not eligible. So we never reached even though the total amount is over double our current financial threshold for a declaration we never met the declaration level. That means we are not eligible for reimbursement and not eligible for public assistance. So we are all aware that the federal government creates these rules for cross purposes, and sometimes they make sense, and i appreciate the testimony so we can hopefully get that in better alignment. At the same time, i knthe epa is all about reducing smoke. But what we would be getting back to is doing controlled burns. So you mention your groups agencies got together and came up with, i think you said, 148 different recommendations that i think you said were 100 agreed to. Can you talk about the mitigation . Are we just not removing the fuel . Talk about controlledburns. What are the best things we can do in terms of mitigation that we can agree to. Absolutely, sir. Thank you very much. This is a very wicked problem. We cannot just do more prescribed burns on forest lands. So it using the biomass tools that we talked about earlier so that way we can take out the dead and downed timber that is not soluble for the logging operations. Doing controlled burn operations. And we do look at some issues in controlled burns. Because when we look at fema funds we cannot do controlled burns but we can using federal funds. Loggers as well. That is the problem. How do we reduce the problem in the forest environment . Some of that involves using wildland interface code so we have homeownersthat are actually protecting their communities around it. And with Fire Protection fans that are allowed with the fema mitigation plans. That way there is one cohesive plan on how we are going to mitigate that risk. I ntinueto see that we really dont have an increase in the number of acres being burned every year. Sometimes it is actually decreased. But oftentimes like with hurricanes as well, we have just built up so much real estate on the coast or we mes i fire prone areas. Is that the issue here . Interesting, too. You cannot have any federal funding until it actually crosses into state land which actually ■÷ems insane. Miss reynolds . I want to address that risk. You are right. We are building towards risk. We continue to build towards fire prone land. And if we do so without proper ingress and egress for the population living there and without proper living codes and without using fire resistant materials, we know that geography is going to burn and so we have to preplan for that so that we do not have these disasters. Fire is going to be normal. We are going to have fire adapter communities. But the fedel lutions to this. It is just too big a problem. So individuals who choose to live there, it is just too heavy property. Individuals who live there, what does right look like . Keeping vegetation off your home. Not using mulch. Not having would. These are all just very Practical Solutions for a fire prone mmunity. If people knew there was a disaster waiting to hit i mean, is there kind of a booklet or a publication . For here, you have the real concerning areas. I mean, people were not thinking about this before. I like living around trees. Okay . Have we identified these areas and are simply not addressing them . And what are we doing towards that . I apologize going overtime here. We can look at a fire risk index for our forested areas. What we do not have as a fire risk index for the built environment. Because of Climate Change, which you appropriately brought up, the drought that we are having and all of the soil moisture reduction so on one is perfectly green and on the other side everything is dry. So we are seeing that not only across the island but on areas across the natibefore. Louisiana, for example. These are areas that we have to Pay Attention if we are going to build here. Along withClimate Change, we have to Bring Solutions pre, not post, essentially. Thank you, senator. Mike bipartisan bill, the fire grants safety act re authorizes the u. S. Fire administration and the assistance to firefighters an for adequate fire and Emergency Response Grant Program to 2030. The bill would also increase operation of appropriations for the Fire Administration for the First Time Since 2012. ■u dr. Mooremerrell, can you help done to better help prepare with these wildfires . Thank you for shepherding that bill and already passing it in the but u. S. Fire Administration Needs the funding to be able to expand resources to prepare our firefighters across the nation to mitigate pre, to be able to respond, and to assist with recovery. It is imperative that we not only educate the communitiesgem been made abundantly noted that the individuals are going to have to take responsibility, but it is our firefighters who connect with those individuals in their communities to teach them those things. So we need that. We need the data. We need to be able to build a new analytics platform. Our system was built in 1976. And so we need the funding to be able to build an appropriate Data Platform to inform this fire risk index that we have discussed. So these funds are necessary to be able to elevate the usf a so we can engaaccording to the recommendations. And the commission. There are many that talk about usf face engagement at the Community Level across the nation because they are the boots on the ground, many times early on. Thank you for your answer. Mr. Anderson, just how vital are these programs, especially given the fact you are all finding yourselves on the front line committing to your communities and resources are clearly stretched. But let this committee know how important these resources are. Absolutely, sir. And thank you for the support of these Grant Programs. When i was a Deputy Assistant fire chief, we had a Grant Program. When you look at, especially the built environment, we are putting homes in these urban interface environments but they do not provide the tax revenue. So when we put a subdivision in, we may not have the funding for staffing. These grants allow that local government to make that large investment. I was able to do that and we had funds for two people but we need six people to fill the two positions. And we were able to use the grant to hire the other four. And by the time the Cost Allocation me0 on our side instead of the cost share, we were able to absorb that in our budget but during that four year period, we could have two more firefighters on our street. With the assistance for firefighters grant, things are very expensive in the firefighter world. You are looking at a fire engine costing 200,000 or 400,000. Our Law Enforcement partners get a lot of funds from the department of public justice. These are the Fire Services way of getting those funds that are necessary to provide protection in our local communities but may be out of the reach of some of these jurisdictions, and the competitive process that is used helps us ensure that we are giving it to the right places, i think , nationally. Thank you. Certainly, the maui fires are just a devastating example of how deadly these wildfires can destroy communities and catastrophic ways. As a remo group of islands, hawaii is especially vulnerable to disasters because it is hard for resources to quickly reach the state when disaster strikes. Fema has worked with other federal, state, and local partners to continue providing relief and recovery to disaster survivors with hundreds of fema staff deployed to hawaii to assist in those ■ local efforts my question is for you. You recently traveled to hawaii to examine the recovery efforts. Would you mind sharing with the committee some of your top concerns for recovery at this point . Sure. We went there shortly after the fires had and toward the effective areas. A couple of them i mentioned in my opening statement. One thing is housing for survivors. In is 10 times harder than in traditional disasters because for many, many reasons. First of all, a lot of times ■e locations whether it be maui or california. There is not a lot of y or hotels or things like that. I think in maui right now according to fema, there are still 5000 people that are in some kind of hotel or temporary condominium situation. And also what the fire, you have to wait a lot longer. If you have a flood, you can typically get your house ready to live in within months, possibly. With a fire, it could take years. You are fighting with insurance and trying to get federal assistance. Fema does a really good job with shortterm housing. Then hud comes in on the long and. But there is this middle end and people get stuck and do not5 have a good housing option. Housing is one of the things i see is a good option. The other thing is debris removal. This is always a tough part of any disaster but with fires, again, 10 times harder. Debris is toxic. You have to figure out where to be excavated. A lot of this is privately owned land so many people are sensitive about just excavating and removing their property. And in maui, they just found where they are going to store this toxic property and ■ it. This is just two examples of fire that are way more difficult than traditional disasters. Our system is not prepared and deed to handle that yet. Thank you. Senator lankford, you recognize for your questions. Thank you, all of you. We obviously have to focus on the folks on the ground. I want to talk a little bit about the permitting piece of need to try to work on with federal permitting . Post wildfire or prewildfire that needs to be done . Any ideas on this argument . Anyone can jump in on this. I can start on that and ques i think it is permitting reform of the alignment. Clearing indexes that we need to receive. There are issues with contracting. What is the yeah. So knee path neepa often gets held up on litigation. That work that gets done on the ground. Takes a lot of staff time and a lot of money. Is this postfire or pre fire . Is the issue there for neepa the litigation around it or what needs to be resolved . It is the procedures we need to go through that get held up in litigation in order to get the projects done. And so working on those to find more efficiencies to that process would be the best thing to avoid being held up in litigation. That takes a lot of staff time and it takes away from working done on the ground. Than getting a sense of what can be done as far as mechanisms that can be done in the forest. And categorical explorations. What we can do to get through the process faster. The faster we can get through the process, the more work we can get done on the ground. Again, when you talk about categorical exclusions, this before mediations or both . I would say both. We are years behind on getting work done, so we need to be able to get in there, get work done, and then after a fire there is an immediate need to get things done before a fire happens. But in order to get ahead of a fire crisis, we need to start with tools immediately. Go ahead. You want to make sure your microphone is on there . Relative to Forest Restoration and the work that is necessary to improve the quality of habitat and the area that reduces the threat of wildfire, a couple of other art the Forest Service are typically limited to their willingness to allow third parties to potentially fund conducting the actual nepa process on their behalf. They are very limited in the resources that they have available internally to actually do that physical work on the ground. Go out into the cultural surveys and biological surveys. And we are utilizing for example in our area are goodaut service to actually be able to perform some of that work on their behalf. They still go through the regulatory process and have to approve or, you know, typically they go through a cadx. But if we can help with those costs or resources we have under contract to perform that work by credible licensed professial bringing more flexibility, we approached fema about doing this for a fuels reduction project that we have in our area that is four years in, and we are still waiting for the environmental to be done. And that would have been a fairly simple solution. Yeah. We are not taking over the regulatory responsibility. But providing them th the leg work. You know . Boots on the ground to get the work done. Yeah. Obviously while you are waiting on permitting, you are waiting for the permitting. And for some reason wildfires do not wait on nepa permits. Let me ask on just a couple of clarifications are brought up in my Opening Statements as well. Red flag fire warnings and what we deal with at times. Hien that has been effective for reducing the number of wildfires caused by power lines without actually ju communities as well . Yeah. And as you know, oftentimes the wind. If you have another type of storm, it can cause that. Some of the mitigation that you use for hurricane or Straight Line winds here and the east are effective for preventing this from happening. The problem is we have mitigated a lot of these things in the east because of the threat of tornadoes and hurricanes and things like that but we have not done that in the west. Is a just a rule or a physical structure . It has been more of a matter of the risk over time and were most of the federal money has gone over the years. Most of the federal disaster money and mitigation money has gone. A lot of those are not federal dollars. Those are local companies and coops on all of that. What i am asking, is it the way they are managing the line or a piece of hardware or something or software that is missing . Yeah. I can touch on that. I think it is a collaboration effort with those companies. In utah, we have taken a stand on identifying where that risk is on those powerlines. If it is a high, medium, or low risk and then working with those companies to mitigate that risk. Developing fire mitigation plans to work on the risks they have allowed those lines are very important. Question, sir. In nevada, we have taken a more active response and prioritized whats on that powerline is in. And then our Power Company has actually contracted local governments. Then we are working with the Public Utilities commission of nevada to replace the power poles and infrastructure that is old. I think that speaks to what the representative was speaking about on the east coast. More of that stuff has probably been more recently replaced because of disaster. We just have not had the disaster to cause those power poles to be replaced yet. The material actually expands to absorb the heat. That way we keep those lines in place when a fire does come through as well. I would take up anyone here that is going to have a chainsaw d bring it on over to help us because we deal with these red cedars, as i mentioned before, which is explosive to us. They are a nice, pretty tree, but a terrible problem for pollen in the springtime and a fire risk. They have to be managed underbrush and thare there. We have the same issue and some open prairie areas as well. So thank you to all of you. I appreciate you warning us on explosive trees in oklahoma. So bring your chainsaw. Sounds great. Senator rosen, you will recognize for your questions. Thank you, chair peters. I want to thank you chief ogres in. I just want to say that for shutting down power lines in a place like nevada that we regularly have temperatures greater than 100 degrees all throughout our state through a large portion of the year, this could create a deadly second consequence buy them not having power. It is just as bad. You could have a fire or strong winds. We also have those winds coming in from the coast. So do we want the powerlines to go further . Do we want to kill people because there is no air conditioning . This is important why we talk about these things. I will talk about three main topics. One about smoked. One about Land Management. 80 of nevadas public land. Then our wildfire designation upgrade, which i know is near and dear to those of us in nevada. There is a big impact on smoke and air quality in our local communities. We are no stranger to that in nevada. We experience hazardous ai quality for weeks at a time. It forces Small Businesses to close their doors. It has got lots of health risks. And the smoke levels are just as expected to increase more frequently as Climate Change causes more frequent and severe wildfires. So when smoke plays communities like those in my state, we often do not have the tools to properly mitigate that. And that is really important and persistent, hazardous air quality as a result of wildfire smoke, it is not currently eligible under the stafford act and it makes it difficult for us to get those federal funds. People really suffer those, like those with chronic lung disease. I remember being up ode a few years ago. And i can just tell you i cannot breathe after a while. This sky is just brown from the smoke. Sochi ferguson, can you talk about what happened, particularly up in northern nevada when that smoke just hangs over us coming in, and what it means if we could upgrade smoke as a major disaster declaration . Thank you for the question, maam. A few years ago, i think it was the ring fire that we actually saw this impact. I cannot remember until the rim fire. It just floated in and stuck around for months. And then we had a year without it. And it seems like every year now, every summer, we have two months with smoke causing air quality issues. And i dont know if there is a good answer to at. Some people have some thoughts on it and some of us have some jokes on it. But we have got to figure out how we is good fire to reduce the number of fires that there are. That way we have smoke that is not as heavy and dense. And then the other one is we have to start investigating more in Public Health and sensors so we can see where the bad air quality and do Additional Research on what the impact of the air quality is. So one part of it is not only on the community but we have to think of our firefighters that sleeping on the base camp and then taking their twodaybreak. We know there are longterm and we have lake tahoe and all the wildlife and other things in the community impacting that ecosystem as well. So i think investing in we address this is going to be good for everyone. And i know that the commission tionalsmoke monitoring and alert systems. You think that would be a good thing for us to invest in . Yes, maam. When we look at it, urban areas have a lot of those smoke monitors. Such as nevada. Such as you to. We dont have many of those monitors so it is hard to give an idea of what is the air quality level. Thank you, sir. I want to continue to talk about response and recovery. 80 are managed by the federal government. Siki percent by the bureau of Land Management. We have several agencies. It is kind of an alphabet soup. Five federal land agencies have missions related to wildFire Management. All five of these act with the tribes and our communities. I am gointo nevada here. What are the challenges of having so many agencies, and what might you suggest streamline this project, especially in the middle of a disaster . Absolutely, maam. Part of it is trying to get the rules the same. Whether it is department of Agriculture Department of interior, they have different rules on the way they do things. There are rules on how to use those firefighters and work frustration and stuff. The National Firefighters group is starting to work hard on it. But there are still some nuances there. Between the government and the different agencies, it is an issue. And part of it is pulling in that Emergency Management so we can bring in public works,la in Emergency Management, and have that coordinated collaboration. The Central Point of contact in the midst of an emergency would be most helpful to cut through some of these different bureaucracies. What you say . I would agree with that. I will move on to something i know is really important to you and to all of us. We need to respect a wildfire. How do we do that . We need to give it the same respect we get the disaster of hurricanes. We need to be proactively ready to prepare. We see at coming. We know it is coming. But we cannot wait until it ■0 crosses this particular road for you to do something or any of these other groups to do anything. This is impacting our homes, our community, our health. Everything that happens. We have to do more to detect and respond but moving that designation up to be more like a hurricane so we see it coming and we are there, prepared, and ready. What will this do to improve the outcomes of saving lives, saving businesses, and just getting that fire out. Right . Absolutely. When we proactively use and the Commission Recommends a Fire Environment Center that is based on nola just like a ■1 Hurricane Center and we move resources, we can put those fires out just before they get bigger have the resources there have the official resources to make that decision. And that is the whole crux of ensuring we have the right resource in the right place at the right time based on what science today seems to be able to tell us through either a. I. Modeling with our fire cameras are the new Fire Administration put in hawaii or the weather data we are getting from noa. It is no longer just the western states. It is every state. And prevent an attack it and re prevent it when we can. Attack it when it is there and work on mitigating it before and cleaning up after. Thank you all for being here and everything. This is critical, critical work to every Community Across america. I hope we dont need to i hope that all the mitigation Prevention Works so we arent having to respond, but i am grateful that we are thinking about the best ways to do that. Thank you. Thank you senator rosen. Senator carpenter . Thanks for giving me a littl about not just addressing the symptoms of problems and challenges, but also addressing the root causes. I have been to another hearing and now i am back here. I want to ask a question, i think, from mr. Currie, initially, involving how do we improve coordination between fema and local authorities in after. How do we better before i do that, let me just say that our planet is on fire. It is not just the western half of this country. Our family is on fire. And noaa, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration tells us this is the hottest that we have been back as far as we can look. The hottest year. Look at the rates in france before that. The pavement was melting. It is not stuff. It is not just a western part of this country. It is not just ocean rise on the eastern seaboard. As we try to address the symptoms of these challenges, it is important. It is also important we continue to focus on root causes. With respect to improving coordina■pon between fema and local authorities, the evidence is pretty clear. The right to wildfire is escalating at a rapid pace and posing significant risks to the health and safety of communities, not just out west, but across our country. Wildfires are not only more frequent but they are more destructive than ever before. They are more likely hotter because of Climate Change. It creates drier fuel for those fires. A commission over years creates the conditions that lead to High Temperature firestorms. Extremely dangerous. The result is more loss of life and more loss of property. The fema role in reducing risk to our environment. To our infrastructure. To our Public Health. And the audits in recent years looking at the federal governments role in the Fire Management question. Through the various audits and reviews, how can the federal government better improve its coordination of state and local authorities . We had better coordinate with local and state authorities more productively, address the impact and risks of wildfires. Thank you, sir. Senator rosen laid this out really well. I think what we need to do with wildfires is treat them and prepare for them and respond to them the same way we do for hurricanes. I will just use the delaware analyses. I love it. Lets do this. So if we expect the hurricane to hit landfall in delaware, we also declare in delaware. We also do in maryland, virginia, and even maybe a couple of states north or south of that. Cause they are unpredictable and we know it is going to be bad and missing that is going to happen so we can take all the necessary steps to do that. That is not how it works in wildfire. We hope we hope it is not across from federal or rural land into a populated area. That has got to change. That mentality and whatever rules and legislation behind that needs to change. Improve coordination, i think fema has got particularly good in the coronation was state and local on response. Very programs ams are the across the 30 different agencies in the federal government that provide some type of assistance, they were never designed to Work Together for recovery. So like what senator lankford said with the permitting, they all require different rules, permitting, time frames, and n together. So at the state and local level, that is just a very, very frustrating process in the years of recovery after. I noticed some of you are nodding their heads. Wish they had a delaware ticket they could offer as well. Dr. Mooremerrell, you could telegraph my picture , but the question is supporting atrisk communities. It depends more and more on federal assistance. How we respond as the threat level has increased over time. As my colleagues on more than a few times, we have got to find out what works. We have got to learn more about that. And what specific measures are the u. S. , and fema, taking to support atrisk communities, particularly in terms of ■ healthcare and infrastructure and resources. Also, how can we build unsuccessful efforts to keep up with the increasing threat level of these devastating wildfires . Thank you for the question, sir. Yes. Usf a is certainly leaning into our communities and certainly their vulnerability to wildfires. We know the impact of Climate Change has various impacts. We have looked at the vulnerabilities of our land areas and where we are Building Communities towards fire prone geographies. So this continues to escalate and where usfa was leaning to advocate for building codes, we are advocating for technology to be able to be introduced. We are leaning towards more and more complete quality data th■a can be leveraged to help us understand the fire risk index, not just in the wild landscape, but once a fi idea today the dynamic nature of that fire. Yes. We can equate it to hurricanes and should elevate it to that recognition level, but unlike a hurricane, there is no code for a fire. We can look at the code on a hurricane and prepare based on that. This is a challenge that i will say to you we are leaning in heavy on wildfire evacuation, and how we are going to prepare communities. Right now, we use a ready, set, go. Well, ready and set should already behaa fire. We have to understand when we had to go that is in the midst of a fire. If we have not leaned into preparing our people across the nation to be able to evacuate, then we are going to have issues like the paradise fire where we had 85 people trapped on the egress route. Likevw lahaina when it was so fast that the time for evacuation was minimized. So there are dynamics of wildfires that do not match the hurricane model. The other thing i will say, senator, is highlighting in our communities the real effect of continuing structure fires. It is not always a wildfire that starts with vegeta tion. We have structure to structure spread that happen in lahaina. But, also, we have already lost their safest 600 people since january 1. 600 have died in their homes. That does not mean all of the people that have been displaced. You sent fire in general. You said america am going to ec will say america is burning. Mr. Chairman, could i have maybe another minute . Thvery much. Yesterday, democrat senators gather to hold our annual caucus retreat. It was a wonderful time to share ideas of what is working and what is not. Republicans had a similar kind of caucus, i believe, yesterday. And one of the things i wanted to mention to my colleagues about yesterday, what is causing these requests on fire. About 30 of the Greenhouse Gas emissions in this country are coming from mobile sources, cars, trucks, vans that we drive. Probably another 20 from plants like coal fire plants. Natural gas. Maybe another 20 comes from manufacturing operations. I think asphalt and steel mills. Those are the three majors. 30 . 25 . That is like 25 of the root causes. We are working on all of those as a country. We are trying toovide guidance and maybe inspiration for the rest of the world. I just want to know that we are not just addressing the are tragic. We are also addressing the causes of this and are all in this together. Thank you very much. If i may, sir, on the Greenhouse Gases, wildfires themselves produce Greenhouse Gases that then contribute to Climate Change that perpetuate droughts and wildfires. This becomes a very circular problem so thank you for recognizing that. Thanks. Thank you, senator carper. Mr. Currie, the gao has offered a number of reports on the Emergency Management efforts with topics ranging from federal cooperation, managed growing risks, to barriers with ng, and retaining federal wildlife and firefighters, and many others. So my question for you is, what are some of gaos top recommendations to fema to help be better prepared and respond to wildfires. How can the committee help, and what can we do. A couple of things. First of all, back in 2019, we issued a report on wildfire response. We were talking about how unique the response wasnt how fema programs were not necessarily geared towards that. Fema developed a plan in response to some of my recommendations to try to change some of our recommendations to cure them towards wildfire. There was some progress there. There was just not enough. And a great example of the house and when i talked about. So fema provides shortterm housing when the federal government gets response to a sawild fire. This is not really designed for the length of recovery for a wildfire th a survor has to deal with. And there is not really a good option in that intermediate phase which is what we are seeing right now in lahaina and trying to find places for disaster survivors to live. So we have de recommendations related to housing. I have talked about the debris removal challenges and how they are so much different than that needs to be done is reform of the recovery programs. Again, what we hear from the state and local level over and over again is that the programs were not designed to Work Together and that leads to delays and oftentimes missed opportunities in disaster recovery. Thank you. As we wrap up here, i have a question. Ms. Andreani, this deals with 150 recommendations. But i will ask both of you to prioritize some of those in your mind. There was some prioritization in the report but what stands out to you . You can start and give us some idea as to what we should be looking at if we are drafting legislation. Which would be focused on. Great question, senator, but i am sorry i dont have a great answer for you. It is such a wicked problem. Is recommendations that we made. It is so hard and i would be remiss to to to the top three, the top five, the top 10. Top 11 then . Ill be looking at themes in our reports chapters and grouping those things together because one really has a nexus to another. We have a great chart that Commission Staff shared with us to show how interconnected all the recommendations are. So if you pick three, that eliminates a few other ones. I would really highlight that staff looks at the chapters and sees about using that as their priority based rather than the recommendations. That is good guidance. Senator andreani . Excuse me. Sorry. However, i did point to a couple in my testimony that i think, labetter term, are fairly straightforward opportunities that can dramatically change outcomes in communities. So i would ask you to consider those. You know . Because i think their policy level maybe they are some level opportunities to the right side of the problem and address some very immediate issues that we have. Okay. Berry good. In the interest of time, we are going to wrap up, but i will be submitting a question for the record for fema to try to identify for us which recommendations fema is recommending on its own and which recommendations you require congressional action for specifically. We will look forward to seeing your response coming up. So i would like to, you know, first testing all of our witnesses for joining us here today to share your testimony and expertise. This is an important conversation, and one that does not end today. We have a lot to do. A lot to act on and to support the men and women dealing with this issue each and every day, and oftentimes risking their lives to do that. Congress and the federal government, we must do our part to address this increasing threat and do everything we can to create resilient communities in the process. And i look forward to our continuing Work Together for both mitigation, preparedness, response, as well as recoveryfo will remain open for 15 days until 5 00 p. M. On march 29th of 2024 for the submission of statements and questions for the record. Thank you again. This hearing is now adjourned. <