on the interest in hearing about the status of those advances and learn from our witnesses whether the fire at patrician training courses are in fact meeting the expanded needs of today's fire service. i also interested in hearing about the current state of the five-year related research and the emerging research areas and how the fire administration is contributing to these efforts. i would also like to learn more about how the fire administration prioritizes its research and investment and how it coordinates the research activities with other federal entities engaged in a fire related research including the national institute for standards and technologies and the science of technology directorate within the department of homeland security. more importantly, however, i am interested in hearing recommendations or suggestions of what of to be included in the next administration reauthorization bill. as you are aware of the current authorizations that have expired in just over four months. i am pleased that we are holding this hearing today and i think it's an important first step and i hope that the decision to call this hearing is an indication that there are plans to draft and moved a reauthorization bill through this committee in the coming weeks to review of the chairman will be able to provide some insight into these plans this morning and as you may be aware of our colleagues past the fire administration reauthorization bill for the committee on homeland security and government affairs just yesterday. i believe we also have an obligation and an opportunity to ensure that the fire administration the authority continues uninterrupted and i look forward to working with the chairman towards that end. again, mr. chairman, thank you for holding this important hearing. the five-year administration plays an essential role in ensuring that our firefighters who are so critical to the safety and resilience of the nation have the tools they need to protect us and keep us out of harm's way. i am looking forward to hearing from our witnesses and of the tools congress can provide the fire administration that will allow them to effectively assist fire departments all across the country and i yield the balance of my time. >> if there are members that wish to submit additional steegmans, your statements will be added to the record at this point. i would like to introduce the witnesses and then proceed to hear from each of them in order to read our first witnesses chief ernest michel, jr assistant administrator of the federal emergency management agency and the united states fire administrator in charge of the united states fire administration of the department of homeland security. next we will hear from dr. john hall jr., the division director of fire and always seemed research at the national fire protection association. dr. hall has been active in fire analysis and fire research for nearly 35 years. our third witness is chief jim critchley. jeeves critchley represents the tucson fire department in my home state of arizona and also currently serves as the president of the western fire chiefs association. our final witness is mr. kevin o'connor, assistant to the general prison for the international association of firefighters. thank you again to the witnesses for being here today. as the witnesses should know, spoken testimony is limited to five minutes each. after all witnesses of spoken, members of the committee will have five minutes each to ask questions. i now recognize the first witness, the united states fire administrator, ernest mitchell. >> good morning, chairman quayle to the crosby, ranking member edwards and members of the committee. my name is ernest mitchell, jr. of the emergency management agency and the united states fire administrator in charge of the united states fire administration at the department of homeland security. it is indeed an honor to appear before you today to discuss the u.s. fire had fenestration. the fire administration is committed to providing national leadership to foster a solid foundation for the fire and emergency stakeholders and prevention preparedness and response, and my testimony today i will share an overview of the administration's core functions, major priorities and present activities and goals. this might making progress over time, the united states has been higher than in most of the industrialized world. this has held true in both fire deaths and loss rates. thousands of americans die each year and thousands more are injured. property losses reach millions of dollars. average annual fire loss in the united states exceed those from floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes and other natural disasters combined in our country. the fire administration is a national leader in providing fire safety and prevention programs, helps the treaty could decrease tragic losses and we lead the way of preparing the communities to respond to fired and other hazards on the whole community perched emergency management. we are supporting the efforts of local communities and championing federal fire prevention control efforts and coordinate information about fire programs throughout the country. there are the traditional stores in the administration that we have initiated more these good datacenter administers the system for collecting and analyzing and disseminating data and information on fire and other emergency incidents to state and local governments and the fire community. number two is true partner -- public education and awareness through partnerships and special initiatives of fire administration involves the fire service, the media, other federal agencies and special-interest groups in the development and delivery of fire safety awareness and education programs. free is training the national fire academy offers educational opportunities for the advanced professional development of the mid-level and senior fire and emergency medical service officers and allied professionals involved in fire prevention and life safety activities. member for his research and technology. research testing and evaluation of fire administration works with public and private entities to promote and improve fire and life safety. research and special studies are conducted on fire detection, suppression and notification systems as well as issues related to verify your health and safety. the size and the more recent as technical assistance and response. it is a recent initiative for the administration and developing a national firefighting strategy. the mission's purpose is to establish an overall multidisciplinary response and recovery support mechanism for fema by as television is structure to engaging access to the nation's structural fire and emergency medical service skill sets thereby expanding the capacity for responding and providing foster coordinated efforts to contain and minimize the loss of life property during disasters. within the scope of these efforts it is essential that we work on the multiple levels and with a wide variety of partners. we engage stakeholders and evaluating programs that will address the emerging fire disaster response needs. one example was the collaboration of the national protection association of us by coalition and the mission of the coalition is to inform consumers about life-saving benefits in selling sprinkler systems. the more recent orie emerging star has been utilized at this point to respond to disasters and result in some success provided technical the expertise and assistance during the development of the teams across the country we have responded to and demonstrate effectiveness in the 2011 flooding in colorado, alabama, georgia and during this april's tornadoes in texas. graduates of our highly sought after team programs have contributed to and participated in these events. given the dynamics of the times, the fire administration has identified fire from the goals as the remark to provide national leadership on fire safety issues. we will continue to pursue these goals for the existing programs while evaluating issues and instituting new initiatives rather than to the credit in future of read it climate. thank you mr. chairman for giving me the opportunity to appear before you today. their continued support is greatly appreciated. i would be glad to answer any questions you may have to the estimates before very much of mr. mitchell. i now recognize mr. hall to present his testimony. >> mr. chairman, members of congress, my name is john hall, and i am here on behalf of the national fire protection association to communicate our very strong support for the reauthorization of the u.s. fighter at fenestration. next year marks the 40th anniversary of america birmingham. of the 90 recommendations in the report, the first was for the establishment of a u.s. fire administration to provide a national focus for the nation's fire problem. the report also identified tasks appropriate to the federal role in what would continue to be primarily a local responsibility technical and educational assistance to state and local governments collecting in analyzing fire information conducting research and development in certain areas and providing a financial assistance when adequate fire protection lies beyond the community's needs, and of quote. the u.s. fae has maintained this mandated focus throughout its existence. the report also said out ambitious goals saying, quote, a reduction of 50% in deaths, injuries and property losses is quite possible within the next generation, end of quote. how is america done on this goal? civilian fire deaths declined by about 60%. firefighter on duty fatalities declined by half, civilian fire injuries by about 40%. firefighter injuries by about one-third interest property damage adjusted for inflation by about one-quarter. even so, we still have some of the highest full-year loss rates in the developed world. we know how far we have come, but we also know how much better we can do because we see greater safety in countries like us. thanks to the national fire incident reporting system used with the ns p.a. service to the greater ability to evaluate programs than any of our country the world in the years since bonamici was founded it's transformed itself into an all hazard emergency response force. report fighters have declined by more than half since 1980. however, hazardous material responses have more than doubled and medical aid calls have more than tripled. imagine a gasoline tank truck rolling over in a highway and a small community. the truck was built in of the states and crashed on an interstate built and maintained by the federal government. the fire department will be expected to contain the spill and cleanup national environmental regulations using presinal to cook met with national consensus standards. it's far from easy to find a local responsibility in such an incident. now have a natural disasters commit terrorist attacks and fire scenarios unheard of two decades ago such as a burning building with a roof covered with photovoltaic power cells. we've asked our full-year service to provide more various tasks and emergencies with more rules whenever something goes wrong this. they've responded to every challenge and everything we have asked of them, but it takes a nation to save a village. they need our help. for nearly 40 years, the u.s. ssa has been there. recent surveys of the needs conducted by nfpa in cooperation with the usfa have found the following: by comparison with national standards, the fire service has extensive needs for every type of resource. fire departments serving the smallest communities are most likely to have the needs to although the needs are still great, they're have been great progress. the assistance to firefighters and save grant programs have been well targeted to the needs and collectively effective in reducing the needs the targeted. america burning identified research is a the usfa has filled the gaps and complemented research purposes when appropriate. some major current or recent projects the nfpa has supported include the following. the next generation of home fire alarms, the next generation of firefighter personal protective clothing, safety in the interface and decision support tools for dealing with unwanted alarms. nfpa supports mitchell newly confirmed fire of the mystery of the latest in a distinguished line of leaders that have had the mfa. we sum up we urge you to reauthorize the usfa and to provide requested funding for the usfa, its program to the academy's training program, the grants programs. the usfa this great work. they've made a great difference, and they can and will do more in keeping with the original vision of the agency that would provide a national focus on fire through effective actions appropriate to a federal role. thank you very much for the opportunity to speak with you on behalf of nfpa, and like chief michel, i will be happy to answer your questions. >> thank you dr. caulkett i now recognize dr. critchley for five minutes to present his testimony. >> good morning, german steel and ranking member edwards. i am chief critchley of the tucson fire department and president of the western fallujah jeeves association aaa also a member of the international association of fire chiefs. i think the committee for the opportunity to testify about the vital work of the u.s. fire administration does for america's fire and medical service. it's important to recognize the major accomplishments that have taken place since the tweets was created in the 1970's. in 1978, 172 firefighters died in the line of duty. in 2011 we had 83 firefighters. more than 50%. in 1970, we had seen a number of civilians also dropped over 50% to a little over 3,000 in 2010. the united states fire administration has been a major role in these accomplishments to the fire service training, public education and research. as a local chief, i would like to especially emphasized the importance of the national fire academy which use on line learning, train the trainer program some on campus class's and other educational schools to train more than half a million responders in 2007 triet through 2011. i'm proud to be one of the more than 6,000 arizonans who completed the nfa clauses. a highlight of the curriculum is the officer program of this program is a gold standard for developing transformative five-year officers ready to deal with the nation's future challenges. as a local fire service instructor the nfa provides material based on the national best practices to help train the next generation of fire service leaders. this common training provides interoperable the of the incident scene of many natural disasters. the usfa also provides excellent data for the national fire data center and the national fire incident reporting system. it allows local fire departments to report incidents in their area and identify national trends to read for civil, use the usfa report to compare their statistics, statistical data in the incidents that i had in tucson. this cable the allows me to prepare for the future threats to my citizens. the budget already has been reduced 25% over the past decade. fiscal year 2013 department of homeland security appropriations bills would cut the budget by an additional 3.5%. the proposed cuts would reduce and eliminate many programs. it will also cancel the final stages of the modernization effort. am i organizations urged congress to restore the funding to the usfa fiscal year 2011 budget and the 45 million is not a large federal spending for them, however, the agency plays an effective role in the inherently government will function of the protecting of the american public. we also would like to express the support for the efforts to clarify that the usfa should be the lead agency of imam wild land fire and the emergency support function number four. the fire fighting and mix. usfa and the u.s. forest service have a memorandum of understanding which allows the usfa to act is supporting the agency. local fire departments work well with the forest service and coordinating esf4 however based on its relationship with the fire and emergency services leading that the mou should continue to play a strong primary role in the structure events from a terrorist attacks and non-wild land fire incidents. in addition, we support the astana of of the teams of firefighters that can quickly deployed in the event as a major all hazardous disaster. as we witnessed in arizona last year, local fire departments are the first seen in the last to leave the incident. the support teams can provide a major benefit to the fire chiefs by helping the incident management covering activity working with steve, travel and local agencies. the authorization for the usfa expires and senator joe lieberman and susan collins have introduced the mark gup s2218. this bill would authorize funding for the usfa through fiscal year 2017. on behalf of the leadership of the nation's fire and the msm service i ask the committee consider companion legislation this year to i would like to thank the committee for being continued supporters of the nation's fire service over the years. we have made major progress in reducing the tragedy of the fire loss in the past 30 years. however, we have much work to do. adding to for holding this hearing i look forward to answering any of your questions. thank you. >> thank you comegys critchley. i now recognize mr. o'connor for his testimony. >> thank you, chairman quayle comer remember, member bonamici. i represent the national association of firefighters, 300,000 members that serve communities in each of the nation's 435 congressional districts. i'm especially pleased to be before the subcommittee because i am currently a constituent of the member john sarbanes and after the november elections will be very proud constituent of the ranking member. as sorrier fighters have taken on additional responsibilities, and extend the capabilities of the total response of the communities so too must define your administration evolves in the needs of the 21st century service. today the firefighters primary function is to simply put out fires. today's fire fighters are well-educated trained and skilled and all-purpose emergency responders with broad responsibilities ranging from the ems has mattress' once, wmd and all hazardous response. most significantly, your fire fighters are always the first deutsch on the ground for any man-made or natural disaster. the prevalence of the delivery systems requires the agency to fully integrate the training and preparedness and to its mission. although usfa is beginning to move in that correction, we want to ensure that it be afforded it's appropriate recognition and attention will continue to integrate prepared this into all of its programs, it must work to change the perception that is primarily focused simply on fire. one way that problem may be solved is to simply change the agency's name to reflect the current mission to read the u.s. fire ems administration are similar branding would better describe expanded goal of those of the modern fire service and agency. after the well-publicized problems stemming from hurricane katrina, commerce rightly took steps to revamp the nation's approach to emergency response. the usmc is currently working to deal with a better means of coordinating existing state and local response for disaster of deployment. currently, the agency is considering organizing firefighters and other responders to support the disaster response and recovery efforts. we fully support this endeavor. but we must ensure firefighters are the appropriately utilized and deployed during any disasters. during the delay in response to hurricane katrina, fema called a thousand firefighters to service community relations officers tasking them of the distribution of fliers instead of deploying these well-trained and sponsors where their presence was desperately needed. frankly it was a tragic waste of resources and capabilities. the iaff partner with usfa and fema to ensure the resources are probably had to decide and utilized on emergencies. the best way to accomplish that would be to establish a national firefighter credentials system. in the past to many of well-meaning firefighters had dispatched an emergency but many of those firefighters have lacked the training and experience to operate effectively. a national provincial and system will really see it that uncertainty by typing responses based on training and certification levels to this will enable the commanders to make the most appropriate use of their most valuable resource personnel. the stubble of the credentials system has been in the development since 2006. there's simply no excuse for this deily. the project needs to be completed. most importantly, usfa serves as the fire service federal government. unfortunately, the fire administration ability to represent the service at the federal level is compromised by a lack of adequate funding. usfa has long struggled to function with insufficient resources. the current authorization level must be maintained for the agency to carry out its mission coming and i urge the subcommittee to retain or even increase current authorization level. rest assured we will be making the same case to your colleagues and appropriations. last i would like to address a prior congressional recommendations that usfa has been slow to implement. the u.s. fire academy has successfully for their processional to become professional development through trinity education. the academy offers learning the locally sponsored centers throughout the state to expand its ability to serve individuals who are not able to attend training and at its word. to expand the academy is reached, congress authorizes usfa to part of nationally recognized organizations that established the chennai programs to deliver a portion of the agency's training to the organizations such as the iaff provide excellent partners to come back to the real world training a few institutions to match. for such partnerships, usfa could increase the number of firefighters to benefit from the programs. we look forward to working with chief michel and his role and hopefully implement this program. this concludes my testimony. i think you for the opportunity to speak before you today and like my colleagues i am ready to answer any questions to the estimates before. i want to thank all of the witnesses for their testimony and also for being right at the five men at spot. that is a rarity on capitol hill and i think you for your punctuality. now i want to remind members when the questioning is to five minutes the chair at this point to build in the round of questions and recognize myself for five minutes. the chief michel as we are examining the usfa what changes should be made to the authorities currently it serves as a support agency of the u.s. forest service and federal emergency management agency the urgency support function number four, fire fighting genex these responsibilities are signed at the discretion of homeland security. some of the fire service community is recommended that the usfa should coley to the leader with the u.s. forest service to ensure more effective state and local response. would this be 13 people to handle this responsibility and to your knowledge, has the department explored the possibility of making this change with the service? pacoima what do they kazbek thank you. guess we have explored. in fact, we have come up with a couple of initiatives that would allow us to participate more in response. we are meeting with fema response leadership at this time this very week and also with the u.s. forest service to discuss how we would coordinate being dual coordinators within. we have a lot of ideas on how we could you that and partnering with the theater services non-governmental organizations and agencies to provide some level of coordination with the disaster response across the country with mutual aid agreements and contracts, so there was a point we wondered if we have the authority to talk with our legal folks has the authority to write to us into that program and so right now we're just trying to coordinate that effort with the forest service and do it in a way that is acceptable to the parties involved infant of beef to strength and complement to all hazards. >> we are learning the same incident management tight the forest service uses we have some specific entities, some specific duties that we do in any event the forest service model doesn't address and hasn't had the technical rescue during a big fire scene. i think that this just will build up the strength of it if we are both a part of that decision making instead of just one coming to a support agency if we're there with our voices saying this is the best way to go i think that is a much better product than having to wait for support. >> thank you. chief michel, leveraging the r&d under way in different agencies there is ongoing research at the dhs as the directorate and this fire safety research looking at the fire retardant materials to protect firefighters how does the usfa gordon-reed its research with other fire safety research going on in the department of homeland security and defense. >> we meet with them regularly we just had a meeting, an on-site meeting last week. we partner nfpa laboratories today we are talking right now with recently with the laboratory is about new smoke detector technologies is essentially we continually have communications through our team that works in technology and research and just stay in constant communication. we gather input from our fire service stakeholders and the other non-governmental organizations across the country in the fire service as the needs we communicate those with the technology agencies and laboratories and parkhurst and try to see that our needs are being met by the community. >> have you experienced any sort of problems with actually getting the level of cooperation between the different agencies? sometimes we hear that it's hard to get information from one agency if you are working with another agency. >> i've only recently come into the federal government and so the level of bureaucracy -- you may be need to go through to go from one step to the next is a little different than in the local government. but, no. the people engaged are very cooperative. i think sometimes the process and our level of resource that supports has been engaged in the process probably limits of our ability to move forward faster. but we work with them to the extent we can. >> thank you. i now recognize the ranking member for five minutes. >> thank you mr. chairman and to our witnesses. my staff recently had a chance to spend the day and our fire training academy, and i have to say for the work of the firefighters and the chief on the ground that's not for the faint of heart so i really appreciate what you do for all of our communities to date in your testimony both of you come and we will allow you to answer this question out of respect for of minister michel, and i will share with you why, you both expressed concerns over the administration's current level of funding and you describe the impact of the budget is having on the fire at illustration's activities, and specifically, chief critchley, you mentioned the five-year of fenestration won't be able to complete modernization of the fire incident reporting system from the national fire incident reporting system and that a number of courses offered at the fire academy will be eliminated and new courses will not be developed. i wonder if you can comment on the ability of the administration to fulfill its mission to rated the most local level i wonder to what you could comment on the budget constraints mean and what level of oberst funding to you've got to be included in the read authorized bill as we move forward for congress? cheeks? >> succumbed to the first level of losses that we have seen in the u.s. fire administration specifically of the national fire academy we have seen a reduction in the number of courses, wide-ranging horses from hazardous material to prevention to deployment for command-and-control lots of those has been reduced. we have seen wonderful programs that is also looking at a reduction in funding. in the trade program is where i met the fire chief for the very first time as the training officers which builds and network across the nation about doing the right thing with our training. on i am worried that may be lost. the executive officer program, what an outstanding way to educate the continuing leaders in the five-year service so that we are thinking for word instead of staying the way we are because we are going to have to change. those are issues that i would be concerned about with being cut on the modernization. right now we get reports, lots of reports for how it relates to the data. a wonderful things for us to do but i am wondering if there's a way that we can do real time members and we can get to finish this so that we can have numbers that we can compare our organization for civil we of the l.a. fire department in new york having questions about their times mean. we had 80 of us thought that we could get real-time members from i believe that say incredible value to the islamic what you are sharing with us is a reduction in the budget has -- because it is a fairly lean agency has real impact locally. mr. o'connor, do you have a comment on that? >> to piggyback we all recognized the fire service is inherently local operations of the chairman reference to the landmark america in 1973 and frankly congress recognized the federal government needs to be an agency that is the voice of the fire service, and you described this as being very lean and that's correct. some of my testimony to other issues such as the brandt it offers criticism of limited resources for consistently diminishing infers is having a hard time doing its job and the simple reality is the author level is great and needs to be at least at the current level but it certainly needs to be appropriated. this is a lead agency. there's not a lot of fact there and its supporting the professional firefighters and probably two and a half as many volunteers across the country in every community and we encourage the congress to recognize that this is an efficient use of federal funds as protecting the communities and that really in our view is the government's most basic responsibility. >> administrator mitchell, if i could just ask in terms of what firefighters need an departments need all across the country, some of it is credentials and others you would like the capacity to be able to deliver those things. is that correct? >> yes. i would like to extend our capacity, and really since i have been at the fire administration i found that we have excellent people working. they have a plan that's outstanding. we do not have the resources to carry all elements through expeditiously, so the reductions have limited our ability to move forward with some of the new programs the we need to move forward. >> thank you. i would yield back. >> i now recognize the chairman of the full committee, the gentleman from texas, mr. hall for five minutes. >> mr. chairman i do think you and i think this panel. i just -- you have such an important job and it's important to the smallest group of firefighters coming into your testimony you given your time to prepare and a lot to be preceded by this committee and i think we do. and the questions she and i kind of work as a team of a lot of times and i want to enlarge a little bit on her questions with some of the answers that you've given. my dad was a firefighter in the smallest county in the state of texas, 254 counties they were the smallest and they had a five-year department. a siren would go off at night and everybody could hear it. i could hear it, too. it would wake me up. my dad would get and rall way to the fire station because they wanted to be fit for the bridges got there because the first one there got to drive the one truck they had and it is always a race and when it is all over and they come home he would see how did it go? well, we saved a lot was usually his answer. it means a lot and i have to rely on you. i guess administrator mitchell last year how does the united states five-year administration how do you support the fire for? i have a lot of them in my fourth congressional district. how do you support those? i guess the fundamental differences in the nature of the problems compared to the u.s. tire province as a whole, and i would say this, it's sad that we had to have a 9/11 to get people to appreciate the way they should. our communities are protective of the volunteer fire departments and face a very unique challenges come agricultural fires, wildland and urban interface. does the usfa offer training a specially tailored to volunteer firefighters, and what type of resources have you developed to assist the fire department to operate in the rural communities? i guess you want me to repeat that? >> thank you, congressman. >> yes, we have course is specifically tailored to words volunteers tikrit largely what we have our offerings of those courses. we've worked with the volunteers to try to make them more visible and recognized the difficulties having the time to get additional training so we work more to expand the online offerings and the in the field courses that go out through the states, state by training. much of the basic training is done locally, so those are handled outside. what we do try to do it on a larger basis is a lot of that online. with respect to the rural areas and wildland, we have courses in development right now for the weigel and inter to develop the structures close to the wild land, and we have some widely and courses that are being offered to the national wildland coordinating group, so we are i guess the over all the answer is that we are reaching out trying to make the course is more available to the volunteers and working with the volunteer association also that held that to happen. >> think you for that and i think it's very important and i yield back my time, mr. chairman. >> thank you very much mr. chairman and i now recognize mr. bonamici. >> i want to join the other members of the committee in thank you all for the work that you do to try to keep our communities safe. the minister michel, in your testimony you talked about the indirect cost of fire and estimate that according to your testimony here the indirect cost which includes things light lost business, medical expenses, temporary lodging, psychological damage may be as much as eight to ten times higher than the direct cost of fire, and that just emphasizes the importance of training and education and prevention. and i know that right now many communities not only in my district and state, but across the country are struggling and don't have the resources they need of the local level to do all the work that the need to do. and so what i would like you to do, maybe dr. hall because you mentioned this in your testimony, can you talk about the progress that's been made with the areas that are targeted with the assistance to firefighters in the safer grant program, can you comment about how these programs have really contributed to addressing the challenges that are faced by the local fire service? >> we have conducted three needs assessments 1/5 to read the second and third of what we accompanied with a matching analysis looking at how the needs have been affected by the grants that the people have gotten in the years before the survey was conducted. what we found is that the particular types of leads that were especially targeted by the afg and safer grants intended to show the biggest improvements over the ten years between the first and the last. these improvements for all sizes of the communities from the big cities to the small world volunteer for your department areas mr. hall was talking about what began as the program grants are very well targeted. they're very effective, the only limit that we have seen is that there's limited funding. the accomplished as much as could have been expected given the amount of the grants that were out there. so to us, the road map was clear. if you want to get these needs really far down, you need to come as the other speakers have said, maintain the funding and a possible decreased funding for the grants. now another thing we have looked at in the grants program in the needs assessment was training. to the of the training come to the of the certification for the various different tasks, and here again we saw the improvements in the very great needs, and this ties back to the outreach programs that are being conducted from the academy. estimates before. now, in my state of oregon, we pride ourselves on the state of devotee and green building so when somebody mentions the rooftop covered with photovoltaic cells, that sounded like back home. could you talk a little bit about the work that is being done to make sure that the tactics are developed for fighting fires and green building? >> i think those i statement that you are reacting to come, this woman. thank you. there is an active project at nfpa it is in cooperation with the fire administration and with other key entities to try to develop the best practices. how should you adjust your way of fighting a fire in order to identify this particular hazard is there when you show up and then to decide how you avoid the shock hazards and other sorts of things in the course of fighting the fire. it's not only going very well in terms of producing results, but i think it's something of a role model project for now how hazards can be incorporated into the best practices of the fire service in general. >> thank you very much and i yield back mr. chairman. >> thank you and i recognize the gentleman from illinois for five minutes. >> thank you mr. chairman. i thank all the witnesses for their testimony and obviously very critical issue we're talking about fire safety. in written testimony of mr. konar and mr. mitchell u-boats highlight one area in which you think the usfa can do more in training and you specifically mentioned it's been slow to implement the congress recommendations that a partner with organizations and establish fire training programs. so i want to ask, mr. o'connor, can you tell us more about the training programs and how it can help the five-year academy expand the reach of its class is? >> i think in all fairness to the academy, part of the issue is the resources that we have talked previously, but in our view the national academy is for people directly able in the residence there and actually travel to emmetsburg and it's wonderful training. i think this committee in congress and the authorization recognize the there's other opportunities and the organization there's a lot of folks throughout the fire service organization representing firefighters to have their vibrant training programs. for example, the one i know this obviously is the iiss. we have several programs funded in the department of energy, department of homeland security and the department of transportation the darfur located on the peer-to-peer training. essentially we have training programs certified to meet the standards and the approval of the fire academy and other sources, but they are delivered in the economic and local level meaning if there's a need for training courses and hypothetically we would find the instructors that are already trained and certified in portland their day jobs may be a firefighter in portland are met for a door somewhere else, but they would be dispatched and the training and basically only to be compensated for the program that they're actually training. they are spread geographically across the nation so it's a very fishy and economical way of delivering the training. cadre currently exists and if we were contacted through from mechanisms we allow the opportunity to put these programs in the field is certainly a very good model training. it is especially effective because it is not just an academic setting it is an actual fire fighter that may be an expert in that response channing other firefighters in that discipline so there's that natural respect and camaraderie as a very good way of expanding the training profiles in getting the curriculum in the field to avoid the trouble cost in things of that nature. >> i want to turn the rest of my time over to the issue of the fire brands. in 2009 and 2011 might help to the legislation reauthorize the firebrand program. neither has been passed. the legislation would make the dance more accessible to the fire departments across the country and bring civility to the crucial source of the funds in the local fire authorities. dr. hall, in your testimony you speak to the importance of the programs and the effect they've had on the committee. can you comment on the importance of free offers in the program and your fault of the proposed changes and the every authorizing language? >> thank you, congressman. yes, we have considerable analysis which was done in association with our needs assessment surveys to demonstrate the good targeting and effectiveness and the cost effectiveness of the grants programs in all kinds of different resource areas. we have made the results of those studies available to every member of congress and their staff and would be happy to discuss these things in detail at your discretion. i do not honestly have any suggestions or thoughts on the reauthorize and language. i know our washington, d.c. office would be more than happy to discuss that kind of detail with any of you and your staff as you go forward. >> i appreciate that and hopefully i to get in touch of the opportunity i hope my colleagues to also. with that, i will yield back the remainder of my time. >> thank you, mr. lipinski. now going to open after a second round for coastal would like to ask additional questions and i now recognize myself for five limits. there's been a lot of discussion about resources, and i understand that over the course of a number of different years the authorization level has been up to $70,000,000.4 busbee 13 and in the appropriations actually came in much lower than that, and i think in the 2013 house funding bill, basically it's providing $42.6 million, which is right about the same level of the request from the president and his budget did i know that that's not the level that you would like, but i do think that this hearing has been very informative to see what the priorities and how we can support your endeavors in very tough budgetary times. i think providing an authorization level that is much higher than we can afford i think is a little bit irresponsible, but i do want to continue to go down and see what priorities we can do to make sure we are getting the support that is necessary even though we might not be getting to the level then you would like, so i do appreciate your buddies testimony and i want to go to the chief. chief michel was talking about how the wildfires are becoming a more significant threat to it as you know, arizona is currently battling the wild fires in the central and eastern part of the state and we had the fire last year and we continue to see this. can you say, give me some insight on why are the wildfires becoming a more significant threat? is a forest management policies such as ensuring that we are keeping fuel low and trees than? to a healthy level or patterns of development moving closer or a combination of both? >> thank you. i would say it's a combination of both. i'm not as well first of the fuel management program that they have, but i can promise you that as we grow as a community, we are reaching out into areas that were never designed for fire trucks to get in to take care of. so as we expand the size of the cities or the movement out into the urban interface area, we just increase the number of buildings that are going to be hurt during the wildfires. so i believe it is both but primarily the way that we are managing our growth. >> thank you. chief michel, you have any thoughts on why they become more significant? >> again, i'm not as familiar with the fuel management part of that, although we are engaged with other agencies now and studying fuel management and help fuel management verses of by yo response intractable coming up in southern california, and i know a large part of the problem was based upon for building and living in the interface. the lack of fire resistive construction in those areas and some of the of the preventative mitigation measures that could and should be enacted to prevent law. >> thank you. dr. hall, it's been described in one of the training challenges reaching out to all firefighters across the country and increasing in the distance trainings has it from any research to try to quantify the impact of training programs and have they specifically measured the effectiveness of the remote training? >> thank you, mr. chairman. the analysis we have conducted is not at that level of detail. we have results that indicate that the training situation for the fire service has improved to a limited degree between the first of the needs assessment surveys and the more recent survey. but we haven't been in the position to look at specific data about people reached or the efficiency of the particular methods of delivery. >> thank you very much. and i would now recognize the ranking member ms. edwards. >> thank you mr. chairman for this second round of questions. i want to go back to the issue of credentials because i recognize we have a lot of local fire departments, fire fighting is essentially a local activity, but we also have a number of circumstances, particularly major disasters that we are calling on, you know, one jurisdiction to support another the jurisdiction and for me this is for the question comes forward, because i think it's really important to would ever jurisdiction has the same capacity so that they can kind of fit right into the program and are able to respond appropriately. so, mr. o'connor, can you elaborate on the recommendation for the credentials and explain why you think it's important and if chief mitchell could comment on the status, because i think mr. o'connor, in your testimony you indicated that there's some, you know, lagging because it's been in the hopper since 2006 tariffs too this was something the was brought force after line 11 and certainly katrina, and you have actually articulated a very well. i don't think any one of the federal level or the fire service wants to suggest the local communities with their level should be or ought to be that is up to a local community we recognize that and we don't want to try to intervene with that. however, one of the larger skill incidences whether it is the planes or hurricanes coming on the shore or wild fire, whatever the incident is unique in appropriately trained responder to actually handle that type of a crisis. throughout many fire departments as you know i was a firefighter in baltimore county i don't have the training in firefighting, so it would be useful to have a dispatch to that type of incident, so the point of this is to make sure that instinct commanders and there are some types if you will of the clearing houses or databases that firefighters and departments are actually typecast so you know to what level of responders training. it's just simply makes common sense, and i think everyone recognizes that. i also recognize that this wasn't specifically asked to the u.s. fire administration putative was also with an agency, but it's something that frankly is a responsibility of the incident commander and the people responding and it's why it's so important that it's falling through. >> administrator mitchell, that if you could comment about the status is coming and sort of where we are moving on that, if this is something we have been considering since 2006, and my recollection is that on the 9/11 disaster where you had people that understandably departments that wanted to respond but in a very unique situation you could see how making sure that you got the right people responding could be lifesaving. >> i worked in an act of mutual aid system for many years and we recognize how important it is that people are able to work together at the essentials for their own safety and in order to be effective. i've been advised that the administration and fire academy did a credentializing review and to input and made a recommendation. back in 2005 or 2006i was tasked to get back to you one will test status is going forward. estimate would be helpful because its 2012 come and coming you know, it would seem to me that if a recommendation has been made from the experts, then there should be a way that that gets expedited for consideration thank you. last, chief michel, in a the authorizing bill, the requirement for the secretary of homeland security in consultation with the fire administration to establish the position of financial operations center, and i've been given to understand that that is not a full-time position with full-time status, can you update us on africa limited and how it is being fulfilled by the administration? >> that is correct, it is not approved a 24/7, but as a full-time position for a person to deal with the transfer of data and information that position has been approved and is presently being advertised so we are in the process of filling that position. >> is it important that there be a sort of concerted person designated from the fire administration representing the fire services at the national operation? >> yes, we believe that would be extremely helpful as far as we use a full-time if we are talking about around the clock, given the resource demands that probably not our most efficient way of the threat level were raised a point we would handle and as we do of their positions at that time and staff of round-the-clock based on conditions on a daily basis and would be the full-time equivalent positions. >> thank you very much. >> i would like to thank the witnesses for their voluble testimony and the members for their questions. we may have additional questions for the witnesses and would ask you to respond to those in writing to read the record will remain open for two weeks for additional comments and statements from members of the witnesses are excused. thank you all for coming. this hearing is now adjourned. ..