forest when you don t have a fire that make it easier and more effective in fighting the fire? it s an excellent question, sir. we spend a large time in cal fire on public education and prevention and also with respect to you were talking about fuel, the fuels program, or vegetation management program in cal fire, we have a robust program throughout the state where we are conducting burning operations and vegetation management with prieflt ranch owners and private land owners as well as on state and cooperating with our federal agencies with the u.s. forest service. so two-fold program, vegetation management, we aggressively pursue that, but also from a public education stand point. what we find in these large scale incidents, the public is going to have to be self-sustaining and self-supporting. they need to be prepared. we try to educate them in respect that we say we ll provide the offense, you provide the defense. we talk to them about hardening their structures in a de
build upon and leverage what we re doing here. communications, that was one of the first things. it s different with our active duty forces because you see here, we send our aircraft all around the world. we can t necessarily just invest in some components in the aircraft and call it good because those assets may be gone and deployed but we have work arounds for that. we are looking forward to that as well in addition to the training. lastly is we again kind of relish the opportunity to participate in the operations against an active enemy. at least here, it s fire. we appreciate the fact we can go ahead and enter a tactical command air control. those are operations that are familiar to us and they are, it s a great exercise for us tactically as well. we are able to integrate with cal fire itself with the objective being the fire itself. those work out for us here and we can go ahead and use those skills forward as well. thank you very much, we appreciate the opportunity. t
but we have work arounds for that. we are looking forward to that as well in addition to the training. lastly is we again kind of relish the opportunity to participate in the operations against an active enemy. at least here, it s fire. we appreciate the fact we can go ahead and enter a tactical command air control. those are operations that are familiar to us and they are, it s a great exercise for us tactically as well. we are able to integrate with cal fire itself with the objective being the fire itself. those work out for us here and we can go ahead and use those skills forward as well. thank you very much, we appreciate the opportunity. thank you, i d like to thank our panelists and open it up to our group for any questions of our panelists today. yes, sir, secretary. there are a lot of things you can do in a forest that tend to make it easier it fight a fire like most importantly burning off the fuel during the wet season so there s less for the fire to feed on. to
need to keep the ball moving forward. we can t i think most of us all here would agree, we really can t prevent the next disaster from happening. but by building the partnerships that we are here today and will continue to build in the future, we can certainly limit the number of deaths and long-term destruction. we can surge a lot of things: resources, people. but we cannot surge trust. so venues such as this is what helps us build that trust so that when the bell does go off we know a comment i made yesterday and i d like to use it again in closing today, the most important thing for me to come out of this two-day seminar and sbat into the future is the ability for us to physically face to face look each other in the eye, shake hands and say to each other, we are in this together. thank you, ladies and gentlemen. . (applause). thank you, admiral beeman. you have helped me carry out one of the instructions secretary schultz gave to me 3 years ago, bring the fleet bac
fires in california, but if you look at a global disaster perspective where you have a hundred thousand victims like a tsunami or a large scale event, we have yet to experience that in this nation. i think the agreements we have here today and the relationships we develop today are going to be key to mitigate that. the other scenario that we are concerned with is a coordinated aerial incendiary attack by al qaeda. one of the things we ve seen already in the european union is suspect of al qaeda starting fires in the eu if that happened in california in the right weather conditions, it would be disasterous and everybody in this room would likely be involved. but to go back, it s all for me it s all about relationships, it s all about communication and respecting each other s mission. we certainly appreciate our relationships with all 3 agencies up here. the last thing i would say with respect to technology, one of the things as a command and control tool that cal fire is exp