program will be moderated by a professor geoffrey hazard, a distinguished professor of law at uc hastings. the professor is a leading expert in the field of civil procedure of legal ethics and is good at asking questions. it is my pleasure to introduce our very special guest, stephen zack, president of the american bar association. with nearly 400,000 members, it is the largest volunteer professional membership organization in the world. mr. zack is the first hispanic american to serve as the president and the second to be born abroad. he was only 14 when his family emigrated from cuba under harrowing circumstances, including last minute detention by the secret police. he made it here. in two lines and two lines come to mind when i think of him. this is my country, land of my choice. this is my country, here i found voice. what a voice it is. he earned his aba at the university of florida and he is now in their hall of fame. he is a partner in the miami office of the nati
professor geoffrey hazard, a distinguished professor of law at uc hastings. the professor is a leading expert in the field of civil procedure of legal ethics and is good at asking questions. it is my pleasure to introduce our very special guest, stephen zack, president of the american bar association. with nearly 400,000 members, it is the largest volunteer professional membership organization in the world. mr. zack is the first hispanic american to serve as the president and the second to be born abroad. he was only 14 when his family emigrated from cuba under harrowing circumstances, including last minute detention by the secret police. he made it here. in two lines and two lines come to mind when i think of him. this is my country, land of my choice. this is my country, here i found voice. what a voice it is. he earned his aba at the university of florida and he is now in their hall of fame. he is a partner in the miami office of the national law firm. his clients rang
but the days of staying and defending your home and killing our fire fighters are done. we will not stand and defend a house that has not been prepared by a land owner and die for it. we don t do that any more. that s one of our doctrinal changes and we set forth some new guidelines with that. thank you. question, mr. secretary. in a large scale disaster relief, where the military is called in to assist the civilian components there is an obvious issue of how you get the command and control and in particular what telecommunications is used to support that command and control. your exercising together is very critical, i think, to working out command and control but you still have an equipment problem because the equipment, telecommunication equipment designed for the military was different from that used. how are you working out to get the coordination of telecommunications, particularly in disaster relief where the cellular infrastructure may be broken down and not ava
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 what extent in cal fire and all your other things do you encourage people to do things in their 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 priva
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 defensive measure against wild land fires. a lot of it is public education, survivability, building standards, but predominately our focus is putting the onu