[Senate Hearing 114-337]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 114-337
A REVIEW OF PAST WILDFIRE SEASONS TO INFORM AND IMPROVE FUTURE FEDERAL
WILDLAND FIRE MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON
ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
----------
NOVEMBER 17, 2015
----------
Printed for the use of the
Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
Available via the World Wide Web: http://fdsys.gov
A REVIEW OF PAST WILDFIRE SEASONS TO INFORM AND IMPROVE FUTURE
FEDERAL WILDLAND FIRE MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES
S. Hrg. 114-337
A REVIEW OF PAST WILDFIRE SEASONS TO INFORM AND IMPROVE FUTURE FEDERAL
WILDLAND FIRE MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON
ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
NOVEMBER 17, 2015
__________
Printed for the use of the
Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES
LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska, Chairman
JOHN BARRASSO, Wyoming MARIA CANTWELL, Washington
JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho RON WYDEN, Oregon
MIKE LEE, Utah BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
JEFF FLAKE, Arizona DEBBIE STABENOW, Michigan
STEVE DAINES, Montana AL FRANKEN, Minnesota
BILL CASSIDY, Louisiana JOE MANCHIN III, West Virginia
CORY GARDNER, Colorado MARTIN HEINRICH, New Mexico
ROB PORTMAN, Ohio MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii
JOHN HOEVEN, North Dakota ANGUS S. KING, JR., Maine
LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee ELIZABETH WARREN, Massachusetts
SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia
Karen K. Billups, Staff Director
Patrick J. McCormick III, Chief Counsel
Lucy Murfitt, Senior Counsel and Natural Resources Policy Director
Angela Becker-Dippmann, Democratic Staff Director
Sam E. Fowler, Democratic Chief Counsel
Bryan Petit, Democratic Senior Professional Staff Member
C O N T E N T S
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OPENING STATEMENTS
Page
Murkowski, Hon. Lisa, Chairman and a U.S. Senator from Alaska.... 1
Cantwell, Hon. Maria, Ranking Member and a U.S. Senator from
Washington..................................................... 3
WITNESSES
Fennell, Anne-Marie, Director, Natural Resources and Environment,
U.S. Government Accountability Office.......................... 6
Maisch, John ``Chris'', State Forester and Director, Division of
Forestry, Alaska Department of Natural Resources............... 26
Covington, Dr. William Wallace, Regents' Professor of Forest
Ecology and Director, Ecological Restoration Institute,
Northern Arizona University.................................... 43
Zerkel, Richard, President, Lynden Air Cargo, LLC................ 52
Burnett, Mike, Fire Chief, Chelan County Fire District 1......... 57
Wyss, Jon, Chairman, Okanogan County Long Term Recovery Group.... 64
ALPHABETICAL LISTING AND APPENDIX MATERIAL SUBMITTED
Burnett, Mike:
Opening Statement............................................ 57
Written Statement............................................ 59
Responses to Questions for the Record........................ 128
(The) California Forest and Watershed Alliance:
Statement for the Record..................................... 278
Cantwell, Hon. Maria:
Opening Statement............................................ 3
Chart 1-Wenatchee Complex in 2012............................ 87
Chart 2-Behive Reservoir..................................... 89
Chart 3-Fire Treated Road.................................... 91
(The) Corps Network:
Letter for the Record........................................ 283
Covington, Dr. William Wallace:
Opening Statement............................................ 43
Written Testimony............................................ 45
Responses to Questions for the Record........................ 119
Fennell, Anne-Marie:
Opening Statement............................................ 6
Written Testimony............................................ 8
Responses to Questions for the Record........................ 114
GAO-13-684 Wildland Fire Management: Improvements Needed in
Information, Collaboration, and Planning to Enhance Federal
Fire Aviation Program Success dated August 2013............ 144
GAO-15-772 Wildland Fire Management: Agencies Have Made
Several Key Changes but Could Benefit From More Information
About Effectiveness dated September 2015................... 199
Maisch, John ``Chris'':
Opening Statement............................................ 26
Written Testimony............................................ 28
Murkowski, Hon. Lisa:
Opening Statement............................................ 1
Wyss, Jon:
Opening Statement............................................ 64
Written Testimony............................................ 67
Responses to Questions for the Record........................ 129
Zerkel, Richard:
Opening Statement............................................ 52
Written Testimony............................................ 54
A REVIEW OF PAST WILDFIRE SEASONS TO INFORM AND IMPROVE FUTURE FEDERAL
WILDLAND FIRE MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES
----------
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2015
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Energy and Natural Resources,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:01 a.m. in
Room SD-366, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Lisa
Murkowski, Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. LISA MURKOWSKI, U.S. SENATOR FROM
ALASKA
The Chairman. I call to order the meeting of Energy and
Natural Resources Committee.
Before we commence with the hearing, I think it is
appropriate, and I know that on the floor of the Senate at this
appointed hour, ten o'clock, a 1-minute moment of silence is
being observed for those that were the victims of the horrible
tragedy in Paris. So at this moment I would like to observe a
1-minute moment of silence. [Moment of silence.]
The Chairman. Thank you.
This is a pretty somber way to begin, and it is also a very
somber subject this morning as we talk about the 2015 fire
season. It was a tragic one. It was punctuated by some
fatalities. We lost residents who could not escape the flames
and the brave firefighters who gave their lives to keep our
communities safe.
The Okanogan Complex fire in Washington claimed the lives
of three heroes, Thomas Zbyszewski, Andrew Zajac and Richard
Wheeler. I want to start by acknowledging them and offering
prayers to their families.
Each year the wildfire season seems to include new worsts
and historical records. For its part 2015 has been marked by a
relentless wildfire season that has stretched nearly all year.
According to the National Interagency Fire Center more than 9.4
million acres have burned through October 30. This year's
season is among the most devastating years for wildfires since
reliable records began in 1960, coming close to 2006 when an
all time high of nearly 9.9 million acres burned.
Mega fires, which are the fires over 100,000 acres in size
and incomprehensible just decades ago, are becoming the new
norm. Five mega fires were burning at the same time in
September alone.
The majority of our nation's fires continue to occur in my
State of Alaska, and this year was no exception. We had over
five million acres burned in Alaska. This is an area the size
of the State of Connecticut. Only the 2004 fire season, where
nearly 6.6 million acres burned, was worse for us.
This year the fire season in Alaska was also unique and not
in a good way. We did not have much snow over the winter and
the spring featured record warm temperatures creating some
unusually dry conditions and then came the lightning. On one
day alone, near the summer solstice, lightning struck our state
around 15,000 times, so over 15,000 strikes in one day.
Ultimately lightning caused more than half of the more than 700
fires in Alaska this season.
At one point this summer more than 200 fires were burning
in the state, all over the state and all at once. Numerous
Native Alaskan villages were evacuated because of fires that
threatened air quality and structures. The thick smoke in
Fairbanks pushed air quality to hazardous levels, forcing
outdoor activities to be canceled. Dozens of homes north and
south of Anchorage were lost. Anchorage spent 24 days at
preparedness level five. You all on the panel here clearly know
what level five is, but for those who are unfamiliar, it is the
highest level. These wildfires drained budgets and required so
much manpower to battle that officials enlisted the help of
international crews at times.
Unfortunately there is no easy solution. We cannot simply
match the increasing wildfire threat with greater and greater
suppression force and call it a day. Wildfire suppression and
its escalating costs are economically, ecologically, and
socially unsustainable, and the 2015 fire season underscores
that point.
We must recognize that many of the same factors that are
increasing the size, frequency and intensity of wildfires are
also driving up wildfire suppression costs both in actual
dollars and as a portion of the Forest Service total budget.
These factors include excessive fuel loads, due in part to
decades of fire exclusion, a changing climate, insect and
disease infestation, severe drought, the spread of invasive
species and expanding wildland urban interface. But that is not
all. Operational factors associated with wildfire management,
our objectives, strategies and tactics, all have significant
cost implications. This includes the aviation assets that we
deploy today.
We spent $2.1 billion fighting fires this season and $4.2
billion in total on wildfire management. It is not even clear
where these dollars were spent and whether they were well
spent. That is due, in part, to the fact that the agencies do
not bother to conduct reviews of the large, expensive fires.
The Forest Service has claimed that the wildfire problem is
a budget problem, but that is probably an oversimplification.
We all agree that Congress must end the practice of fire
borrowing, but we just cannot throw money at the problem.
In the Interior Appropriations bill that I chair the
Subcommittee on, we provide a fiscally responsible approach to
end fire borrowing. It would budget for 100 percent of the 10-
year average for fire suppression and provide a limited
emergency reserve, or contingency fund, for fire fighting in
the above average years. I think that is part of the solution,
but the wildfire problem is not just a budgeting problem. It is
also a management problem, and we have failed to appropriately
manage our fire dependent forests and fire prone landscapes and
that has predisposed our forests to mega fires.
We must work with our state agencies, our local communities
and the public to increase community preparedness and make our
forests healthy again. Healthy, resilient forests are fire
resistant forests. Yet, despite knowing the value of fuel
reduction treatments in mitigating wildfire risks, increasing
fire fighter safety and restoring the health of our forests,
active management is still often met with a series of
discouraging and near insurmountable obstacles. High upfront
costs, long planning horizons and regulatory environment
requirements, including what seem like unending environmental
reviews, are impeding our ability to implement treatments at
the pace and the scale these wildfires are occurring.
These are big problems that will take cooperation and
commitment to solve. Senator Cantwell and I have agreed to work
together and with members of this Committee to develop a better
wildfire management strategy for our country. I think it is
fair to say that Senator Cantwell and I share the view that
this is strategy that should be guided by some principles.
The principles include responsibly funding wildfire
suppression, ending the unsustainable practice of fire
borrowing, improving operational efficiencies to ensure the
availability and effectiveness of the aviation fleet and fire
fighter safety, increasing community preparedness through Fire
Wise activities and implementing community wildfire protection
plans, making the necessary investments in a full array of fuel
treatments to include not just prescribed fire but also
mechanical thinning, increasing the use of technology on
wildfires and reducing paperwork to get needed projects
implemented in a timely manner.
We know this type of strategy is necessary because we have
just endured another terrible fire season that has affected
many of our home states, many of the people that we know and
many of the lands and the landscapes that we treasure.
So this is not just any Tuesday morning here at the Energy
Committee. This cannot be a review without a purpose where we
turn the page, close the book and consider our responsibility
is met for another year. We have a lot of work to do, and we
need to work together to develop real solutions to the wildfire
problem.
With that, I turn to Senator Cantwell.
STATEMENT OF HON. MARIA CANTWELL,
U.S. SENATOR FROM WASHINGTON
Senator Cantwell. Well thank you, Madam Chairman, and thank
you for holding this important hearing. Thank you for the
witnesses coming today. We look forward to hearing from all of
you.
I also want to thank the Chair for allowing us to do a
field hearing last August in Seattle, Washington that our
colleague, Senator Barrasso, came out for. We certainly
appreciate both the field hearing and him joining us for that.
We learned many things from the hearings that we have had
so far, and we are going to learn more today. We have learned
there are actions that agencies can take and that communities
can take to decrease the risk of forest fires. We learned about
the benefits of creating surge capacity to respond in these
cases when we do have extreme events. But what has stood out
most for me, from one of the witnesses that we had in Seattle,
Dr. Medler from Western Washington University, was that he
explained we have not seen the worst yet. This is something
that requires immediate action.
I want to thank Jon Wyss and Chief Burnett for being here
today from the State of Washington. These are two people who
are intimately familiar with these issues surrounding
wildfires, particularly given our experience over the past two
summers.
In 2014 our state experienced the Carlton Complex, the
worst fire in our state history. So earlier this year when the
Committee began work on fire and discussing what we learned
from that tragedy, we were scheduling listening sessions all
across the State of Washington about what the Federal
Government could do better and what we could do to help local
communities. What we did not realize at the time that we had
scheduled those meetings is that 2015 was going to be an even
more dramatic fire season.
Almost one million acres in my state burned in about a
month. That is an area the size of Delaware. So in addition to
severe economic loss to the timber industry, the recreational
economy, tribes, and the fire fighters in Washington State, who
suffered a tragic loss, these impacts are unbelievable.
I want to say that the three Forest Service fire fighters
that were killed in the line of duty while protecting the
communities in which they live were the best among us, Andrew
Zajac, Richard Wheeler and Tom Zbyszewski. A fourth fire
fighter, Daniel Lyon, was severely burned in the entrapment and
has been going through recovery. Clearly 2015 was a tragedy.
As I have traveled across the state looking at various
issues I heard compelling stories from fire fighters, business
owners and residents who lost their homes or had to evacuate
that what we needed to do was to do better. Fire fighters,
county commissioners, Forest Service people, legislators, all
came forward with issues about coordination, response, making
sure that fewer homes burned, making sure our fire fighters are
safer, and proactively decreasing the intensity of these fires
so that they can be better managed. I know that the colleagues
that are present here today have experienced similar fire
seasons in their states, as Chairman Murkowski just mentioned.
Unfortunately, there are only so many spots available on
the witness table, or I am sure that every one of us could have
filled the whole table with people from our state who are
stakeholders in this discussion. So before we begin I would
just like to recognize a couple people who are not at the
table.
From Aero-Flite, Mike, if he is here he can wave his hand,
a company that is in Spokane, Washington. The air tanker fleet
is very important to how we fight fires and continuing to
improve that service with the Forest Service giving contracts,
I think is very important.
I want to recognize Brian Gunn from the Colville Tribe, who
is also here. This summer wildfires spread into the reservation
and destroyed 20 percent of their timber. A quarter of the
tribe's economy is generated from timber, so to say that this
was a big deal is an understatement. They lost upwards of $1
billion of standing timber.
This hearing is the third in our Committee that we have had
so far since the wildfires of 2015. I am pretty sure that makes
a record for the Committee. I think it shows that we are
serious about getting something done, and I want to thank
Senator Murkowski for outlining some of the things that she and
I believe that should be in a bill. Ending the practice of fire
borrowing so that we actually do more in prevention and
preparedness up front, improving the efficiencies of our
operation, ensuring that the fire fighters have the best
equipment and those in communities that are challenged by how
broad the map has become have every resource available to them,
increasing community preparedness through activities such as
Fire Wise and risk mapping, and investing in fuel treatments
that we know will make a difference such as prescribed burn or
mechanical thinning.
Dr. Covington, I cannot wait to hear from you today about
this issue particularly because I am very interested and will
show some maps about thinning success in Washington State and
where it mattered in prevention. But also just this overlay as
it relates to where our fires are with ponderosa pine. I really
want to understand how we are going to protect our forests.
Increasing our use of technology and including unmanned
aerial vehicles to give us more information, and for us in the
central part of the state, it is clear we need a new Doppler
system to talk about high wind incidents which we certainly
experienced the day that our fire fighters lost their lives.
All these are very, very important issues, and I am pleased
to be working with the Chair on this. We have also had many
conversations with our colleague, Cathy McMorris-Rodgers in the
House of Representatives, since her legislative district has
been front and center in all of this.
I also want to just say that I know that while we have put
out a white paper that we discussed in Seattle at our hearing,
that there are many inputs that we have received along with
what we are going to hear today.
I hope, Madam Chairman, that all of us on this Committee of
Western States can work together, because I think we see that
those who are represented here today understand that we do not
want to face the 2016 fire season without better tools, without
better processes, without better operations to help our
communities and help our states.
Thank you very much.
The Chairman. Well said. Thank you, Senator Cantwell.
With that we will go to the panel before us. Again we
appreciate you coming to the Committee this morning and giving
us your perspective.
The Committee will be led off this morning by Anne-Marie
Fennell, who is the Director for the Natural Resources and
Environment Team at the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
We appreciate you being here.
Next we have Mr. Chris Maisch. Chris is the State Forester
and Director for the Division of Forestry with the State of
Alaska, very skilled and very much an expert in so many of
these issues. So we appreciate you traveling to be with us this
morning.
Next we have Dr. William Wallace Covington, who is the
Regents' Professor of Forest Ecology, the Executive Director
for the Ecological Restoration Institute at Northern Arizona
University. Thank you for being before the Committee this
morning.
Next we have another Alaskan, who will speak to us from the
air tankers perspective and how we deal with these suppression
efforts from the air, Mr. Richard Zerkel, who is President of
Lynden Air Cargo. Thank you for being here this morning.
We also have Mr. Mike Burnett, who is the Fire Chief from
the Chelan County Fire.
Rounding out the panel we have Mr. Jon Wyss, who is the
Chairman of the Okanogan and Carlton Complex Long Term
Recovery.
We have a lot of expertise here this morning before the
Committee, and we thank you for being with us.
Ms. Fennell, if you would like to lead off? Please keep
your oral testimony to five minutes and your full testimony
will be incorporated as part of the record.
STATEMENT OF ANNE-MARIE FENNELL, DIRECTOR, NATURAL RESOURCES
AND ENVIRONMENT, U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE
Ms. Fennell. Chairman Murkowski, Ranking Member Cantwell
and members of the Committee, I'm pleased to be here today to
discuss our recent work on wildland fires.
Wildland fires play an important ecological role but cost
billions each year and result in damage and loss of life. As
you know the 2015 fire season has been especially severe with
over nine million acres burned.
The Forest Service and Interior are responsible for
wildland fire management on Federal lands including contracting
for aircraft to help suppress fires. Increased fire intensity
has prompted agency efforts to try to better manage fires.
Understanding the effectiveness of these efforts takes on a
heightened importance since these agencies have obligated $8.3
million over 6 years to suppress fires.
My statement today focuses on one, how the Forest Service
and Interior assess the effectiveness of their wildland fire
management programs, and two, the Forest Service efforts to
modernize the large air tanker fleet and challenges in doing
so. My testimony is based on reports we issued in September
2015 and August 2013.
First, Forest Service and Interior assess the effectiveness
of their wildland programs in several ways including through
performance measures, efforts to assess particular activities
and reviews of fires. In our September report we found that the
Forest Service and Interior acknowledged their performance
measures needed improvement and were developing new ones. In
addition the agencies are undertaking efforts to assess
activities to reduce hazardous vegetation that can fuel fires.
However, the Forest Service and Interior have not
consistently followed agency policy in selecting and reviewing
the fires to determine agency effectiveness in responding to
fires. Their policies generally direct them to review each fire
involving Federal expenditures of $10 million or more. Agency
officials told us that these policies over emphasize cost
rather than effectiveness in responding to fires.
The agencies, though, have not developed specific criteria
for selecting fires. For example, Forest Service officials told
us that they judgmentally select fires based on such broad
criteria as national significance. Accordingly, the Forest
Service reviewed five fires that occurred in 2012 and ten that
occurred in 2013. But given its broad criteria it's not clear
why the Forest Service selected these fires and not others such
as the 2013 Rim Fire which burned more than 250,000 acres and
was the costliest fire to suppress that year.
We concluded that by developing criteria for selecting and
reviewing fires the agencies may obtain useful information
about effectively responding to fires. As a result we
recommended in our September report that the Forest Service and
Interior develop specific criteria for selecting and reviewing
fires and update their policies accordingly. The agencies
generally agreed.
Second, in our 2013 report we found that the Forest Service
faced challenges in modernizing its fleet of large air tankers
which declined from 44 in 2002 to eight in 2013. Specifically
we found that the Forest planned to modernize its fleet by
obtaining aircraft from various sources over the near, medium
and long term but each component of this approach faced
challenges. Some of these challenges persist while others are
less relevant today.
For example, the Forest Service had awarded contracts for
seven next generation large air tankers but as of 2013 only one
had completed necessary Federal approval and certification
processes. Agency officials told us that they now have 20
privately-owned, large air tankers under contract and another
seven air tankers transferring from the Coast Guard.
In conclusion, the increasing severity and cost of wildland
fires highlights the importance of Federal agencies
continuously and systematically assessing the effectiveness of
their approaches so as to identify possible improvements in
combating wildland fires in an ever changing landscape.
Chairman Murkowski, Ranking Member Cantwell and members of
the Committee, this concludes my prepared statement. I'm happy
to respond to questions.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Fennell follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman. Thank you, Ms. Fennell.
Mr. Maisch, welcome.
STATEMENT OF JOHN ``CHRIS'' MAISCH, STATE FORESTER AND
DIRECTOR, DIVISION OF FORESTRY, ALASKA DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL
RESOURCES
Mr. Maisch. Good morning, Chairman Murkowski and Ranking
Member Cantwell and members of the Committee. My name is Chris
Maisch. I'm the State Forester and Director of the Alaska
Department of Natural Resources Division of Forestry and past
president of the National Association of State Foresters
(NASF). The NASF represents the directors of the state forestry
agencies in all 50 states, eight territories and the District
of Columbia.
This was another difficult wildland fire season for us
nationally, and in Alaska it will go down in the record books
as the second worst season for acres burned. Approximately 5.1
million acres or about 54 percent of the 9.4 million acres that
burned nationally this year were in Alaska. The worst fire
season on record for Alaska occurred just over a decade ago at
6.4 million acres a year.
And if you would, please look at Figure 1 in your handout.
As you examine the graph you will see a dashed line that
indicates the rolling 11-year average for acres burned, and you
can see that 2004 was the tipping point for the state. The
workload, as represented by acres burned, has doubled from the
previous long term average and this past season underscored the
type of wildland fire season we are faced with on a more
frequent basis.
I also have to tell you a personal story. It was the year
my red beard turned grey in 2004. [Laughter.]
Our season began this year with two large urban interface
fires, the Sockeye near Willow and the Card Street near
Soldotna. The Sockeye fire was initially attacked at two acres
and was 1,000 acres by the end of the day, and by the end of
the second day it was 9,000 acres. Unfortunately over 100
structures were lost including 55 primary residents.
These incidents were a sign of things to come, and in mid-
June in a 7-day period over 61,000 lightning strikes ignited
295 fires. And that's Figure 2 in your handout. By the end of
the season 45 states and two Canadian provinces had provided
resources to Alaska fires.
While all this activity was taking place in Alaska, the
lower 48 season began to develop into a more active and
challenging series of incidents. Many of the Western states,
particularly Oregon, Washington and California, were having
another difficult fire year.
So what did we learn from this past season and what can we
do to address these growing problems?
Communities at risk. In FY2013 the total number of
communities at risk from wildland fire in the U.S. was 72,000.
The NASF is a key partner in the development and implementation
of the National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy and
its three primary goals: restore and maintain resilient
landscapes, develop fire adapted communities, and provide
efficient and effective responses to wildfires.
I'd like to illustrate the importance of these objectives
by sharing a story about the Funny River fire from the 2014
Alaska fire season. The Kenai National Wildlife Refuge has been
creating fuel breaks. These are large landscape level projects
designed to protect homes, businesses and other values at risk
should a fire start on the refuge and move toward the
community. Take a look at Figure 4 for a picture of one.
These advanced preparations paid off and in the spring of
2004 a lightning initiated fire threatened the outskirts of
Soldotna. The fuel breaks made all the difference. The call
came in around midnight that the fire was going to hit the
Funny River Road. By the time crews arrived there was not much
time to start a burn out to rob the approaching fire of fuel.
The fuel breaks slowed the fire and allowed crews to safely and
successfully light a burn out. Over 2,400 structures were
protected with an assessed value of more than $250 million.
Next I'd like to talk briefly about another topic, and this
topic has to do with our aviation programs. An ongoing problem
for many states with wildland fire aviation programs is the
issue of carding both individual pilots and aviation platforms.
Both the Forest Service and the Department of Interior,
through their Office of Aircraft Services, require additional
verification of any aviation assets that will be used on a
Federal fire. The two agencies are not well coordinated in this
effort despite using the same carding standards for
certification and this caused some real problems during the
fire season.
In my written testimony I've listed several specific
examples to illustrate the issue, but I'd like to share two
with you from my home state. A State of Alaska contract
helicopter that is based out of California had been carded at
the beginning of the fire season by the Forest Service and had
to be re-carded by OAS when it reported to Alaska for work
later in the summer. Also in Alaska two National Guard
Blackhawk helicopters doing bucket work on a Forest Service
fire were not utilized for a second mission when it was
determined they were not carded.
These examples illustrate some of the challenges faced by
states this season and the Federal agencies should engage State
forest agencies as equal partners to update the National
Wildland Fire Aviation Strategy with an efficient and
consistently implemented approval process.
I see my time is short so I'd encourage you to examine two
other general topics in my written testimony where I've made
some recommendations for improving or maintaining programs that
help grow and maintain response capacity and the need for more
proactive forest management to help address some of the
underlying causes of this problem.
In conclusion, thank you for the opportunity to appear
before the Committee today. My fellow state foresters and I
stand ready to assist the Committee at finding ways to address
the challenges we all face as the wildland fire problem
continues to grow and consume larger and larger portions of our
State and Federal budgets.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Maisch follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Maisch.
Dr. Covington, welcome.
STATEMENT OF DR. WILLIAM WALLACE COVINGTON, REGENTS' PROFESSOR
OF FOREST ECOLOGY, AND DIRECTOR, ECOLOGICAL RESTORATION
INSTITUTE, NORTHERN ARIZONA UNIVERSITY
Dr. Covington. Chairman Murkowski, Senator Cantwell,
members of the Committee, thank you so much for the opportunity
to testify before you today about a problem that's important to
all of us. It's been important to me for almost 50 years now.
My name is Wally Covington. I'm Regents' Professor of
Forest Ecology at Northern Arizona University (NAU) and
Executive Director of the Ecological Restoration Institute
which was established in 2004 by Federal authorizing
legislation. We have three institutes, one at Arizona, one at
Colorado and one at New Mexico. All of them, working together
to provide the best available information that can be had for
restoring forest health and preventing the kinds of devastating
fires that we're talking about today.
Being at NAU for over 40 years now I have had the
opportunity to teach fire ecology and management, wildlife
forest operations, virtually any topic in the area of forestry
and I've also conducted research, primarily fire-based
research, confronting the problem of steadily increasing
wildfires.
In 1976 I'd been there for just a year when my house was
threatened by a fire which was then called the biggest and most
devastating fire in Arizona history. It was almost 4,700 acres.
And then during this 40 years I've seen these increasing
gradually, you know, to 10,000, 20,000, 50,000, and now
hundreds of thousands of acres.
At no great surprise we've seen a couple of things
happening.
One is that we see fuel building up in the understory of
frequent fire forests, like Ponderosa Pine forests. And then in
forests that naturally have catastrophic fires like Lodgepole
Pine, Spruce, Fir, interior Alaska forests, we see landscapes
becoming more and more homogonous. So larger and larger patches
of the land are available to burning.
The other thing that has driven this clearly has been an
increase in the severity and duration of fires, of the fire
season. We're now seeing fires burn in at times of the year
that are completely unprecedented. We have fires now, we've had
fires in Arizona called the January fire and the February fire
because we never had fires during that period of time. And now
they're coming. They can burn just about any time of year.
So my testimony then has five major points, and I'm just
going to highlight that briefly.
The disruption of natural fires has resulted in a shift in
fire regimes and frequent forest types like Ponderosa Pine from
surface fires to crown fires. The attempted suppression of fire
in areas that are naturally catastrophic fires, like I
mentioned before, has resulted in more homogonous landscapes
that require heroic efforts to try to suppress.
My final point is that the research has shown that there
are things we can do about it. One in crown fire regimes where
fires are natural, we can break up fuel continuity with fire
breaks. You thin it out. You make it so that instead of a
million acres being available to burn, maybe you have 50,000
acres available to burn. That's one approach.
In frequent fire forests you need to thin across the
landscape and remove the excess trees that have come in since
fire suppression, conserve the old growth trees and then start
burning on a natural cycle. In that way these forests are
consistent with their evolutionary environment, no threat to
endangered species. Watersheds are protected and so on.
We've looked at fires post fire. We've had, as you know,
some very large fires in Arizona, half million acres plus. And
one of the projects that has been particularly instructive to
us was to look at the wall of fire, post wall of fire, look at
what happened there and then use a Forest Service developed
fire behavior models to determine what the fire behavior would
have been had treatments been put in place beforehand,
different treatments then we had.
What we found was that if you just focused on urban
wildland interface treatments, you could reduce the fire size
by about 12 percent. You could reduce flame lengths by about 6
percent. However, if you strategically located these treatments
across the entire landscape, you could reduce the size of the
area burned under high severity by 40 percent and flame lengths
by 30 percent.
So in closing I'd just like to say that there is strong
science available to help inform how we can do these preventive
treatments, and using that science we have demonstrated, as
have others, time and again that an ounce of prevention is
worth a pound of pure. If you invest up front you can save
houses, you can protect lives, and you can restore landscapes
for current and future generations.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Covington follows:]
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The Chairman. Thank you, Dr. Covington.
Mr. Zerkel, welcome.
STATEMENT OF RICHARD ZERKEL, PRESIDENT,
LYNDEN AIR CARGO, LLC
Mr. Zerkel. Madam Chairman, members of the Committee, thank
you for this opportunity to discuss aerial firefighting policy
with you today.
My name is Rick Zerkel, and I'm the President of Lynden Air
Cargo, an all cargo operator of L382G aircraft based in
Anchorage, Alaska.
Lynden's seven aircraft are the civilian version of the
Lockheed C130 and are operated under Federal Aviation
Administration Part 121 Air Carrier Regulations, the same
requirements followed by all major U.S. airlines including
Delta, American and United. This is the highest safety standard
under FAA regulations.
The U.S. Forest Service is currently operating one C130H
under public aircraft rules and plans to add more. This is in
direct conflict with the findings of the 2002 Blue Ribbon panel
report to the Forest Service titled, ``Federal Aerial
Firefighting: Assessing Safety and Effectiveness.'' And I'd
like to read a couple of those findings real briefly.
Under Finding 3, Aircraft. Under the current system of
aircraft certification, contracting and operation key elements
of the aerial wildland firefighting fleet are unsustainable.
The FAA has essentially said. ``It's a public use aircraft.
You're on your own.''
Under Finding 6, Certification. The Federal Aviation
Administration has abrogated any responsibility to ensure the
continued airworthiness of public use aircraft including ex
military aircraft converted to firefighting air tankers.
Although these aircraft are awarded FAA type certificates, the
associated certifications do not require testing and inspection
to ensure the aircraft are air worthy to prepare for their
intended missions. The panel found that the Forest Service and
BLM leaders do not have a good understanding of the FAA
certification and oversight rule regarding public use aircraft.
Just like the Blue Ribbon panel, we are opposed to the U.S.
Forest Service operating a government-owned airline under
public aircraft format for the purpose of fighting wildfires
when qualified civilian aircraft are available. Lynden spent
substantial capital in one year complying with the regulatory,
technical and physical conversion of one of our Hercules in
order to lease to a qualified operator under the next
generation 2.0 solicitation. A very tight timetable and rigid
requirements resulted in our aircraft being rejected while the
U.S. Forest Service operated the first of seven C130H aircraft
equipped with an obsolete dispersion system and operated
without FAA oversight. By necessity the Lynden aircraft was
deployed to Australia where it is in service to the National
Aerial Firefighting Center.
Our message this morning can be summarized in three main
points.
First, the commercial aerial firefighting industry is
entirely capable of providing all of the Forest Service large
air tanker requirements at considerably less expense than the
current planned use of the C130H aircraft.
Second, the acquisition and use of the C130H, in this
depends on the structure of the program, may be in conflict
with Federal acquisition regulations and the Economy Act.
Most importantly though, the non-regulated, public aircraft
format proposed for the government-owned large air tanker fleet
is inherently less safe than the rigorous standards a
commercial fleet must adhere to and has set an unfair double
standard. This double standard resulted in the most capable and
safest firefighting aircraft being deployed elsewhere while an
unregulated and expensive government aircraft fought fires in
our country.
More importantly we believe that regulatory certification
and safety standards mandated by the FAA been established for a
sound reason, to mitigate the possibility of loss of life and
property. These standards should be applied to all aircraft
operating in the harsh environment of aerial firefighting
without exception.
As we speak it appears the Forest Service intends to
operate the C130Hs under the public aircraft category accepting
responsibility for their continuing airworthiness and for
certifying the design safety of the retardant tank
installation. If the Coast Guard is retained as the engineering
authority, the expertise of the FAA is completely removed from
the process.
The Forest Service has been very specific that all
commercial large air tankers be modified in accordance with the
very demanding and time consuming FAA certification process.
Now the industry accepts these parameters and the time and
expense it involve, but we strongly disagree the Forest Service
should waive this requirement for itself and opt for the less
stringent public aircraft option. There should be one safety
standard for all aircraft involved in aerial firefighting and
it should be the most robust safety standards contained in the
FAA regulations.
Lynden Air Cargo provides the following recommendations.
Number one, commercial aircraft operators, including Lynden and
others, are available and ready to meet aerial firefighting
requirements of the Forest Service. We urge the Committee to
provide direction to the Forest Service to utilize available
and qualified aircraft prior to employing any government-owned
aircraft. The U.S. Forest Service should be required to certify
any aircraft they do operate, certify and maintain the aircraft
and dispersant systems to the same rigorous standards as
industry. And Number three, no funds should be authorized or
appropriated to the Forest Service to acquire or upgrade
additional aircraft until private industry has had an
opportunity to respond to a final round of the next generation
solicitation. As long as commercial operatives can meet the
Forest Service requirements the Forest Service should refrain
from competing.
Madam Chairman and members of the Committee, I welcome your
questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Zerkel follows:]
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The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Zerkel.
Mr. Burnett, welcome.
STATEMENT OF MIKE BURNETT, FIRE CHIEF,
CHELAN COUNTY FIRE DISTRICT 1
Mr. Burnett. Thank you very much, Madam Chair and Senators.
Thank you for the opportunity to offer this testimony to the
Committee.
My perspective comes from that of a Fire Chief in North
Central Washington as well as an incident management team
member as a planning section chief, one of the type one teams
that are put together on a national basis.
The fire season for us in our county started in late June
with the Sleepy Hollow fire in Wenatchee. We had 30 homes that
were lost and three warehouses. Followed by the next tragic
fire which was the Reach fire in Lake Chelan. The Reach fire
combined with the other fires in the area became part of the
Chelan Complex that grew to almost 90,000 acres and destroyed
51 homes and an additional three warehouses. Five days later we
had the tragic loss of three firefighters outside of Twist, all
that's happened in North Central Washington.
The 2015 fire season was also my busiest year as an
incident management team member. Our team was deployed to four
different fires, the Newby Lake fire which came out of Canada
into Northern Washington, the National Creek Complex fire in
Crater Lake National Park and then North Central Washington
again for the North Star fire and the Tunk Block fire.
Efforts are being made to address the growing costs and
severities of wildfires. On a regional level the Okanogan/
Wenatchee National Forest, BLM, the Washington Department of
Natural Resources and all of the local fire districts have
worked together to ensure that we work more collaboratively
when a fire occurs.
Recently our community hosted a one day summit titled,
``The Wildfire and Us.'' The goal of the summit was to develop
a regional approach to reduce the risk of wildfires. Attended
by approximately 500 residents it was a great success and
illustrated the interest that people in our region have on the
subject.
Locally Chelan County Fire District 1 has established a
connection with the Forest Ridge Wildfire Coalition. Our
department has partnered with the Forest Ridge Coalition to
assist them with grant funding for fuel reduction projects,
participates with their Fire Wise community outreach and has
initiated an alert system to notify their board members who in
turn activate their phone tree.
From a local perspective if we're to improve our ability to
respond to wildfires, I believe that we need to address four
issues: increase our efforts on education and prevention,
support quicker initial attack, continue fuel reduction
efforts, and allow for earlier utilization of air resources.
Education and prevention needs to occur on a local level.
Our firefighters are part of our community and they're trusted,
respected and capable of providing the education to the public.
The problem is most rural fire districts have limited staffing
due to funding. The Sleepy Hollow fire that I referenced
earlier had approximately 150 firefighters assigned to it, of
which 120 of them were volunteers.
Any Federal funding to support a wildfire education and
prevention program would pay substantial dividends. Training
local firefighters to perform home assessments, cost shares on
hardening homes, conducting evacuation preparedness drills and
education on the value of beneficial fires are all examples of
a good prevention program. The value of a prepared community
translates directly to a safer environment for firefighters.
Next we need to augment the initial attack capabilities of
local resources. I measure initial attack response times in
minutes and catching a wildfire in hours. Local jurisdictions
need resources available to them and much quicker than what
wildland agencies are currently able to provide. We have--we
need funding for the seasonal firefighters to be available on a
local level so that the initial attack can be more robust and
more rapid. These seasonal hires could also be used to enhance
the community's outreach with a focus on building a more fire
adapted community.
We need to continue the fuel modification efforts. The
treatment area near the Beehive Reservoir just outside of
Wenatchee is a great example of how it can reduce the impacts
of wildfire. The Peavine fire in 2012 burned through the area,
stayed on the ground as a surface fire and was stopped on a
Forest Service road system.
And last, the use of aviation resources early on can keep a
small fire from becoming another expensive, large fire.
Unfortunately as an incident commander from a local fire
district I have to rely on the Forest Service or a state duty
officer to arrive on the scene, make a determination if the
fire is in their jurisdiction or a threat to their jurisdiction
before a helicopter can be ordered. Most fire districts cannot
afford the cost of air attack resources. If the State and
Federal Government want the fire extinguished when they are
small and manageable, we need the resources to do the job. Give
the local fire chief the authority to call for them when
they're needed and have the State or Federal Government pay for
it so that the local fire district is not financially
devastated.
I provided my perception of the complex issue. By no means
do I feel that the system is broken; however, there are
opportunities to improve our efforts via the funding for rural
fire departments, enhancing education and prevention strategies
and continuing fuel reduction efforts.
In closing I want to thank the Committee again for hearing
my testimony and I appreciate the opportunity to provide a
voice in this important discussion.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Burnett follows:]
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The Chairman. Thank you, Chief.
Mr. Wyss, welcome.
STATEMENT OF JON WYSS, CHAIRMAN, OKANOGAN COUNTY LONG TERM
RECOVERY GROUP
Mr. Wyss. Senator Murkowski, Senator Cantwell and members
of the Committee, thank you for holding this hearing today.
I was born in Thermopolis, Wyoming, son of a seventh and
eighth grade science teacher and raised in Worland, Wyoming
just east of Yellowstone National Park. Growing up in Wyoming
allowed me to have great respect for our natural environment,
natural resources, natural parks and people. It also allowed me
to see my first wildfire disaster in 1988 when Yellowstone was
set ablaze by a lightning strike. Who knew 27 years later I'd
be in the middle of back-to-back wildfires in Eastern
Washington which have destroyed over 500 structures in a
community with less than one percent vacancy rate.
After graduating high school I attended college in Texas,
and I worked for the U.S. Bankruptcy Trustee offices in four
separate states, then served as a Chief Deputy Assessor in
Spokane County and even served three days as a state senator
when Senator Benson was on military leave. I now work for my
wife's family company, Gebbers Farms, who provided suppression
resources in 2014 and in 2015. We also lost 7,000 acres of our
private timberlands that abut the Forest Service and DNR.
My upbringing and background and Chair as the Long Term
Recovery Group give me a perspective at looking how these fires
disrupted our communities. The 2015 Washington wildfires
consumed one million acres and consisted of eight fires. The
fire storms called multiple level 3 evacuations including my
own home. When it came time to evacuate not all the memories
could be packed up, not all the animals could fit in one
trailer and so gates swung open, fences were cut and animals
were left to fend for themselves.
When people could return some came back to their homes
standing. Others lost everything including their animals, only
to be known by the bangs tag in the dead animal's ear. Then as
the fires raged on and the winds picked up we heard over the
radio a call that no firefighter ever wants to hear. We have
seven firefighters trapped.
On that fateful day the bell rang for the last time for
three brave souls, excuse me, as they tried to escape. We pay
our respects to the victims and their families where they
sacrificed everything.
At the time Washington State's FEMA application, an
estimated $123 million in suppression costs were expended. We
question if some of these costs could have been avoided with
better real time weather information. The National Weather
Service Doppler radar network has a gap in coverage in our
state where we can't see below 10,000 feet in Chelan, Douglas
or Okanogan Counties where most of these fires occurred.
In Washington State the U.S. Forest Service has four times
more land than that owned by the state. Over the last 27 years
we've seen a change in forest management practices and a
decline in timber harvest in our state. By not allowing fires
to burn as they historically have or thinning out all the trees
that have resulting growing up we've increased the fuel load
and lowered the timber value and increased chances for massive
wildfire.
After back-to-back fires many are saying log it, graze it
or watch it burn. But we do not want to promote unabated
logging and landscape alterations. Common ground can be found
on these issues.
A local rancher and forester told me, ``We must remember,
fire is good for the environment when it can burn along the
ground in a controlled manner. Fire is not good when it races
through untreated corridors of riparian area that have been
untouched for 30 years leading to bad fire. These conditions
can be changed with proper management that isn't paralyzed by
incessant threats and appeals. It's not a zero sum game where
these disasters have to happen before we hit the reset
button.''
What lessons can and have we learned from the fires?
Lesson one. It starts here, right here today is what
decides it all. The Committee hearing and the comments from
those testifying will be decided where we go in the future. It
starts right here with you, the elected officials who can pass
legislation and have oversight so this doesn't happen again. It
starts from the agencies wanting to make sure the changes that
are needed are being bold in their choices to ensure this
doesn't happen again.
For example, on this summer's fire near me a state
contracted CAT was being used to build a fire suppression line
through state and private lands. When the CAT and driver hit
the Forest Service grounds the CAT was stopped, stopping
suppression activities because the CAT didn't have a Federal
certification.
Lesson two. For the first time in decades Washington put
out a call for volunteers to come help fight fires, but we
didn't have enough fire-trained bosses to lead those
volunteers.
Lesson three. The land is precious. What we can all agree
is the land is precious. We've learned over the years that it's
expensive to manage lands, but even more so to repair them
devastated by fire.
It's time we end fire borrowing and put the money back into
the proper management of lands to make our lands healthier, our
forests healthier and our national, our natural resource
economy vibrant in our local and tribal communities.
What are the cascading impacts of wildfire in our
communities? As you heard 20 percent of the managed timber
lands of the Colville Reservation burned with up to $1 billion
in value. The Spokane Tribes estimated in the Carpenter Road
fire they lost $1 million of timber. Citizens of this great
nation are owners of the land. It ought to mean something.
After the Carlton Complex fire the State House passed
Representative Joel Kretz's bill, House Bill 2093, unanimously.
Passage of this bill was important as on August 14th the
lightning strike struck in the Carlton Complex donut hole, as
we call it. The Paradise fire was threatening 22,000 acres of
which half was Forest Service ground.
Gebbers Farm mobilized the necessary equipment to surround
the fire, contain it from spreading, utilizing the new law.
What could have been a 22,000 acre fire was 2.7 acres and out
immediately.
I would be remiss if I didn't thank the Forest Service,
USDA, Department of Interior, FEMA and a host of other Federal
agencies who have worked closely with our long term recovery
group to assist our community in recovery efforts.
Last, Senator Cantwell, we appreciate that you held the
meeting in Wenatchee and then co-hosted a meeting in Spokane
with Representative Morris Rogers. The meetings with various
fire chiefs, industry leaders and elected officials kept this
issue in the forefront and has led to ideas gathered that will
lead to change.
Right here today we can make a difference, and right now
it's up to us.
Thank you for your time.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Wyss follows:]
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The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Wyss. Your testimony reminds
us that there are true consequences, unfortunately, very tragic
consequences when we fail to manage properly. There is a lot of
discussion around these halls about needing to end fire
borrowing, and it is more than just about money. We have to
make sure that we have the resources, but I think we also
recognize that we have some management issues that we have to
deal with. We need to make sure these resources that we direct
are spent wisely.
So to listen to some of what you have just pointed out,
what Mr. Maisch has pointed out, what Mr. Zerkel has pointed
out, in terms of the lack of coordination, the double
standards, the failure to manage some of what we are looking
at, these are some of the concerns that I hope we will get out
on the table today as we try to address the bigger picture that
we are facing and again, the ever increasing threat to our
forests.
I wanted to ask a little bit about aviation coordination.
Mr. Maisch, you brought it up initially, and I think, Ms.
Fennell, you alluded to it a little bit with your discussion
about the aviation assets.
It is really discouraging, extraordinarily discouraging, to
hear that you have different standards for aircraft used for
fire suppression between the Forest Service and the Department
of the Interior and that you can literally be poised to move in
to address the fire and you are held back because you do not
have the proper certification. You do not have the aircraft
carded.
How do we get around this? Mr. Maisch, you have been
dealing with these different standards and you see how it
impacts the efficiency and the ability of our agencies to
effectively engage in these fire suppression efforts. What do
we need to do here? It should not be this hard, and we have had
hearings before this Committee that I have been part of where
we say, particularly in a state like Alaska where you have got
your BLM lands, you have your Forest Service lands, you have
your State lands, and you have tribal lands. The fire does not
care whose land it is. The fire is going to go where the fire
is going to go.
Why can't we do a better job with this interagency
coordination? What do we need to do? I will start with you, Mr.
Maisch, and anyone else that would like to contribute is
welcome to join.
Mr. Maisch. Ah yes, thank you, Senator, for the question.
It's a good question but unfortunately it's not an easy
solution. We've been working on this for several years to try
and streamline and get the two agencies to basically have a
seamless process that if one agency cards a ship, it's good to
go. It's not another cooperator letter or another carding
process that it has to go through. They are carding to the
exact same standards, so it's very perplexing.
The Chairman. Then if they are carding to the same
standards, why do you have to have multiple cards or multiple
certifications? That makes no sense.
Mr. Maisch. That's an excellent question. I wish I had an
answer for you on that, but we've been frustrated for years.
And you see the about eight examples we gave, specifically in
the written testimony, about other examples around the country.
Incidents happened in Oregon, Nevada, Alaska, Montana. So it's
not just a one off situation, unfortunately.
And the point I made about treating the states as equals
and allowing them to basically modify the agreements we
currently have with the Federal Government to reflect that if
one agency does the process and approves the ship and the
pilot, it's basically good to go across the board. And it's
basically some bureaucracy there.
The Chairman. Does anyone else have an answer for how we
address it? I hear the frustration. We all have the
frustration, but it ought not be this hard and recognizing that
we do have the same standards that should be okay.
What Mr. Zerkel raised with the standards that we have
between the commercial aircraft and the government-owned
aircraft that, to me, is absolutely unacceptable. You go with
your highest standard, and those set by the FAA, it seems to
me, makes sense. But to have safety standards that are less, if
a government-owned aircraft verses a commercial aircraft, we
have got to get that one worked out.
Ms. Fennell, do you have any observations based on your
reviews?
Ms. Fennell. We haven't looked specifically at the carding
issue that is mentioned here, but we did note in our reports
that there are challenges associated with collaboration amongst
the agencies. And in fact, for one of our reports we did have a
recommendation where we called for enhanced collaboration
amongst the agencies in terms of looking at the performance of
aircraft.
But to date--
The Chairman. We have been doing that for years. This is
not a case of first impression here. This has been going on for
years. I am just stunned that we are not any better, not
further along.
Let me turn to Senator Cantwell and then we will come back
for a second round of questions.
Senator Cantwell. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
There are a couple things I wanted to mention before I ask
questions.
First of all, Mr. Wyss, thank you and Gebbers for
everything you did in the Carlton Complex. I think you are
talking in testimony about so many things. You mentioned it,
but I do not think it really is crystal clear what you were
saying that is that you and individual citizens and employees
of Gebbers basically went out and held the line and really
prevented a lot more acres from burning and did an incredible
job of also helping the Town of Pateros. So thank you, and
thanks for being here.
Chief Burnett, thank you so much for everything that you
have done over these fire seasons and for helping us illuminate
some of the issues about what I have heard on the ground in
Washington State that I just call hasty response, which is just
how can we be more active in using people to jump on fires
immediately when they start. So thank you for articulating
that.
I also want to mention that last night the Forest Service
did announce $300,000 to Chelan for recovery.
But I wanted to get to these handouts I gave my colleagues.
So if we could put these up, there are handouts that actually
show three slides.
One, the 2012 Wenatchee Complex and fires.
[The information referred to follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
One thing, Mr. Burnett, you did not mention when you kept
saying warehouses were burned down. Could you explain to people
what was in these warehouses?
Mr. Burnett. Yes, the community of Wenatchee, we lost
approximately $110 million worth of assessed value. The fire
spotted from the Broadview neighborhood over a mile into an
industrial area, took hold initially in a recycling plant and
spread to the roofs of a chemical warehouse storage building
and then spread to two large fruit packing plants.
So yes.
Senator Cantwell. All of this is the home to the apple
industry in Washington State and why it is so--okay so the next
chart demonstrates the Beehive Reservoir.
[The information referred to follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
So the red is encroaching fire from this season and the
community that was trying to be protected. This Beehive
Reservoir area is where you did actual treatment. Is that
correct?
Mr. Burnett. Right. So you can barely see it there, but the
Forest Ridge neighborhood is a Fire Wise community. They've
taken a lot of efforts to protect the approximately 70 homes
that are there, and we've done grant funding with them to do
fuel modifications right around the neighborhood. We've tried
to partner with the state agencies as well as the Federal
agencies on choosing those areas where the fuel treatments
would be best suited.
The Beehive Reservoir has had a lot of fuel treatment
around there by Forest Service and that fire that, you see the
perimeter, is the Peavine fire that was coming into,
threatening that area. It's less than two miles away. The fuel
treatment in Beehive Reservoir area was significant in
controlling the fire.
In 2012, the Wenatchee Complex had over 60 fires that we
were dealing with and so being able to allocate a limited
number of resources in that area on a fire suppression effort
that took a minimal amount of resources was significant for us.
Senator Cantwell. Well and fuel treatment, you are saying
that was a success in a year that we actually even saw places
where the fire jumped the Columbia River. So we had extreme
weather conditions blowing that up.
Mr. Burnett. Yes.
Senator Cantwell. So can you go to the last page which I
actually wanted Dr. Covington or Mr. Wyss to comment on. This
is an up close of the area that Bryan Petit from our staff was
just there visiting.
[The information referred to follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
You can see on one side of the road the treated area, and
on the other side the burned area, so basically it did not jump
over to the other side of the road.
I think one of the most important things that you said in
your testimony is this issue about surface to crown. From our
state agency, from our DNR Director and everybody, it is all
about the crowns, right? The ferocity of our fires are from
crown to crown.
What we are talking about here is reducing the ability to
get to crown level by basically reducing the surface timber. So
if you wanted to further elaborate on the challenge that we
have with all this Ponderosa Pine not having been treated for
some time and what that means as far as the ability to go crown
to crown and the kind of devastation we're seeing?
Dr. Covington. Yes. So about 90 percent of our mega fires
are in the dry forest types in the West. This last season we
saw mega fires in areas where crown fires are normal, just not
crown fires of that size, of the size that we encountered. So
they are separate problems.
On the one hand with frequent fire forests, like Ponderosa
Pine, they were originally, before fire regime suppression,
were open and park like. The fires naturally burned through the
understory. The plants and animals were adapted to these fires.
These fires are easy to control, if you want to control them,
although it's not always clear why you might want to control
surface fires.
As the forest filled in we moved from a frequent fire
regime in Ponderosa Pine to a crown fire regime. So we
essentially created the kinds of fuels that occur naturally in
Spruce, Fir and Lodgepole Pine over tens of millions of acres
throughout the West. So the solution in that type is
restoration, is thinning out the post-settlement trees,
conserving the old growth trees which are so important for
wildlife and aesthetics, biodiversity and then reintroducing
natural fires, fires that would burn on the two to maybe, 15
year interval.
In the crown fire types, in Spruce, Fir, like in interior
Alaska, Lodgepole Pine types, we have a different problem.
There the fires have always been crown fires but they were
smaller crown fires on the scale of like in the case of the
Yellowstone ecosystem, somewhere on the order of 100,000 acres,
200,000 acres. But what we've seen over time with fire
suppression is that we get an area that's ready to burn now.
Fifty years from now being adjacent to five other areas that
have accumulated crown fuels to the point that they'll support
fires, it's a lot easier to fight a 100,000 acre fire where you
know that's as far as it's going to go than it is a million
acre fire.
When we're dealing with mega fires we--this is very recent.
We just don't have the capability to deal with fires of that
size, so the restoration in that area of sizes, it's patch
sizes, involves putting in fuel breaks.
If you weren't worried about aesthetics, it would probably
be clear cut fuel breaks between these different patches to
break them up so that they can then burn at a more normal size.
Senator Cantwell. Thank you. And thank you, Madam Chairman,
I know my time is up.
The Chairman. Senator Daines?
Senator Daines. Thank you, Chairman Murkowski and Ranking
Member Cantwell for holding this critically important hearing.
I have got to say I am tired of talking about this. I want
to see action out of Congress. We need to do something.
Like much of the West, Montana had a very difficult fire
season. Over 300,000 acres burned, multiple evacuations of
populated communities were ordered. In fact one firefighter
from Stevensville, Montana was the only survivor of that four
member crew where three of them lost their lives in Western
Washington that was referenced twice in this hearing already.
This year's fire season demonstrated the need for a strong
wildfire funding solution that is a support of the Wildfire
Disaster Funding Act. I strongly believe Congress should
relieve the Forest Service of the suppression costs of fires
that are truly natural disasters, but at the same time the fire
season also demonstrated the urgent need for restoration work
to be done in Montana and other parts of the country.
Consider, for example, lessons of the Bear Creek fire in
the Flathead National Forest. I was up at the Incident Command
Center of West Glacier here when the big fires in Glacier were
burning this summer. Bear Creek is not too far away.
It was incredibly hot with flame lengths reaching 100 feet.
As the fire progressed to the Meadow Creek trailhead, it went
to a spot where we had a recently completed a thinning project.
However, when it hit the recently completed thinning project,
guess what happened? It settled down considerably.
Local Forest Service officials said the thinning project
really worked. That is the good news. Now here is the bad news.
The thinning project was part of the larger Spotted River
project that was hamstrung by litigation for several years.
According to nonpartisan research done by the Bureau of
Business and Economic Research at the University of Montana the
case was in court for over 1,000 days. So instead of planning
for a new forest restoration project, 18 Forest Service
personnel spent nearly 2,000 hours responding to the lawsuit.
Further, the study found that over 100 forest project jobs
were threatened. It pointed out that the litigation delayed
efforts to improve recreation access and wildlife habitat. I
was chasing elk just this last weekend in Montana, and you hear
both the quantitative as well as qualitative stories about when
you thin the forest it improves the habitat for the wildlife.
It is quite possible that the work that was upended by the
litigation could have further mitigated the damage when that
fierce, fierce, Bear Creek fire swept through. The Forest
Service ultimately prevailed in court, but the impacts of
litigation against this project and many, many others are
extensive and they are severe and they should not be accepted.
I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, let's come
together and pass a wildfire funding solution as well as timber
management that includes some litigation reform so we can move
forward here and protect our forests, protect our jobs and
protect the lives of the men and women who fight these fires.
Dr. Covington, you talked about the importance of thinning
and prescribed burns, you also talk about the dangers of
excessive stand densities. Do you think that providing the
Forest Service with additional tools such as expanded
categorical exclusion authorities could help the agency get
substantially more restoration work done?
Dr. Covington. Yes, of course it could. One of the problems
that we've solved, I think, in a lot of the collaborative work
is that when you get local people together to support a
project, if you have strong, local, political support, you can,
kind of, head off legal action that might otherwise stop a
project.
So there's the one approach that you're describing is let's
have more categorical exclusions and that, obviously, if that
could get through, you'd still have potential political blow
back from it that could slow a project down.
If you have local, political support that's well organized
and engaged in it, in many ways I think that would be more
robust.
Senator Daines. Yes.
Mr. Covington, in addition to, I think, that reform is
needed, would include incentives for the collaborative efforts
as well.
It is working in Montana. The problem is the extreme
environmental groups that litigate the collaborations are not
part of the collaboration. They are waiting at the courthouse
to file the lawsuit once the collaboration wants to move
forward.
Dr. Covington. That's right, and so it seems to me, Senator
Daines, that there's, just like there are variations across the
landscape in fuel accumulation and forest types, there are
variations across the political landscape that make different
solutions more helpful in one area than in another. And we
don't typically analyze that.
Senator Daines. Right.
Let me ask one last question, Ms. Fennell, because my time
is out.
Ms. Fennell, I think performance metrics and accountability
are vital and thank you for being here. You note in your
testimony that the Forest Service is beginning to improve at
understanding fuel treatment effectiveness.
Do you have any other thoughts on how Congress can further
enhance accountability on the agency in terms of both finding
the most effective fuels reduction treatment for a given area
and in maximizing the amount of effective fuels reduction
projects it does each year?
Ms. Fennell. Senator, I think it would be important to
continue oversight in terms of the new efforts that they are
putting into place regarding looking at the effectiveness of
their fuel treatment program. They--we noted in 2007 that, they
did not have sufficient information by which to evaluate the
effectiveness of the fuel treatment programs, and therefore had
impacts in terms of how they would allocate the resources
accordingly.
Since that time they have established a new system called
the Fuel Treatment Effectiveness Monitoring Program. It is in
process, and I think it would be important to continue
oversight over it to see how it's progressing and whether it's
getting the information that's needed to evaluate the
effectiveness of the fuel treatment program.
Senator Daines. Thank you. I am out of time.
The Chairman. Senator Heinrich?
Senator Heinrich. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
Dr. Covington, I want to start with you, and I want to
start with a thank you actually because I think in oh, seven
years of Natural Resources Committee meetings on both sides of
the Capitol in both the House and the Senate, I think you are
probably the first person to succinctly articulate that we need
different strategies for different forest types and that what
works in a Ponderosa Pine forest that should be burning every 2
to 15 years is not exactly the same prescription that we are
going to need in a closed canopy forest, be it Spruce, Fir, or
Lodgepole Pine further north. I think that is really helpful.
I think we tend to oversimplify things here in Washington,
but I think that comes with the territory.
You said you used the phrase, ``an ounce of prevention is
worth a pound of cure.'' I think we all wish that everyone
agreed with that approach, but one of the challenges we have
had has simply been being able to show and justify the
restoration efforts and show that they actually do pay off
economically in the long run. And that goes back to the
question that Senator Daines was raising as well about
evaluation of those.
Can you talk a little bit about data capture and
particularly one you are able to wrap things in like the
potential impacts to municipal water supplies and soil impacts,
about the cost effectiveness of being able to do, especially
these Ponderosa Pine, restoration projects rather than waiting
for these areas to burn and starting from scratch?
Dr. Covington. So quickly then there. We have studies where
we've approached this two ways.
One is looking at areas that have already burned over,
large landscapes and then examining the portions of those
landscapes that had been treated before with restoration
treatments. And repeatedly what we see is that in areas where
the forest had been restored to more natural conditions they
stand up, even under the most severe fire conditions.
Senator Heinrich. Right.
Dr. Covington. They survive well. Fires burn through the
understory, and then once they get out of the treatment they
get up in the crowns again and run.
These kinds of fuel breaks, restoration-based fuel breaks
in Ponderosa Pine, we see have saved houses, have saved entire
communities as well. In the back country this works also to
protect Mexican spotted owl nest sites and other highly-valued
portions of the landscape. So one way is an ex post facto is to
go out there, see what happens and the evidence is
overwhelming. It works.
The other thing that we've done is what I mentioned in my
testimony, is we've looked at fires and then analyzed what the
potential fire behavior would have been had treatments been put
in elsewhere. When we do that sort of analysis what we see is,
by breaking up landscape scale fuel community, continuity.
Senator Heinrich. Right.
Dr. Covington. You can protect values at risk, including
homes, where if embers are coming two to four miles away.
Senator Heinrich. Gotcha.
Dr. Covington. Being dropped into communities.
Senator Heinrich. Thank you.
I want to shift real quick to Ms. Fennell. I want to start
by just saying that I think it is clear that at this point
using the 10-year average to budget for fires is no longer
working for us. If you look back at the last 9 of 11 years,
using the 10-year average has underestimated the Forest
Service's suppression costs 9 out of those 11 years and it was
actually 40 percent below actual costs during that period.
With the climate shifting that we are seeing we do not see
that trend exactly slowing down, so the ten-year average
standard was created at a time to ensure that in most years the
agencies would have the funds that they needed to cover those
costs. That is not what we are seeing work out today.
So if that no longer works as a construct do you have
advice for how we should be budgeting for something that can be
as variable as fire suppression costs from year to year?
Ms. Fennell. Senator, we haven't specifically looked at
that particular issue as part of our current effort. I think
the last time we looked at various options available for
legislative action was about 2004. We noted that there are
various pros and cons with each approach that's taken, but we
haven't specifically looked at the current issue that you're
raising as part of our current work.
Senator Heinrich. Does anyone else have a comment?
Mr. Maisch. Yes, I'd like to respond to that.
We do much the same in the state. We talk about a 10-year
average and budget for that but what we found, as you alluded
to because of changing weather patterns and climate, you have
these extreme events much more frequently. And it's hard for a
10-year average to fit to that kind of a scenario.
So you really need the flexibility from an agency
perspective to do a disaster declaration which is what we do in
our state and the supplement suppression accounts when those
kinds of events have occurred. You've got to have some kind of
system that allows that flexibility because it's hard to
anticipate the kinds of events that we're seeing.
Senator Heinrich. That is helpful, thank you very much.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Senator Barrasso?
Senator Barrasso. Thank you very much, Madam Chairman.
You know this year is another example why it is a necessity
to conduct more prescribed fires, perform more fuel reduction
treatments and undertake more vegetation management projects to
thin our unnaturally, overcrowded forests. According to the
Forest Service between 62 and 82 million acres are in need of
treatment and are at risk of catastrophic wildfire over 40
percent of the entire National Forest system and the number is
growing.
We simply cannot allow the status quo to continue. That is
why I have introduced S. 1691, a bill called the National
Forest Ecosystem Improvement Act. It is designed to make
treating our forests a priority it needs to be.
The Forest Service also states specifically there are about
12 and a half million acres in need of mechanical treatment
such as thinning. With these numbers in mind do each of you
agree that Congress must take action to increase the pace of
treatment using both prescribed fire and mechanical methods to
restore forest health and reduce the severity and the size of
wildfires?
Everyone agrees with that? [Witnesses shaking heads yes,
simultaneously.]
Senator Barrasso. Alright.
Dr. Covington, in your written testimony you say it is too
late to use controlled burning alone to protect communities and
restore forest health. You then explain why first thinning and
removing unnaturally high tree densities and then introducing
fire produced stunning results. Would you elaborate on why you
think it is too late to just use controlled burns alone and
what are some of the stunning results that you are seeing?
Dr. Covington. Okay. So when I first started out in this
work back in `75/'76 I was pretty much thinking that if fire
exclusion had caused this problem you just put fire back in. It
ought to solve the problem, and so I embarked on a 6-year
program of study working with cooperatives with the Forest
Service to try this.
What we found in dense forests of Ponderosa Pine which is
95 percent of the Ponderosa Pine type is that we could not
develop a safe prescription. On several circumstances we had
fires get into the canopy, become independent crown fires and
fortunately we had enough suppression force around to knock
them down again. But I was on the verge of becoming the
shortest lived professor in the school of forestry. I would
have been fired if we'd burned up the San Francisco Peaks from
those early experiments.
Then that caused us to look at thinning out the post
settlement trees to try to restore natural conditions, and
those first experiments have just been so stunning. We've now
done this throughout areas in the West, especially Arizona, New
Mexico and Colorado. What we see is old growth trees that have
put on no growth at all for decades start growing like
teenagers. We see abundant grass production and wildfire
production understory, a tremendous blossoming of birds,
songbirds, butterflies and everything. So every aspect that we
look at in forest health shows that these work.
The difficulty that we've got, Senator Barrasso, is not all
areas are accessible for being able to remove all of the
biomass and the thin material. So a problem that we're dealing
with right now is trying to figure out how can you do onsite
disposal of some of these materials while not creating
excessive fire hazard or dumping a lot of smoke into the
atmosphere. We're talking about putting a lot of treatments
down there around urban interface areas, and that's where
people live and people have asthma and they have lung diseases
and they like to breathe clean air. So right now we're putting
a lot of focus on how we can deal with that biomass issue.
Senator Barrasso. In terms of this wildland urban interface
that you just made reference to, you also write about the
reduced mega fire potential when treatments in all high risk
areas were performed verses treatments only in the wildland
urban interface. Why are the risks of the mega fires reduced
when treatment is not limited to around communities only but
also treating the greater landscape as a whole?
Dr. Covington. Well, thank you for the question.
The treatments around communities are designed to protect
houses, primarily, you know, to help out with fire department
operations. When you're talking about mega fires across the
landscape, that's only 5 percent or less of the landscape in
most circumstances. In the back country is where we have our
natural resource values, the watershed function, biological
diversity, wildlife, recreation opportunities and so on. So I
don't think anyone wants just the houses in burned over
landscapes.
I had one study area over in Los Alamos back with the Cerro
Grande fire. This one elderly couple had a brick home. They had
cleared out around their house. It survived the Cerro Grande
fire. They got smoke damage payments. All the houses around
them burned, but they didn't want to live in a burned over
landscape. Out back, you know, from their door was a wonderful
little canyon that just burned to a crisp, killed all the old
growth trees. And ironically on their property there was an old
growth tree that had been labeled in Forest Service research in
1911--it was 480 years old--that had survived. It had fire
scars on it. It survived 40, 50 fires, and then in that one
fire it burned up.
So most people that are living in this country don't want
their cabin or their house or their subdivision in a burned
over landscape. So we've got to look at it in the whole habitat
point of view, I think.
Senator Barrasso. Thank you.
Thank you, Madam Chairman.
The Chairman. Senator Stabenow?
Senator Stabenow. Thank you very much, Madam Chairman and
our Ranking Member for holding this hearing. These are very,
very important issues and it is interesting to me that I find
myself on the Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee,
Energy Committee and Budget Committee, I am, I think, the only
member on all three committees that are touching all of this,
and it is incredibly important.
Let me start out by saying we just held a hearing in the
Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee a few weeks ago,
and we found amazing consensus around the issue on the budget
and on Senators Crapo and Wyden's bill. In fact it was
interesting. Every single person that testified from across the
political spectrum was saying that we needed to start the
wildfire discussion by fixing the Forest Service budget and the
Wildfire Disaster Funding Act. So I want to applaud Senator
Wyden and Senator Crapo for that because I do think when we are
looking at mega fires, like you have been talking about today
and natural disasters, that it is incredibly important that we
understand what is coming and more and more and deal with it in
a different way.
I would like though to start, Mr. Maisch, with talking
about what happens, because we are taking all the funding. I
mean, we passed a Farm bill in 2014 with the most robust
funding we have ever had in a forestry title to try to get
ahead of things by doing it and creating a number of tools to
deal with prevention and so on. All that money is going to
fight the fires, so we are not able to get ahead of it.
Because you concluded in your written testimony support for
the Wildfire Disaster Funding Act, I wonder if you might talk
some about the basic Forest Service functions and programs in
Alaska that are suffering because the agency is forced to spend
so much of their budget on wildfire suppression?
Mr. Maisch. Ah yes, thank you for that question, Senator.
It's not as much in Alaska as in other parts of the country
because, of course, the Tongass is not a fire driven ecosystem.
So there's different issues affecting the Tongass of which I'm
sure we don't have time to go into. But I can speak to the
issue of more active management on Forest Service lands.
When they have to divert funds, essentially borrow funds,
to pay for suppression costs it takes away from all the
proactive activities, pre-commercial thinning, commercial
thinning, restoration work. You can almost name the type of
activity. It restricts the funds available for that type of
work.
I think you heard from everyone on this panel and as you
alluded from other panels that you've heard from that you have
to get in front of this problem. You have to be proactive, and
you can't just pay for fighting fire. We need to pay to prevent
fire where we don't want fire.
Senator Stabenow. Thank you.
To that point, Mr. Burnett, I wondered if you might speak a
little bit more to the fact that our forests are not just on
Federal lands, as we have all said, or even on state lands,
there is private land as well. And our private landowners and
states have a huge role in making forests more resilient to
wildfire, both to protect lives and property and safeguard
drinking water and so on, all the issues we have talked about
today.
We have worked again back into what we did in the forestry
title of the Farm bill to expand what is called Good Neighbor
Authority a couple of years ago, and we have seen some Good
Neighbor Agreements signed recently in Wisconsin and Michigan
that are positive.
I wonder if you could speak a bit from your experience to
the importance of forest health efforts between Federal, State,
and private land boundaries and what types of policies and
concepts should we be thinking about as we build on the Good
Neighbor Authority?
Mr. Burnett. Thank you, Senator.
So it is not just a Federal issue. The local fire districts
are your first line of defense in protecting those homes that
are in the wildland urban interface. The homeowners also have
to understand that they have a responsibility to help harden
their homes and to take the efforts to reduce the fuel around
their homes. They need to work as a community.
The Sleepy Hollow fire, part of the neighborhoods that were
affected, had defensible spaces around them and we were able to
steer the fire around that. It got into the Broadview
neighborhood and those homes are tightly packed together and
they're sitting right on top of a ravine that has old growth
sage in it. When the fire hit that it came up over the homes
and was basically a tidal wave of flames, and there's nothing
that we could have done to protect those homes. It is not just
the Federal efforts, but it is the local efforts as well. The
city of Wenatchee has enacted the WUI fire codes from ICC, and
those types of efforts need to happen both on a city and a
county level to help us give us the tools to be successful when
the fire does come into a WUI interface area.
Senator Stabenow. Thank you very much, Madam Chairman.
Senator Risch [presiding]: Thank you, Senator Stabenow.
Senator Gardner, you are up.
Senator Gardner. Thank you, Senator Risch. And to the
panelists, thank you for being here.
According to the Congressional Research Service, since 2000
we have had an average of about 74,000 wildfires burning an
average of 6.6 million acres. We have talked about the numbers
and how 7 of the past 11 years have been beyond that. During
the 1990's the annual average of burned acres was 3.6 million
acres.
So I appreciate the work Dr. Covington is doing and
appreciate the presence in Colorado at the Institute. We have
obviously felt the burn as well in Colorado in terms of the
forest fires and the destruction that has occurred.
In June 2013 the Black Forest fire, northeast of Colorado
Springs, saw 14,280 acres and 488 structures destroyed. A year
earlier in June 2012 the Wallow Canyon fire, outside of
Colorado Springs, saw 18,000, nearly 19,000 acres burned and
346 homes destroyed. In 2012 we saw the High Park fire in
Larimer County destroy nearly 87,000 acres and 259 structures.
In 2010 the Four Mile Canyon, northwest of Boulder, saw 6,000
acres burned and 170 structures burned down. And of course, one
of the most infamous wildfires in Colorado history occurred in
June 2002 when the Hayman fire burned 136,000 acres and saw the
destruction of 600 structures.
While we have experienced significant wildfires over the
past 15 years, our state's development, like the rest of the
country with an interest to fire developing in the wildland
urban interface, as we have talked about here this morning.
According to a 2007 Colorado State University study between
2000 and 2030 there will be a 300 percent increase in
Colorado's WUI interface from 715,000 acres to more than 2.1
million acres.
Building upon that study in late October of this year the
American Forest Foundation came out with a report on wildfires
that highlights areas of our nation that are most at risk for
wildfires and threat to watersheds. The analysis found that
there are 52 million acres at high risk for fire on private
land, on family forest land in addition to the 93 million acres
on public land. Of these 52 million acres, 1.3 million of them
are in Colorado.
And so, Mr. Burnett, I have a question for you. Given that
you serve in an area of Washington with significant fire risk
that also has considerable wildland urban interface, what steps
do you think we should take to address the risk to private or
family forest land?
Mr. Burnett. As I said before, the rural fire departments
are staffed with primarily volunteers, and there's a need for
additional resources to make an initial attack and keep the
fires small and prevent it from becoming one of the larger
fires. The ability for us to extinguish the fire on that
initial attack is critical.
I mentioned the fact that we need the ability to activate
air resources in order to fight those fires and not wait for
the Federal or State agencies to come in to assist us with that
and to call for those assets. I think that's my answer.
Senator Gardner. Yes and I think at the beginning of your
testimony you talked about four points. I think you talked
about education, quick attack, fuel reduction, and aerial
response.
Mr. Burnett. Yes.
Senator Gardner. When it comes to aerial response in
Colorado there has been significant debate about whether or not
there should be a state aerial firefighting fleet. Is that
something that you have seen in Washington or other states
looking at that?
Mr. Burnett. Yes. The Washington State Department of
Natural Resources has eight helicopters available for
deployment. Chelan County Fire District One actually has a UH1
medium helicopter that we acquired years and years ago. It was
leased to DNR for many years and then they built up their fleet
and decided that they no longer needed it.
As you've heard in testimony here, our helicopter is not
available to be utilized on State and Federal fires because our
pilots aren't carded for long line operations. The helicopter
itself is carded but not our pilots.
Senator Gardner. That is something I think that we have
seen in Colorado too, because down in the Southwest corner of
the state where you have the narrow gauge railroads and you
have a privately-owned railroad that draws thousands of
tourists every year. The railroad company has a firefighting
fleet but they are restricted to activities within 50, I cannot
remember the number of feet, the right of way that they are
allowed to act in, but if they go beyond that they get in
trouble from the Forest Service for trying to put out a fire.
I understand the Forest Service has to try and protect
themselves and make sure that people are taking safety into
account and doing the right thing, but do you see the Forest
Service willing to work with you and others on this
certification issue so that we can address questions like this
railroad issue to allow more private resources to be brought to
bear, to allow the state to be able to provide resources more
timely when available?
Mr. Burnett. There have been efforts regionally for us to
be able to utilize our helicopter, for example. Two years ago
we would have to set down when the State or Federal helicopters
entered into the air space. Last year we were allowed to
actually continue flying when they entered into the air space,
but they will not call or utilize our helicopter.
Senator Gardner. I know I am running out of time.
Ms. Fennell, has GAO taken a look at some of the ways that
our Federal disaster designations work? Here is what I mean by
that question. If you have a significant burn we know that any
significant moisture event after that fire is going to result
in flooding because of hydrophobic soil conditions and other
problems that occur. Oftentimes though that next or that
secondary disaster is not included in that first disaster and
people have to go back and reapply, resubmit, adding cost when
if they were able to address the damage done to the soil
conditions to prevent that flood from occurring which you know
will occur because of the next moisture event, you would have
saved money in the first place. Has the GAO done any kind of
look into whether we could be more efficient and effective with
the initial disaster dollars by preventing the secondary
disaster that comes from a fire?
Ms. Fennell. We haven't specifically looked at that
particular issue, but we would be happy to work with the
Committee staff in terms of any interest in terms of looking at
other, perhaps relevant GAO disaster work that could be
applicable to this particular situation.
Senator Gardner. Very good, thank you.
Senator Risch. Thank you, Senator Gardner.
I am going to exercise the Chairman's prerogative here and
just say that I think, probably, Mr. Zerkel might have some
thoughts on that exchange between Mr. Burnett and Senator
Gardner. Would I be correct on that?
Mr. Zerkel. Pertaining to?
Senator Risch. The aerial firefighting that was referred to
in the exchange between the Senator and Mr. Burnett.
Mr. Zerkel. Well I can say that from our perspective the
method by which the Forest Service wants to operate the C130's
that they're designated is probably not the best way to go
about it, that public use format. And that's really our message
today is it is a poor way to go about operating aircraft.
Industry has very rigid standards that must be met in order
to modify an aircraft, such as putting a tanker into it. Under
that public use aircraft format those rules are not applicable.
I'm not saying that they don't do a good job of engineering or
whoever they get to do it wouldn't do a good job of
engineering, but there is not prescribed process to make sure
there's no pieces missing, no holes that haven't been filled,
and that's the real danger of that type of operation.
Senator Risch. Thank you for thoughts, Mr. Zerkel.
Mr. Maisch. Senator, might I add to that answer?
Senator Risch. Please.
Mr. Maisch. Yes, thank you.
I didn't answer a question earlier from Senator Murkowski
as well as I could have on this topic of carding, but you did
have an excellent example in Colorado this year of this which
illustrates this problem. You have a multi-mission aircraft the
State owns. It was requested on an infrared mission in Oregon.
The aircraft had been carded in Region 2, the Forest Service
region, in your area and then it went over there to Region 6
and had to be re-carded again. So that's the situation, and I
think the way to get at fixing this is we have various
memorandums of understanding, cooperator standards, and
mobilization guides that the agencies use to move things like
this around the country. We need to ensure that those
agreements with the states and the agencies recognize each
other's standards and will accept them right up front, so
there's no more of this back and forth well, it's Region 2,
it's Region 6, it's OAS. Those agreements have to explicitly
state if it's carded in one jurisdiction, it's good to go
nationally. I think that would really help.
Senator Risch. That unfortunately makes too much sense.
[Laughter.]
Senator Franken?
Senator Franken. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I heard Senator Gardner say that Colorado felt the burn,
and I was actually at the HELP Committee with Senator Sanders
and apologize for not being here but I am sure that he
appreciated the shout out. [Laughter.]
And--
Senator Gardner. I was hoping nobody was paying attention
as those words left. [Laughter.]
Senator Franken. I did.
Last night I read a lot of the testimony, and we are
hearing common themes about the balance that is spent of
suppression as opposed to prevention, the balance shifting, of
course, to suppression. Also in prevention you are trying to
get rid of hazardous materials as part of that. And then we
heard just a lot of talk, a lot of testimony about the wildland
urban interface. I would like to see and I think this is an
opportunity for helping to pay for the removal of hazardous
fuels from the, especially from the wildland urban interface,
if we use this waste as a source for electricity because this
would put a value to that biomass and also reduce the risk of
fire in that space which as all the testimony says is growing.
We can utilize this in terms of combined heat and power and
other facilities that use woody biomass.
Dr. Covington, let me ask you, are there places where
forest waste is being used for biomass electricity generation,
and what are the benefits of that from a forestry perspective?
Dr. Covington. Yes, there are a number of places throughout
the West where biomass, the slash material that's not suitable
for making traditional dimension lumber or engineered forest
products are being converted to electricity. So that technology
exists. It's mostly an older technology that's there.
So for example, in Arizona we have a plant that takes
biomass from within about a 50 mile radius and generates
electricity. That plant has contracts with a couple of the
universities, I mean, the electrical providers in Arizona to
buy that.
One of the problems we've got is that with the decrease in
the price of fossil fuels there's a disincentive then to use
biomass which now is more expensive, even than solar.
But still as part of a comprehensive package it's
important. We're talking about health a few minutes ago. That
biomass that's burned in a plant generates very little smoke
and other items in smoke that threaten human health. So instead
of burning it out in the woods if you can burn it in a
facility, a biomass conversion facility, you can solve that
problem.
Right now the biomass part of this is a major stumbling
block to how we can pay for and do effective landscape scale
restoration, more work needs to be done. We've got ecological
restoration institutes, state foresters and University of Idaho
are working together in February to examine this biomass issue
to try to look at innovative ways to do that, both for onsite
disposal back in the woods without generating as much smoke and
then being able to use it actually for electricity.
Senator Franken. Now I have great interest in that and
have.
Ms. Fennell, last May Chief Tidwell testified to this
Committee on the interaction wildfire and climate change and
has done this a number of times. This is, in a way, I think
that climate change, we have seen a change in the duration of
the wildfire season. We have seen the change in the intensity
of these fires and the size of these fires. This is now the new
normal.
I am supporting Senator Wyden's bill, the Wildfire Disaster
Funding Act of 2015 because, and Mr. Chairman I am just going
to go a little bit over, if that is okay, just a minute or so.
Senator Risch. Do I have any choice? [Laughter.]
Senator Franken. Actually, you do.
Senator Risch. Go ahead.
Senator Franken. Okay, thank you. Thank you for exercising
your option to give me the minute or so.
It seems to me that we have so much, that we are doing so
much fire borrowing that we should be treating this as the new
normal and that is disastrous.
Superstorm Sandy caused about $60 billion in damage, or at
least the cost to Federal Government that this, I think, should
be treated as a new normal. I think we should be treating these
as disasters, especially these super huge fires, and about 30
percent of the cost comes from that.
So I would just make a plea for Senator Wyden's act which
would use 30 percent as a disaster fund and treat it in that
way because I think that is what it is.
Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Risch. Thank you, Senator Franken.
Let me help you out a little bit with your interest in
biomass.
This is not new, particularly in Idaho. They have been
running at this for over ten years, and they have been
notoriously unsuccessful in doing it.
Dr. Covington, rightly pointed out there's additional
research going on it. I would disagree a little bit with Dr.
Covington in that one of the real challenges is the fumes and
smoke and what have you that is put off by the burning of the
biomass. Now certainly, it is better in a controlled atmosphere
than it is in the woods. But having said that, the EPA would
probably disagree a bit with you, Dr. Covington, that this is
something that needs additional work because the private
companies that have tried to do this have not been successful
at it.
There have been some successes but they are very, very
limited. The only way, I think, that is it is going to be done,
at least under present circumstances, is with subsidies from
the Federal Government. I know that does not particularly
trouble you, but there are those of us who are not looking down
that road very favorably, but--
Senator Franken. May I respond very quickly?
Senator Risch. Please.
Senator Franken. We have a combined heat and power plant in
St. Paul, Minnesota that generates electricity and also does
the end, does the heat and cooling for downtown St. Paul. I
think they have been successful and that this has been done
successfully in other places.
Senator Risch. That is correct, and in the old days it was
very, very common. Every small town in Idaho had a sawmill, and
that sawmill had what they called a tepee right next to it. The
tepee was a co-gen facility that generated heat and steam and
electricity, and it was very, very, common. Every small town
had one. They are all gone.
I don't know, do you guys have tepees left in your states?
They are gone from Idaho. But Senator Franken, you were
correct. It was very, very common, but because of the cost of
it and because of the environmental challenges they have been
wiped out. They are gone.
I am not saying it should not continue to be pursued. The
University of Idaho is doing some great work in that regard.
Senator Franken. It is a great university.
Senator Risch. It is. It is my alma mater, I might add.
[Laughter.]
As long as we have mentioned that, my undergrad, as most of
you know, was in Forest Management. A little over half a
century ago I sat in the classroom. I took a couple of
semesters of fire behaviors. If it was not the class, it was at
least part of the studies in that particular class.
But really, with all due respect, the things I have heard
here today and the things I have heard over the many, many
hearings we have had on this have really not put anything new
on the table. Back then, half a century ago, we were only 53
years from the Big Burn in Idaho. Now we are over a century but
back then it was only a half a century ago. The professors who
taught, the people who worked in the woods, they all knew the
Big Burn and they knew what had happened and they knew how fire
behaved and what caused it and what the problems were. So this
is not new.
The problem here is not the problems that you, all of you,
have described. Those problems have been known for a long, long
time. The problem here is very, very political, and I do not
mean republican versus democrat. With all due respect to our
colleagues that live east of the Mississippi River, they really
do not have an understanding of what fire is like in the
ecosystem that we live in the West. And with all due respect to
Senator Stabenow, who talked about private lands, look, in
Idaho two out of every three acres is owned by the Federal
Government. We never had a major fire in Idaho that it was not
the Federal Government that was in it up to their ears and a
lot of it due to poor management.
The Good Neighbor laws or policies Senator Stabenow talked
about, the people in Idaho do not particularly look at the
Federal Government as a good neighbor when it comes to
management of their yard. They do not cleanup their yard, and
the result of that is we have major, major catastrophic fires
and are sitting on the edge of it.
When I was Governor we had a summer that had particularly
bad fires, so I spent a lot of time in an airplane looking at
those fires from the air. It was stunning to me. I knew this
before this happened and it is not rocket science, but it was
stunning what happens when a fire comes up against land that
has been treated or even land that has been harvested, just
harvested, or and more commonly and we have it in Idaho very
commonly, and that is it comes against an area that had been
burned within recent years and the fire just stops. It changes,
its character changes, everything changes and the fire is much
more containable.
So the problem, I guess I am following the camp with
Senator Daines, and that is I am just tired of talking about
this, you know? We all know what the problem is, and assent of
the Crapo/Wyden bill is a really, really important and good
response to this. What it does so simply, it tells the Forest
Service that you should be using your prevention money for
prevention instead of putting the fire out.
If we did that one of you said, and I do not remember who
it was, that this whole thing starts right here with this
Committee. You are absolutely right. This is where it starts,
and we really need to get it done.
Thank you for holding the hearing, again, Madam Chairman.
One would hope that at some point in time we are going to be
able to move forward on this. So, thank you.
Mr. Wyss. Senator Risch, if I may?
The Chairman [presiding]: Mr. Wyss?
Mr. Wyss. The one thing that is not being discussed in all
of this, we're talking about pretreatment and treatments. My
job is to do long-term recovery for all the fires that have
occurred in our state and around, and it comes with post-
treatment as well.
Once the timber has burned and it is still standing,
cleaning up the fuel load of the burned timber which if not
done will fall and become the next fire, and coming up with
options for that including bio-char are significant items that
we can look at. Because the market becomes so flooded with the
burned timber, we have to find alternative options. And our
state is looking significantly at bio-char and other options
with that burned timber to get it out of the forest so it
doesn't become fire again and fuel for the next fire. So I
think we have to look at it not only as pretreatment, but post-
treatment as well.
Senator Risch. Thank you very much, I appreciate it.
Madam Chairman, thanks.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Risch.
There has been a lot of discussion about the need to do
more treatment either pre- or post- and I certainly understand
that. Of course it does come down, to a certain extent, to the
dollars, the resources that are made available. But we also
know that we have got some obstacles just in doing that and
obtaining the necessary permits. I think Senator Daines was one
who mentioned it.
I would throw this out to you, Mr. Maisch, maybe to Chief
Burnett or Mr. Wyss as well. In terms of those obstacles that
keep us from really carrying out the hazardous fuels reduction
program, what is in our way? Is it just a matter of dollars?
Are there more politics to it that we need to address? Can you
outline some of that for me?
Mr. Maisch. Yes, I'd be happy to.
I think it is a suite of things. It is, in part, funding
but probably the bigger part is at least on Federal lands, as
we had some discussion here in the Committee, on the litigation
side of this issue.
Do you get at it through some kind of categorical exclusion
process that would help with some of that? Do you do
programmatic level NEPA that would clear very large projects on
a landscape level so there's only one NEPA process and then you
implement projects that are covered by that, in that umbrella
NEPA project? So the potential litigants only get one bite at
the apple instead of repeated bites every time we do smaller
scale projects across the landscape.
I think we have to start thinking in bigger terms and a
broader, all hands, all lands. I think you've probably heard
that term from previous committees. It's not just the Federal
lands. It's the State. It's local jurisdictions.
But we do have to get a handle on that Federal piece,
because that's where the road block often is right now.
The Chairman. Any other comments?
Mr. Wyss. I would concur that in getting a handle on that.
We have a DNR section of state land owned in the Carlton
Complex fire that was cleared for treatment. NEPA, CEPA were
both done, and the DNR was going to clear the burned timber.
That is still tied up in litigation, and that timber is now
falling to the ground and the wind storms and unable to clean
it up or even recover dollars from that. So the litigation
piece is a significant challenge to it.
But it's not only litigation. We have another track that's
above Highway 20 in between Twist, Washington and Okanogan,
Washington where it's a multiple jurisdiction ownership. The
BLM has ownership, and the Forest Service has some ownership.
Trying to do the necessary treatment, post-fire, has been
slowed down because the two agencies do not work together.
They need to streamline that piece to get, I mean, it's all
approved. But the BLM and the Forest Service are still having a
slight disagreement, so on the best way to manage the removal
of the timber. And that's what's causing our challenges of not
being able to get this done.
The Chairman. Ms. Fennell, you have in your report looked
at the, just the reviews, the fire reviews and the concerns
that we are seeing that we have not been doing the reviews as
has been directed. Are some of the things, for instance, that
Mr. Wyss just mentioned in terms of the agencies not
coordinating well with one another? Is that something that we
need to beef up or make sure are included as part of these
reviews is what happens after the fire?
Ms. Fennell. We think that the reviews are a very important
way of assessing the effectiveness of their ability to respond
to fires and to suppress fires. And we called for,
specifically, that they consider specific, clear criteria that
they can use to select fires and then to conduct the fires and
update their policies accordingly. We think that they can
consider a multitude of criteria in selecting those fires and
look for reducing how they are going to implement our
recommendation to do so.
The Chairman. This might not be a fair question, but I am
going to ask it anyway. Is there one agency--does Forest
Service do a better job than BLM or a State? Can you give me an
indicator as to whether or not there is one model that might be
working better than others or are all of these equally fraught
with problems?
Ms. Fennell. Our work has shown that both Forest Service
and Interior could benefit from greater information to make
informed decisions. And we've noted in our recent work that
both are looking to implement a number of different efforts to
improve the way that they are fighting wildland fire. But there
has been a lot of studies that have gone before these
particular reports and we still think that they need to target
better information in terms of what the large fire reviews have
shown, what the performance of different aircraft to fight
fires has shown and also better ways to deal with preparedness
and effectiveness. So we think there are opportunities for both
agencies.
The Chairman. Well coming from a state where we have got a
lot of land that goes up in smoke every year and as a state we
feel like we are pretty in tuned with what is going on with
fires, and the state is a pretty good example to look to of how
you bring all hands in to address threats, not only to
communities, property, but just to the land itself.
Are our Federal agencies not synching in sufficiently with
our States and our local fire experts here? Is this part of our
problem? Chief Burnett, you are smiling.
Mr. Burnett. You're asking the tough question. I can't tell
you why it doesn't happen. I can tell you that it needs to
happen and that the benefits are clearly articulated in this
panel.
So, you know, Forest Ridge Wildfire Coalition has received
grants from the Department of Natural Resources to do fuel
modification efforts around there. We coordinate with the State
agencies as well as the Federal agencies to do fuel treatments
in that prescribed or in that general jurisdiction or
geographical area.
We're working well with our partners as far as the
restrictions that they have to go through in order to make it
happen. You know, that's and it's, I think it's a political
issue and a logistic or a litigious concern.
The Chairman. I appreciate that.
I am going to ask Senator Cantwell to wrap up with the
final questions, but I do not want to conclude without a final
question to you, Mr. Zerkel, because you have raised the issue
of aviation assets and where we are. You have questioned, very
clearly, I think, the wisdom of the government-owned tankers
and the proposal going forward with these next gen air tankers.
You have noted, very clearly, I think, for the record that what
we have is not only an inconsistency. You call it a double
standard between the government-owned aircraft like the C130Hs
and the fact that you have a different standard that is held
toward the commercial aircraft that are stepping up.
Do you think that the private air tanker industry can meet
the need for 18 to 28 next gen air tankers with the
specifications that the Forest Service has called for?
Mr. Zerkel. Senator, given a specific defined requirement
and a specific contractual procedure I have no doubt that
industry can meet any requirement that the Forest Service might
have for large air tankers.
We have a large amount of experience. The industry has been
at it for an awful long time, but the problem in the past has
been a mixture and an undefined set of qualifications that
industry faces. We're not going to spend a whole lot of capital
if we don't know exactly what it is the Forest Service requires
and for how long they require it.
The Chairman. So you would not only need specific criteria
for standards, although you are saying look, we just go by the
FAA standards. You also need some definition in terms of how
long that commitment from Forest Service would be to whether it
is Lynden or other operators that would provide such aircraft.
Mr. Zerkel. That's correct for the industry at large.
First of all the range of tankers that they think they
require. The 18 to 28 is a little difficult for industry to
comprehend. Is it 18? Is it 20? Is it 25? Is it 40, which it
was before 2002. So that's what I mean by defined set of
requirements in terms of the numbers of large air tankers and
then clear, concise contracting procedures.
The Chairman. Just for the record, you had indicated you
had stepped up to make the build out for your Hercules so it
could meet the requirements that had been set forth by Forest
Service, but because of tight timeframes, you were not accepted
into that pool of eligible aircraft for contracting. What does
it cost to basically outfit an aircraft to meet these standards
in terms of investment that you made to prepare for this what
was the commitment there? Because I understand now this
aircraft is not even being used here in the country, and it is
being used for fire fighting in Australia, I think you said?
Mr. Zerkel. That's correct.
Lynden spent about $4.5 million in the procurement of a
retardant tank drop system, the installation and the training
of our personnel to bid for that next gen 2.0 contract. We were
not successful in the bid and maybe rightfully so because of
one portion of our supplemental type certificate was
incomplete. We accepted that. We're going to fix that, and we
are going to bid at the next opportunity. But the point is that
we have those requirements, all of industry, not just Lynden,
not just any of the other ones.
The Forest Service, under this program, the public format
program, would not have that. They could basically do whatever
they wanted to do. Now I'm not saying they wouldn't do a good
job or the Coast Guard or a vendor or whatever that they get to
do it wouldn't do a good job. But the fact is they don't have
to whereas the rest of industry does. And it's--
The Chairman. So it is--
Mr. Zerkel. Yes.
The Chairman. A different standard.
Mr. Zerkel. Absolutely.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Senator Cantwell?
Senator Cantwell. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
I wanted to go back Chief Burnett and Mr. Wyss about the
after effects because we are talking a lot here about obviously
the economic loss of timber lands. But I am not sure we have
given everybody a clear picture of how long it takes to
recover. And one thing I mentioned earlier, the $300,000 from
the Forest Service to help restore the impacts from the
Wolverine fire-but can we talk about where we are one year
after the Carlton Complex?
Mr. Wyss. Sure.
Senator Cantwell. And what we need to do and what happens
when the money runs out? What happens? Chief Burnett, if you
wanted to comment on that as well.
Mr. Wyss. Okay.
So one year after the Carlton Complex, I mean, we had $100
million worth of damage in a community and a county that's the
13th largest county in the United States and 39,000 people. So
39,000 people are trying to dig out of $100 million hole.
It makes it challenging when you lose 500 structures. Our
community took a significant financial impact to the loss of
value. 20 percent of our school district value is gone, 20
percent of our hospital district value is gone, and that drives
significant cost factors.
When you lose 50 people out of the community in Pateros
because 34 homes burned inside the city limits, you no longer
have people paying into the water system and the water fees go
up double because there's less people paying into the system
and it has to be repaired.
Our communities, our small businesses, when including in
Chelan this year with the Wolverine fire in Chelan and the
Reach fire, for 10 days were closed, completely. Our small
businesses paid the credit card impact fees for the reservation
in and the reservation out which are non-reimbursable.
The communities and the small businesses who rely on
tourism lost $1 million a day in the Winthrop and Twist area
and $2.5 million in Chelan because the tourists were not
allowed to come in because we were under immediate evacuations.
When you look at the forestry and timber, the value of
timber has dropped in half because the timber that was
marketable burned and now there's limited market. When you burn
200,000 acres last year and then 500,000 acres this year and
then millions of acres in Alaska, the timber market starts to
get pretty flooded with burned timber and you have to get that
off within a short period of time before it blue stains.
Then you look at our reservations where, you know, they're
going to face 20 to 25 percent of their budget comes from
timber and a billion dollar hole comes over a span. So our
long-term recovery efforts are going to be 10 to 15 years in
our small community to try to recover.
For the rebuilding of homes and construction, only 40
people qualified, who were the most needy of needy to have
homes rebuilt by volunteers through the VOAD partners and the
national VOAD partners in donations. So we have 11 of those
homes completed and done, and we were thinking we were on the
upward trend when this fire hit and we lost 100 more homes.
So back-to-back impacts have really hit our economy hard,
our budgets hard, our roads, our transportation and
infrastructure, but not only that, we're going to suffer
ramifications of unintended consequences with flood. We
actually washed out a highway with just one inch of rain this
last year because the trees couldn't absorb it, and we'll have
it again this year with floods and snow pack.
And we have 10,000 wildlife without a place to eat because
we've burned all their habitat which then goes, Senator
Stabenow talked about agriculture and Senator Cantwell you know
we have the best apples and cherries in the world in our state.
Well those deer eating the limbs and the buds off the trees
which are impacting the agriculturalist's future because they
don't have anything to eat.
So our ramifications and long-term impacts are going to be
felt for a number of years, and it's going to cause some of our
folks to lose their businesses, their farms and ranches. And we
will recover. I mean, that is my job as the lead recovery
efforts, and we will do it. But we will come out of it
stronger, more efficient and better.
We just thank you, Senator Cantwell and Senator Murkowski,
for holding these hearings to bring these issues to the
forefront.
Senator Cantwell. Mr. Burnett, did you want to say anything
about, you had a concern about logs, potentially, you know,
more trees falling and potentially putting more at risk in the
future?
Mr. Burnett. Right.
As Jon was speaking that there is a lot of timber that's
harvested afterwards. But back to the competing interests of
how to best deal with the wildfires and post-wildfires there's
a lot of logs that are not, a lot of standing timber, that is
not allowed to be logged post-fire. And it creates a
significant danger with hazard trees. We've lost many wildland
firefighters from tree hazards.
The burn scars area that we look at for trying to catch a
fire, as an incident management team we'll look out ahead for
any kind of natural barriers or manmade barriers. The natural
barriers are, you know, rocks, trees, rivers or previous fire
scars. If those previous fire scars are left untreated that is
a hazard area that we can't send our fire fighters into in
order to gain access to other areas or to fight the fire in
that area.
Senator Cantwell. Well Madam Chairman, thank you for this
hearing. I want to thank all the witnesses, and obviously each
of you have been dealing with this from one or more facets so
we thank you for that.
That is why, Madam Chairman, I want to work with you and
see what we can do to move forward.
I think the thing that might be different than some of the
discussions that we have had before is the fact that, as Mr.
Wyss said, the economic impacts here are something that we are
going to feel for a long time. I think the threat that we see
coming at us, that these are not the two worst years we are
going to see, that the worst is still yet to come, I think
demands us to think in new ways and figure out how to better
prepare our nation for the economic, incredible economic,
damage and loss that is going to occur and figure out a
strategy for prevention and preparedness.
So I look forward to working with you on that.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Cantwell, and know that we
both agree we have got a lot of work to do. I do think that we
gained some good insight from the panel this morning and from
the questions that were raised by other colleagues.
You speak to the economic damage and the economic impact,
post-disaster, post-fire, and you clearly have seen that in
your state. Typically in Alaska we will see more acreage burned
and very little lost in terms of property value. This year was
different losing 55 homes in and around the south central area.
I think that causes us to recognize that when we think
about the economic impact, the loss, not only from a financial,
but really from an emotional perspective is something that we
need to be very, very cognizant of, but we also then need to be
very wise, very smart and very strategic in how we manage these
fires and finding these levels of efficiency because, as you
and I both know, the Federal dollars here are not getting that
much more generous.
I know in my state we have made dramatic reductions in our
state's budget this year which further restricts the ability of
our state to be engaged. We need to be smart in how we are
managing this, so to hear that we have assets that are either
being held back or are somehow or other just not being as
efficient as we need them to be, when you have agencies that
are not coordinating, when you have differing standards, when
you have inefficiencies that are built into this system, that
is something that we can control.
You and I cannot stop that fire today, but we can make sure
that as we are dealing with these fires we are working smart
and we are working efficiently and collaboratively.
So I look forward to working with you and all of you.
We appreciate the time this morning.
Thank you.
[Whereupon, at 12:16 p.m. the hearing was adjourned.]
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