[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 56 (Thursday, April 22, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4119-S4122]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. GRAHAM (for himself and Mr. Mack):
  S. 868. A bill to make forestry insurance plans available to owners 
and operators of private forest land, to encourage the use of 
prescribed burning and fuel treatment methods on private forest land, 
and for other purposes; to the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and 
Forestry.

[[Page S4120]]

       FORESTRY INITIATIVE TO RESTORE THE ENVIRONMENT ACT OF 1999

  Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I have asked recognition this afternoon to 
commend the firefighters providing relief to the State of Florida and 
its citizens, which is once again besieged by fire due to excessive 
drought conditions. This, unfortunately, is not the first occasion on 
which I have risen to speak about forest fires in Florida.
  The natural conditions in the State have been altered to the point 
where fires, normally a natural and essential part of the pine forests 
of this region, have burned uncontrollably, causing damage to local 
communities, private homes, and to the Florida forestry industry.
  Last year, Florida sustained almost $300 million in private fire-
related damage, and State and local governments spent over $100 million 
in responding to wild fires. Approximately 500,000 acres of forest were 
completely destroyed in 1998. And in 1999, fires in Florida have again 
commenced a process with severe consequences. As of today, 2,542 fires 
have burned more than 58,000 acres; 18 divisional forestry firefighters 
have been injured; 59 structures have been destroyed, and another 81 
were damaged by fire.
  Florida is not alone. Similar fires are occurring in Georgia, North 
Carolina, Arizona and New Mexico. My heart goes out to the unfortunate 
victims of these fires, as well as to the firefighters and volunteers 
who are working bravely to save families, homes and communities. As we 
speak, Americans from Alabama, Delaware, and Georgia, are fighting side 
by side with Floridians to prevent these fires in my State from 
endangering more lives, homes, and property. National Guardsmen, 
meteorologists, insurance specialist, and volunteers have converged in 
Florida to assist in response and recovery. These individuals' bravery 
and willingness to support people who they never met reaffirms our 
belief in the selflessness and vitality of the human spirit.
  Mr. President, they say that a picture speaks a thousand words. I 
would like to draw your attention to the front page of the St. 
Petersburg Times of Tuesday, April 20, which has this dramatic picture 
of the Everglades afire. The Everglades, home to many endangered 
species, and the water source for millions of Floridians, has for the 
last several days been besieged by fire.
  Now, fire is a natural phenomenon in the Everglades. It serves an 
important part in maintaining the ecosystem. However, human 
manipulation of this system has decreased water levels, making the 
Everglades more susceptible to fire and more ravaging consequences of 
that fire. This condition mirrors circumstances throughout Florida and 
many other States where efforts to prevent fires have allowed a large 
quantity of undergrowth to accumulate in our forestry lands.
  As many of you know, the long-leaf pine ecosystem, which is prevalent 
in Florida and other southeastern States, depends heavily on the role 
of natural fire to rejuvenate the ecosystem. Prescribed burning mimics 
naturally occurring lightening fires, clears excess underbrush, which 
can rob lower plants of sunlight. This frequent, low-intensity fire 
retains the rich flora of the healthy long-leaf pine ecosystem. Without 
these frequent fires, underbrush robs lower plants, which in drought 
condition creates a ready fuel source for a fire. It is this situation 
that has led to severe wildfires in Florida.
  Mr. President, today, I will be introducing legislation that is aimed 
at the prevention of the recurrence in the future and to assure that 
this tragedy does not bring a second tragedy--a permanent loss of our 
forest lands in Florida and in the southeast. I am introducing the 
Forestry Initiative to Restore the Environment Act of 1999 to mitigate 
the damages and prevent fire disasters in the future.
  What exactly does mitigation of losses mean for us today? Let me 
focus on my State of Florida. There are currently 16 million acres of 
forested lands, making up 47 percent of the State's total land area. 
The majority of this land--over 7 million acres--is owned by private 
farmers and individual corporate landowners. The State of Florida is 
continuing to grow at an explosive pace. It already has over 15 million 
people, and in 25 years it is projected to have over 20 million people. 
This rapid growth is creating pressure on land values throughout 
Florida and creating a circumstance in which there could be a massive 
conversion of this 7 million acres of privately owned timberland for 
development purposes.
  These 7 million acres not only provide a substantial amount of forest 
products for the Nation but also provide critical habitats for a unique 
group of plants and animals.
  These 7 million acres help to contain a human population explosion 
that would create additional demands on the already scarce water supply 
in Florida and lead to degradation of water quality.
  It is therefore in our Nation's interest to maintain Florida's 
existing timber lands for community use.
  This legislation provides a long-term plan to restore and protect 
private forestry lands damaged by wildfires and other natural 
disasters. It directs the U.S. Department of Agriculture to act on its 
existing authority to develop a crop insurance program for small 
forestry landowners.
  This type of program--which allows producers to invest in their own 
future to protect themselves from natural disasters such as fires, 
hurricanes, or tornadoes--will provide the same protection for forestry 
producers as is provided through USDA insurance plans for crops such as 
wheat or corn.
  The availability of this support in times of disaster will provide 
incentives for private landowners to retain lands in forestry after 
disasters such as the current wildfires that we are experiencing in 
1999.
  The second part of our legislation will help to reduce the severity 
of future fire disasters by increasing the incentives for prescribed 
burning.
  The State of Florida has an active prescribed burning program and 
burns an average of two million acres per year, including forestry, 
grasslands, and agricultural lands.
  However, as evidenced by this week's events, existing levels of 
prescribed burning are not enough.
  Large quantities of brush fuel accompanied by drought have created 
dangerous wildfire conditions.
  One solution is to increase the frequency of prescribed burning to 
reduce fuel levels and the severity of fires when they occur.
  In a study conducted by the Florida Division of Forestry, Orlando 
District, for the period 1981 to 1990, it was shown that an increase in 
prescribed burning leads to a decrease in the frequency of wildfires.
  The study compared two counties--Osceola County and Brevard County 
which differ in the amount of prescribed burning they conduct.
  Approximately five-hundred thousand acres are burned in Osceola 
County every 2 or 4 years. This compares with just over two-hundred and 
fifty thousand acres of lands in Brevard County on which prescribed 
burning is conducted.
  The study found that the number of wildfires, the acres burned, and 
the average wildfires per acre were lower in Osceola County than 
Brevard County.
  Our legislation attempts to encourage the use of prescribed burning 
as a forest management tool on private lands.
  First, it authorizes the U.S. Forest Service to provide both 
technical and financial assistance for prescribed burning to states.
  Grants to pay up to 75 percent of the cost of carrying out prescribed 
burns would be made to private landowners.
  Second, our legislation seeks to enhance public support for the use 
of prescribed fire by addressing one of the most challenging issues--
the misunderstanding of urban and suburban residents of the purpose of 
prescribed burning.
  In the urban interface zone where much of Florida's forested lands 
are located, the opposition of local residents to smoke plumes can stop 
any efforts to conduct prescribed burning.
  Our bill requires that the U.S. Forest Service and the Environmental 
Protection Agency develop education and outreach programs on this topic 
and make them available to state environmental and forest management 
agencies.
  With these actions, this legislation will create a system to mitigate 
damages from wildfires. It will help to reduce the severity of future 
fires by removing obstacles for private landowners to conduct 
prescribed burns.

[[Page S4121]]

  I hope you will join me in our long-term efforts to create a system 
for mitigating damages from natural disasters and reducing the severity 
of future wildfires by encouraging prescribed burning.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that two items be printed in 
the Record.
  The first is an April 18 article from the Miami Herald describing 
some of the wildfire damage which occurred in that city last week.
  The second is an Associated Press story summarizing remarks made by 
the Secretary of the Interior supporting the use of prescribed burning 
at a wildlife conference in Gainesville, Florida this week.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                 [From the Miami Herald, Apr. 18, 1999]

               ``Huge Wave'' of Fire Stuns Port St. Lucie

                           (By Curtis Morgan)

       Port St. Lucie.--When Don Tagner pulled into his driveway 
     at 4 p.m., the faint smoke curling in the pine scrub looked 
     as harmless as late morning fog.
       The fire seemed at a safe distance, a dozen blocks away. 
     But as a precaution he sent his daughters off with a 
     neighbor. Then he called around to cancel that evening's 
     soccer practice.
       When a neighbor pounded on his door 30 minutes later, 
     Tagner opened it to a world he described as ``hell on a 
     rampage.''
       Black smoke blotted out the sun. He ran to his backyard 
     just in time to recoil from a towering wall of fire rolling 
     in like ``a huge wave. It sounded like a subway coming 
     through. Whoosh.''
       Like that, it engulfed Frank Schultz's home next door. 
     Tagner rushed back in his home, grabbed his car keys and as 
     he turned up a street toward safety, houses two blocks up San 
     Sebastian Avenue turned into roaring red balls.
       For the hundreds who fled it and the hundreds who fought 
     it, Thursday's blaze truly was hellish, the wickedest, most 
     destructive one-day wildfire in Florida in almost 15 years.
       In a bit more than four hours, it raced three miles north-
     northeast from its starting point in southernmost Port St. 
     Lucie--destroying 43 homes, damaging 33 others and scorching 
     545 acres in the heavily wooded neighborhoods east of 
     Interstate 95.
       ``I've seen them travel fast before but I've never seen 
     anything of this magnitude in the 16 years I've been fighting 
     fires,'' said a weary, soot-stained Lt. Mike Gablemann of the 
     St. Lucie County Fire District, who led a crew dousing 
     hundreds of hot spots Friday--including a smoldering file 
     cabinet in the Schultz home.


                          drought index peaked

       An unlucky combination of factors turned the small brush 
     fire into a full-blown inferno.
       Like most of Florida, a record drought has left much of 
     rural St. Lucie County bone-dry and crisp as kindling.
       ``Just look at the grass,'' said Gene Madden, safety 
     director for the state Division of Forestry. ``It's not 
     green, it's brown. It crunches when you walk on it.''
       At 1 p.m. Thursday, forecasters warned Treasure Coast 
     counties that conditions for wildfires would peak that 
     afternoon.
       When the blaze flared up, so did the winds. It was like 
     blowing on a hot coal.


                              a fire storm

       Fire crews rushing to contain the blaze battled to keep up, 
     but couldn't, Gabelmann said. They were outmanned and 
     outmaneuvered by the relentless winds. As quickly as trucks 
     pulled up to one house, flames would appear in treetops a 
     quarter of a mile away.
       ``No fire department, no fire personnel are going to get 
     out in front of it and stop a fire like this,'' Madden said.
       Fires leapt from point to point and house to house in a 
     path a mile wide, with destruction as unpredictable as wind 
     currents.
       ``What we saw was the definition of a fire storm,'' said 
     Lt. Ron Parish of the St. Lucie County Fire District.
       Firefighters were frustrated by their inability to do what 
     they normally do: Put out fires. This was more like triage. 
     Sometimes, they had to drive past one burning house to get to 
     another where they believed people were trapped.
       ``Having to leave a house unprotected . . . gives you a 
     sick feeling,'' Parrish said.


                         unpredictable pattern

       The random patterns of damage showed just how difficult it 
     was to predict where the fires would turn next.
       On one block, two homes back-to-back burned but a wooden 
     swing set between them wasn't even singed. Hundreds of brush-
     choked undeveloped lots and wood-framed homes provided 
     plentiful fuel--enough for the fire to jump the 100-foot-wide 
     C-24 Canal.
       Franklin Navas, a former firefighter from Costa Rica and 
     now an equipment manager, credited the survival of his home 
     to clearing brush a few feet behind his property line. Flames 
     left the vinyl siding on one side of his home drooping like 
     limp spaghetti--but the home stood.
       Ironically, a large group of Port St. Lucie residents had 
     opposed bringing city water to their neighborhoods--and even 
     sued the town to block the process. Hydrants had been 
     scheduled for the area within two years.


                         no time to get dressed

       Navas and his wife, Mayra, and two sisters visiting from 
     New Jersey left at 4 p.m. as police began rolling through the 
     neighborhood ordering evacuations by loud-speakers.
       ``Just in time,'' he said. As they pulled away, the flames 
     had hit the lot next door.
       For many, there was little time to pack family papers or 
     heirlooms or even to get dressed.
       Mike Azbell said his wife, Shelby, pulled children Marissa, 
     4, and Tyler, 2, into the car in a panic once she got word. 
     ``Tyler was running around the house naked and he left 
     naked.''
       At 5 p.m., Florida Power & Light shut off power to about 
     5,000 customers--a move to protect firefighters from live, 
     fallen wires. it also left remaining homeowners defenseless. 
     Without power, their pumps couldn't pull water from their 
     wells for the garden hoses that some tried to use in mostly 
     fruitless efforts to halt flames.
       Outside the roadblocks, homeowners worried about what they 
     would find when they returned or pitched in to help others 
     protect their homes.
       About 50 evacuees gathered at Mike Schachter's house a 
     block outside the cordoned-off area. Some helped hose down 
     his house, while Schachter's mother, Barbara, fed others and 
     baby-sat panicky children--including Mike's son, who 
     celebrated his first birthday that night.
       ``Everyone just tried to help everyone else,'' Mike 
     Schachter said.


                          surveying the damage

       By 7:30 that night, man and nature combined to tame the 
     wildfire.
       `'Mother Nature started it and Mother Nature pinched it 
     off,'' Madden said.
       Local firefighters managed with the help of crews that came 
     from as far south as Hollywood and vital reinforcements from 
     water-bearing helicopters and a tanker plane.
       Several hundred residents spent the night in a Red Cross 
     shelter at the Port St. Lucie Community Center. At daylight 
     on Friday residents returned to neighborhoods that, while 
     devastated in spots, could have been hit much worse. No one 
     was killed or hurt and the number of homes that escaped 
     damage far outnumbered those lost.
       Martha Brann began crying when she thought about all she 
     lost: photos of her children, her mother's gold wedding band 
     and the diamond ring from her former husband--mementos 
     representing the special people in her life.
       ``I couldn't get nothing,'' said Brann, 59.
       But Tagner found all: His wood-framed home remained almost 
     as he had left it. Grass had burned to within a foot of his 
     patio and he lost two plastic garbage cans and a recycling 
     bin, which, as it burned, slightly charred a small section of 
     his garage.
       ``Everybody keeps asking me what my secret was,'' he said. 
     ``It was just luck.''
                                  ____


                  Babbitt Advocates Prescribed Burning

       Gainesville, Fla. (AP)--State and local governments need to 
     get more aggressive in preventing wildfires by using 
     prescribed burns, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt said 
     Tuesday.
       ``By taking fire off the land, we've actually increased the 
     fire hazard,'' Babbitt said. ``We must abandon a warfare 
     suppression model and find a thoughtful, scientific, 
     cooperative way to acknowledge this force of nature and 
     harness it to provide a better balance on the landscape.''
       In addition to the controlled burns, which are 
     intentionally set fires ignited to reduce fuel for wildfires, 
     Babbitt also advocated requiring stringent building 
     requirements that help fireproof communities.
       Babbitt, whose office oversees national parkland, spoke to 
     about 300 foresters at the University of Florida's John Gray 
     Distinguished Lecture Series.
       Babbitt said most legislators haven't done enough to plan 
     for prescribed burns and push private property owners to act.
       ``In Oakland, Calif., after the fire in the early '90s 
     which just about wiped out the city, Alameda County actually 
     passed an ordinance requiring brush control,'' Babbitt said.
       ``For landowners who didn't do it, the county would do it 
     and add the costs to their property taxes. I don't know if 
     that's the right answer, but it's a way to do it,'' he said.
       In Florida, the state's Division of Forestry said it has 
     authorized prescribed burns for 700,000 acres of land this 
     year.
       There is no statewide plan for specific prescribed burns, 
     though private and public landowners have their own plans. A 
     state forestry official said landowners are encouraged to 
     perform prescribed burns, but they can't be forced.
       ``We can designate areas as high fire hazards and by 
     designating that we can burn it for them, but we can't tell 
     them that they're going to burn one-third of their acreage,'' 
     said Jim Brenner, fire management administrator for the 
     forestry division.
       As for fireproofing communities, Babbitt said local 
     governments need to ensure that homes get built with fire 
     resistant roofing. He also said the homes should be far 
     enough away from thick woods and hanging trees, such as 
     pines, to prevent damage from an approaching fire.
       Babbitt also said if Florida's fires tap the state's 
     firefighting resources, federal authorities will help provide 
     the needed manpower and equipment.

[[Page S4122]]

                                 ______