Fire Management: Lessons Learned From the Cerro Grande (Los Alamos) Fire
and Actions Needed to Reduce Fire Risks (Testimony, 08/14/2000,
GAO/T-RCED-00-273).

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the circumstances
surrounding the Los Alamos wildfire, focusing on: (1) the events leading
up to the prescribed fire and how it was managed; and (2) what fire
management policies or practices need to be improved.

GAO noted that: (1) the Cerro Grande fire exposed policy implementation
issues that need to be addressed for managing prescribed fires; (2) most
of the issues involved procedural gaps or a lack of clarity about how
policies are to be implemented; (3) these issues affected both the
planning and implementation of the burn; (4) some of the issues are
specific to Bandelier National Monument and the National Park Service;
(5) however, others involve other federal agencies; and (6) those
problems that are not site--or agency--specific raise questions about
the readiness of the federal land management agencies to effectively
support and administer prescribed burns as a forest management tool.

--------------------------- Indexing Terms -----------------------------

 REPORTNUM:  T-RCED-00-273
     TITLE:  Fire Management: Lessons Learned From the Cerro Grande
	     (Los Alamos) Fire and Actions Needed to Reduce Fire
	     Risks
      DATE:  08/14/2000
   SUBJECT:  Forest management
	     Interagency relations
	     Fire fighters
	     National forests
	     Safety standards
	     Decision making
IDENTIFIER:  Los Alamos (NM)
	     Cerro Grande (NM)
	     Bandelier National Monument (NM)

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GAO/T-RCED-00-273

Madam Chairman and Members of the Committee:

We are here today to discuss two related issues, lessons learned from the
recent Cerro Grande fire, and, on a broader note, actions needed to mitigate
current hazardous forest conditions in the interior West.

Only a few months ago, the Los Alamos fire, now officially known as the
Cerro Grande fire, caused hundreds of families in Los Alamos, New Mexico, to
lose their homes and more than 18,000 residents of the state to be
evacuated. Over 1,000 fire fighters were required to bring the fire under
control. Estimates have placed total damages at about $1 billion. This
tragedy was the result of a prescribed fire ignited by officials of the
National Park Service. Ironically, the fire was ignited in an effort to
reduce some of the vegetative buildup in a forested area of Bandelier
National Monument and thus help prevent the very kind of event that
occurred. The plan was to burn up to 900 acres; in the end about 48,000
acres were burned.

The policy supporting the use of prescribed or controlled burns as a forest
management tool has been in place for some time. According to analyses by
federal land management agencies, the use of prescribed burns has been and
will continue to be a critical component of forest management if the nation
wants to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires, particularly in the
interior West. The need to reduce these risks has never been more obvious as
it as at this time. While the Cerro Grande fire demonstrated this, as events
have unfolded, it was only the beginning of what has turned out to be one of
the worst wildfire seasons in history with over 4 million acres already
burned and dozens of fires still burning in many western states. In
reviewing the events surrounding the Cerro Grande fire, we examined how well
the policy was implemented and what, if any, lessons can be learned to
prevent future tragedies like it.

To address your concerns, you asked us to look back at the events leading up
to the prescribed fire and examine how it was managed. You also asked us to
identify what fire management policies or practices need to be improved.
Since we began our work over 2 months ago, we have reviewed the relevant
documentation on the conduct and management of the fire, including the
e-mail traffic and field notes of key staff involved in planning and
implementing the prescribed burn. In addition, we reviewed the investigative
report done for the Secretary of the Interior and the associated Board of
Review report and interviewed the officials responsible in various
capacities for managing and fighting the fire. We also visited the fire site
at Bandelier National Monument to get a first-hand look at what happened and
to review the events with local park officials and others.

Madam Chairman, before proceeding with the specifics of what we found on the
Cerro Grande fire, I think it is important to set the proper tone and
provide some context for the points we will be making. Each year, federal
land management agencies carry out hundreds of prescribed burns. The vast
majority of these are done without incident. However, when a prescribed fire
does get out of control, like the one we are talking about today, it is
imperative that the events surrounding the incident be closely reviewed to
determine what can be learned to help prevent such occurrences in the
future. This kind of analysis has the benefit of hindsight. We did not have
the burden of making urgent, on-the-spot decisions in the midst of trying to
manage an ongoing fire. With the benefit of this hindsight, we have analyzed
the management of the Cerro Grande fire. Accordingly, we are not here to
assign blame but to help improve the way federal land management agencies
manage future prescribed burns.

In summary, we found the following:

   * The Cerro Grande fire exposed policy implementation issues that need to
     be addressed for managing prescribed fires. Most of the issues involved
     procedural gaps or a lack of clarity about how policies are to be
     implemented. These issues affected both the planning and implementation
     of the burn.

   * Some of the issues are specific to Bandelier National Monument and the
     National Park Service. However, others involve other federal agencies.
     Those problems that are not site-or agency-specific raise questions
     about the current readiness of the federal land management agencies to
     effectively support and administer prescribed burns as a forest
     management tool.

We have made a number of recommendations aimed at addressing these issues.
Both the Department of the Interior and the Department of Agriculture agree
with our recommendations.

In addition to addressing the issues surrounding the Cerro Grande wildfire,
you asked us to discuss the actions needed to address the current hazardous
forest conditions in the western part of the nation. In summary, our past
work shows the following:

   * The increasing danger of catastrophic wildfires has been caused, in
     large part, by excessive accumulations of vegetation in the nation's
     forests, particularly in the western states.

   * While efforts to address this problem are now beginning, the Congress
     needs to ensure that the responsible federal agencies use the available
     funding on those areas facing the most serious wildfire risks.
     Currently, it is not clear that this will be done.

Lessons Learned From the Cerro Grande Fire

Before proceeding with a discussion of our specific findings, I would like
to show some slides we have prepared on the Cerro Grande fire. The slides
map the progress of the fire, help describe how it was managed, and provide
a common background and understanding of the flow of events that led to the
fire getting out of control. The slides take you from the start of the fire
on the evening of May 4, 2000, to its substantial containment on May 19,
2000. (See app. I.)

Clearly, many important lessons are to be learned from the experience at
Cerro Grande. We will be highlighting the major ones here today. These
lessons, if they are applied in planning and implementing future burns,
should result in more effective use of prescribed fires as a tool to
accomplish resource and forest health objectives throughout the public lands
enterprise.

Planning for the Prescribed Fire

The National Park Service, like other federal land management agencies,
requires a specific plan for each prescribed fire. Essentially, the
prescribed burn plan documents the objectives of the burn and specifies how
it is to be carried out. In addition, the burn plan is to provide for
cooperation and coordination with other agencies and, where appropriate,
public involvement, and the notification of affected agencies and the public
on the day of the burn.

Policy guidance and manuals on how to prepare these plans were jointly
developed by the federal land management agencies, and each agency provided
supplemental instructions to its staff. Once a plan is prepared, it is to be
reviewed and approved by the top operating official at a park-usually a
superintendent-before it is made final. However, the National Park Service's
guidance does not require or encourage park managers to include other
knowledgeable or potentially affected parties outside of the park in the
review process.

As a result of the Cerro Grande fire, we identified three important lessons
to be learned about the planning process that could improve the management
of future prescribed burns. First, prescribed burn plans need to be
"peer-reviewed" by independent, knowledgeable individuals. Second,
clarification is needed on how to get additional fire-fighting
resources--called "contingency resources"--for a fire once it has begun and
when to make these additional resources available for prescribed fires.
Finally, federal agencies and nearby jurisdictions need more effective
coordination and cooperation before a prescribed burn is started.

Burn Plans Need to Be Peer-Reviewed

The prescribed burn plan for the Cerro Grande fire was developed and written
by staff at Bandelier National Monument and, in accordance with Park Service
and federal wildfire management policy, approved by the park superintendent.
However, while the process used in preparing the plan was consistent with
the existing policy guidance, the circumstances surrounding this fire
indicate that the current policy should be revised. The revised policy
should require that, in risky situations, prescribed burn plans be
peer-reviewed by technically competent reviewers outside of the agency. This
kind of independent review would provide for an objective analysis of the
burn plan and would provide an additional check and balance on what is an
inherently dangerous activity.

In the case of the Cerro Grande fire, the superintendent responsible for
approving the plan acknowledged that he was not technically competent to
analyze the plan's contents. Furthermore, as our analysis and others that
have been done since the fire have shown, several aspects of the burn plan
could have been improved.

Our analysis shows that when all the surrounding weather, seasonal, and
historical data and experience are considered, the timing of the burn can be
questioned. Specifically, the fire was set on May 4, the time of year when
the wildfire season in the southwestern United States is just beginning.
Furthermore, this time of year typically brings high winds, the area was in
the midst of a 3-year drought, and it was known that there were high levels
of forest fuel buildup in the immediate area. Compounding the risk of
starting a prescribed fire in this particular location was the fact that the
town of Los Alamos, the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and other populated
areas were only a few miles from the burn area. Also, during the 2-week
period before the fire was started at Bandelier, four prescribed fires got
out of control in that region. While Bandelier officials acknowledge these
points, they said that two additional factors need to be considered to
understand the basis of their decision to proceed with the burn. First,
their information indicated that the weather and moisture conditions in the
area of the burn--at an elevation of 8,000 to 9,000 feet--were more
favorable than the publicly available information suggested. And second, the
official fire status of the entire southwestern region placed no
restrictions on prescribed burning at the time the Cerro Grande fire was
started.

In addition to our analysis, the special investigative team and its
associated board of review working for the Secretary of the Interior found
numerous problems with the fire plan, including the fact that the overall
complexity of the burn and the resources needed to keep it under control
were underestimated. This occurred in large part because the agencywide
instructions developed by the Park Service and used by the Bandelier staff
in determining the complexity of the burn were incorrect. As a result,
insufficient fire-fighting resources were available on site. The effect of
having insufficient resources snowballed until the fire was out of control.
Similarly, a post-fire analysis by staff from the Santa Fe National
Forest--adjacent to Bandelier--found that the plan for managing the burn was
inadequate because it did not provide for enough fire-fighting
resources--particularly considering the timing of the burn. In our view, an
independent, technically qualified peer review by individuals outside the
responsible agency could identify and resolve areas of disagreement before a
fire is started. This process would provide an additional check and balance
and would help ensure shortcomings are identified and addressed before
prescribed burns are initiated.

Policies About the Availability and Use

of Contingency Resources Need to Be Clear

Another important lesson involves the availability and use of contingency
resources in helping to manage prescribed fires. In this regard, one of the
critical elements in determining whether to proceed with a prescribed fire
is the availability of sufficient resources to assist in controlling it if
and when they are needed. The Park Service's policy, as well as federal
interagency fire management policies, indicates that if sufficient
contingency resources are not available at the start of a prescribed fire,
it should not proceed.

The Cerro Grande fire demonstrated that there is a great deal of confusion
among the federal land management agencies about the availability and use of
contingency resources. This confusion led to differing expectations among
the Park Service personnel responsible for managing the burn, the Forest
Service staff responsible for dispatching contingency resources to
Bandelier, and the regional resource coordinating officials in Albuquerque.
The Park Service staff believed that once they had confirmed the
availability of the contingency resources identified in the prescribed burn
plan, the resources would be available if and when they requested them.
However, the Forest Service dispatching officer and officials at the
regional coordinating center did not agree with the Park Service's view.
Instead, they told us their interpretation of the policy was that
contingency resources are only to be made available when a prescribed fire
becomes a wildfire. As a result of this confusion, valuable time was lost in
getting additional resources to the site. It was not until 7 to 9 hours
after a Park Service official first requested contingency resources that
they began to arrive at the burn site. Even then, the resources arrived only
after the Forest Service dispatcher circumvented the regional policy by
diverting the resources from another wildfire to Bandelier.

The length of time required to get the contingency resources to the burn
site highlights a significant problem. The confusion that existed about the
availability and use of contingency resources during the Cerro Grande fire
is reflective of all the land management agencies currently operating under
the federal interagency policy for managing wildfires. The agencies'
relevant policies and procedures contain no standard definition of what
contingency resources are, how they are to be identified, or when and how
they are to be used. The agencies need to work together to make sure that
these policies and procedures are clarified and their implementation
standardized. Then, when contingency resources are identified in a
prescribed burn plan, they can be provided when needed, regardless of
whether the burn is a wildfire or a prescribed burn. If they cannot be
provided, the burn should not proceed. If this confusion had been worked out
prior to the Cerro Grande fire, it is possible that the fire would have
never gotten out of control.

More Effective Cooperation and Coordination

Among Agencies Is Needed

The third and final planning point we want to highlight as an important
lesson is the need for more effective coordination and cooperation among the
nearby agencies, communities, and other parties that might be affected by a
prescribed burn. As I have already mentioned, introducing fire into forests
under any conditions, including a prescribed burn is inherently risky. This
risk is compounded in a situation like that at Bandelier, with a large fuel
buildup in the park, as well as on the adjacent Santa Fe National Forest,
and the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and thousands of people living in
Los Alamos and other communities just a few miles from the burn site.

Under such circumstances, it is critical that a prescribed burn be closely
coordinated with officials from the jurisdictions that could potentially be
affected by it. While the park officials at Bandelier notified
representatives from potentially affected jurisdictions about their plan to
conduct the prescribed burn, these notification efforts were apparently not
enough in light of the concerns that have been raised since the fire
occurred. Specifically, since the fire, representatives from a number of
affected agencies and communities, including Los Alamos National Laboratory
and the Santa Fe National Forest, have questioned the Park Service's
decision to conduct the burn. Essentially, their concerns were based on the
dry conditions that existed in that part of the country at the time of the
burn and the heavy buildup of fuel in the area. In fact, Forest Service
officials at the national forest bordering the park decided to stop all
burning in the forest on the same day--May 4th--that the prescribed burn was
started in Bandelier. However, the concerns expressed by these officials,
including the Forest Service's decision to cease prescribed burns, were not
communicated to Bandelier officials before they started the prescribed burn.

Furthermore, officials from the park, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and
the Forest Service knew that the most likely wildfire threat to the town of
Los Alamos and the Laboratory was from the area of the prescribed burn. Yet
the agencies did not work together to mitigate this threat before starting
the fire. Instead, the Park Service attempted to reduce forest fuels within
its boundaries and did not work with other agencies to identify, for
example, possible fire breaks that could have been put in place before the
fire started. Several experts we interviewed informed us that more could and
should have been done to mitigate the threat to local communities and the
Laboratory if there had been better cooperation and planning across
jurisdictional boundaries.

Having these circumstances come to light only after the fact is unfortunate
and underscores the need for more substantive coordination and cooperation
before prescribed burns are started. Improved coordination and cooperation
need to occur in a way that puts public safety first, overcomes agency or
other jurisdictional boundaries, and achieves buy-in by the affected
parties. All of this needs to be done before a burn proceeds.

Implementation of the Prescribed Fire

In addition to lessons learned in planning for the fire, we identified a
number of important lessons to be learned from the implementation of the
prescribed burn. First, before an agency ignites a fire it should be assured
that all the necessary preparatory steps have been completed. Second, public
safety should take precedence over resource protection considerations in
deciding on which fire-fighting tactics should be used. And third, guidance
is needed for determining the amount of resources that should be used in
managing prescribed burns.

Better Assurance Is Needed That All Key Factors

Are Considered Before Initiating a Prescribed Burn

Before proceeding with a prescribed burn, current interagency and Park
Service policies and procedures call for the fire manager to determine
whether all of the necessary preparatory steps have been completed. This
determination is commonly referred to as the "go/no-go" decision. If the
on-site fire manager determines that any important factor is not consistent
with the plan, the burn is not to proceed.

Existing policy and procedural guidance available to Park Service managers
and the land managers in other federal agencies provide some guidance on
this decision-making process. This guidance includes the suggested use of a
go/no-go checklist to help ensure that all of the key factors are addressed
before starting the burn. However, current policy and procedures do not
require the use of this checklist. In addition, agencies are not required to
document that all of the relevant factors have been properly considered.

The fire managers at Bandelier did not use the suggested go/no-go checklist
to document their decision because they were not required to do so. They
told us, however, that they reviewed all of the factors on the checklist
prior to igniting the burn but did not document their decision to proceed.
Without such documentation, there is no record of which factors were
considered in the go/no-go analysis, whether each factor was actually
reviewed, and whether all of the conditions that existed on site were
consistent with the burn plan and applicable policy.

In our opinion, the events at Cerro Grande demonstrate a need to change
current policy so that a documented and reviewed record of go/no-go
decisions is required for every prescribed burn. Requiring the use of a
checklist can serve this purpose as well as provide structure and discipline
to the decision-making process.

Policy Needs to Make Clear That Public Safety

Has Priority Over Natural Resource Protection

Perhaps the most important lesson learned from this fire involves the
choices that were made about the tactics used to suppress the fire once it
was declared a wildfire and was still within the boundaries of Bandelier
National Monument. According to current interagency fire management policy,
once a prescribed fire gets out of control and becomes a wildfire, the
fire-fighting strategy can change. Under this policy, the revised strategy
can range anywhere from continuing to manage the fire to achieve forest
thinning or other natural resource benefits to complete suppression. The
change in strategy may trigger changes in the fire-fighting tactics that are
employed. At Cerro Grande, some of the tactics that were employed have been
questioned.

In particular, after the fire was declared a wildfire on the afternoon of
May 5, the Bandelier officials used a fire suppression tactic that required
the introduction of more fire into the western section of the burn area.
According to Park Service policy, agency officials must decide on the
tactics that minimize costs and resource damage. According to the on-site
Park Service officials, the introduction of this additional fire was done in
order to establish wider, more effective fire breaks called blacklines in
the western section of the burn area. The alternative was to create these
fire breaks by using mechanical means such as chainsaws and bulldozers.
However, this alternative was not chosen because it would have been
inconsistent with Park Service policy calling for resource damage to be
minimized.

During the fire, none of the on-site fire-fighting officials expressed
concerns about introducing fire along the western side of the burn area.
However, after the fire, the on-site Park Service official who was in charge
recognized that this was a tactical error and said that if he had better
information on the wind for May 7, the day the fire began to move towards
Los Alamos, he would not have introduced fire into the western portion of
the burn area. According to some on-site firefighters, the suppression
tactics used by the Park Service fire managers appeared to be more directed
at accomplishing the original objectives of the prescribed burn than in
suppressing the fire. On-site Park Service officials did not agree with this
assessment. They told us that once the burn was declared a wildfire, fire
suppression and fire fighter safety were their overriding objectives in
deciding which tactics to use.

As events unfolded, the introduction of fire in the western portion of the
burn area led directly to the fire's getting out of control on May 7. With
fire in the western portion of the burn area on May 7, and estimated wind
gusts from people on site of 20 to 50 miles per hour, the fire intensified
and began moving towards the Los Alamos and White Rock communities. In light
of the conflicting views and assessments, this experience provides a
valuable lesson. The existing Park Service policy requiring fire mangers to
protect resources while trying to suppress a wildfire should be revised in
instances like Cerro Grande. In these cases, where the threat of a
prescribed fire's getting out of control poses direct and serious public
safety risks, there should be no question that fire suppression should be
the top priority.

Guidance Is Needed for Determining the Resources

Necessary for Managing Prescribed Burns

The last major lesson that we would like to highlight involves the amount
and experience of fire-fighting resources needed to implement prescribed
burns. The lack of experience and inadequate fire-fighting resources were
common themes that began during the planning stage of the burn and carried
through to the implementation stage.

The Secretary of the Interior's investigative report raised questions about
whether a more experienced team with more fire-fighting resources should
have been used in light of the fire conditions and the proximity to nearby
communities. This situation became more critical on May 5, the second day of
the fire, when Park Service staff determined that additional resources were
needed in order to keep the fire under control. As we mentioned earlier,
when these additional resources were requested, it took 7 to 9 hours to get
them to the site. Without this delay, the fire might never have gone out of
control. Furthermore, on May 7, the day the fire began to spread toward Los
Alamos and White Rock, most of the fire-fighting resources on site were
being deployed on the eastern portion of the burn area because of
containment concerns there. At the same time, fire had already been
introduced into the western portion of the burn area without sufficient
resources to monitor and control the fire in that area. As I have already
pointed out, this situation resulted in the fire's burning out of control.

Currently, there is very little guidance available on the amount or
experience of, fire-fighting resources needed to manage prescribed burns.
While the current policy and procedures provide guidance on how to determine
resource needs for managing wildfires, they provide no guidance for
determining resource needs for managing prescribed fires. We discussed this
issue with officials in both the Park Service and the Forest Service. They
told us that making these kind of resource determinations for prescribed
fires is "more art than science" and that the quality of these
determinations is based more on experienced judgment than anything else.
However, the experience at Cerro Grande suggests that just relying on the
experience and judgment of individuals is not enough. While a cookbook
approach to determining staffing needs for prescribed fires may not be
prudent, a more structured, systematic approach can and should be adopted to
assist fire managers in making resource decisions.

To address the lessons of Cerro Grande, we have recommended that the current
interagency policy for federal wildfire management and its implementing
procedures, as well as those of the respective agencies that are signatories
to it, be revised to

   * require that, in risky situations like Cerro Grande, prescribed burn
     plans be peer-reviewed by qualified individuals outside the agency
     responsible for managing the burn;

   * better define what is meant by the term "contingency resources,"
     including clarifying the circumstances under which these resources can
     be used, the process for getting them, and the appropriate response
     time;

   * require that federal agencies better coordinate and cooperate in
     developing prescribed burn plans so that public and fire fighter safety
     is the top priority, without regard to agencies' administrative or
     jurisdictional boundaries;

   * require that a decision to proceed with the ignition of a prescribed
     burn is fully justified by requiring the responsible officials to
     complete the analysis called for in the go/no-go checklist and
     requiring that the supporting analysis be documented and reviewed;

   * make clear that, once a prescribed fire becomes a wildfire, the goal
     should be to suppress the fire as quickly as possible without
     compromising fire fighter or public safety, even if suppression
     requires the use of mechanical means; and

   * provide guidance to assist in making decisions about the amount and
     experience of personnel needed to properly manage and control
     prescribed fires.

Both the Departments of the Interior and of Agriculture generally agreed
with the facts, conclusions and recommendations of this statement.

Actions Needed to Mitigate Current Hazardous Forest Conditions

Our review of the circumstances surrounding the Cerro Grande fire underscore
other recent findings about the difficulties faced by the Park Service,
Forest Service, and other federal land management agencies in coping with
the increasingly grave risk of uncontrollable, catastrophic wildfires
threatening communities and natural resources in the dry interior regions of
the western United States. In particular, as we noted last year, past forest
management practices, including the decades-old policy of putting out
wildfires, has disrupted the historical occurrence of frequent,
low-intensity fires. The

routine occurrence of these low-intensity fires have periodically removed
flammable undergrowth without significantly damaging larger trees. Because
this normal cycle of fire has been disrupted, vegetation has accumulated in
many forested lands, creating high fire fuel levels for catastrophic
wildfires. These conditions have, in turn, transformed much of the western
part of the nation into a virtual tinderbox.

Without actions to reduce these accumulated fuels, the current trend of more
frequent and more intense wildfires can be expected to continue and perhaps
get even worse. These fires not only compromise forests' abilities to
provide timber, outdoor recreation, clean water and other resources, but
also pose increasingly grave risks to human health, safety, property, and
infrastructure, especially along the boundaries of forests where population
has grown significantly in recent years - the so-called "wildland/urban
interface."

As our past work has shown, effectively addressing the problem will require
changes in land management priorities at all levels. Accordingly, on the
basis of evidence that 39 million acres of national forest lands are at high
risk of such catastrophic wildfire, we recommended that the Forest Service
develop a coherent strategy to address this problem. Earlier this year, the
Service produced a strategy that (1) established forest fuel reduction
priorities for areas where communities, species, watersheds, and ecosystems
are at risk of such fires, and (2) proposed undertaking vastly increased
fuel reduction efforts in these areas using both mechanical methods
(including some timber harvests) and controlled burning where feasible to
reduce fuels. According to the Forest Service, evidence from fires in
Colorado this year supports our prior finding that, when major fires reach
large areas where fuels have been reduced a fire's intensity and rate of
spread slow sufficiently so that they can be put out. Thus, we believe the
Forest Service strategy is a good start and that a similar strategy for
Department of the Interior lands, may help to establish a coherent approach
across nearly all federal lands. Interior officials have told us that such a
plan is under development.

Currently, the Congress is considering an additional $240 million in funding
for fuel reduction activities on Forest Service and Department of the
Interior lands for fiscal year 2001. This is consistent with the finding in
our report last year that reducing fuels will be costly and require
substantial increases in current funding levels. On the other hand, such an
approach could pay for itself in reduced fire fighting costs as well as
property loss and reduced resource impacts. However, we are concerned that
there be adequate accountability to ensure that these funds are spent on the
highest priority areas. For instance, although the Forest Service's new
strategy identifies, as we recommended, priority categories of lands for
fuel reductions, the agency has no firm schedule for identifying the
specific areas that fit in these categories. Thus, it is important for the
Congress to ensure that the agencies (1) identify which lands meet these
priority criteria and (2) that the additional funding will be spent only on
these lands. Additionally, as both the Los Alamos and other recent fires
demonstrate, much of the risk to communities --as well as to federal
forests--can be reduced by fuel reduction efforts on adjacent lands.

- - - -

This concludes my statement. I would be happy to answer questions that you
or other Members of the Committee may have.

Contact and Acknowledgements

For further information on this testimony, please contact Barry T. Hill at
(202) 512-3841. Individuals making key contributions to this testimony
included Lew Adams, Amy Sue Bunting, Linda Chu, Alan Dominicci, Cliff
Fowler, Chester Joy, Frank Kovalak, Bob Lilly, and Paul Staley.

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