▶ 0:00:28for e
▶ 0:01:14tripping I think I got to you know yesterday was my first
▶ 0:01:59responded this morning I totally forgot about it
▶ 0:08:28e e
▶ 0:09:03and it would take you a week to do an acre he's got problems he's a lousy Governor I said Gavin will you sign a
▶ 0:19:57e e
▶ 0:20:32subcommittee will come to order without objection the chair is authorized to declare recess at any time we welcome everyone to today's hearing on California fires and the consequences of overregulation uh we have a lot of members that'll be uh waving on today without objection Mr mclintoch Mr Kylie Mr Bigs Mr Lou Mr swell uh Miss CER d of and Mr moscowitz will be permitted to participate in today's
▶ 0:21:02hearing for the purposes of questioning the witnesses if a member yields them time for that purpose I will now recognize myself for an opening statement earlier this year Southern California was hit with tragedy as fires exasperated by strong Santa Ana winds engulfed large sections of Los Angeles California Department of Forestry and fire management reports that the ongoing wildfires have burned more than 57,000 Acres destroyed 16,000
▶ 0:21:32structures and tragically caused the death of 28 individuals these fires are not a new occurrence wildfires have been plaguing Southern California for hundreds of years an abundant forest and shrand coupled with a relatively dry climate and strong Coastal winds increased the risk and prevalence of fires given the heightened threat environment one would think California would priori mitigation efforts to reduce the number and the strength of fires unfortunately California
▶ 0:22:03leaders have insisted and instead prioritized often counterproductive goals like planting trees installing electric vehicle charging stations OV equipping their communities and First Responders with the tools they need to protect their citizens and livelihoods uh and unfortunately this thinking has resulted in decades of overregulation that have left Californians more vulnerable to wildfires for example examp Le the states increase of lawsuits brought by environmental groups under the California Environmental
▶ 0:22:34Quality act known as squa has delayed proper Forest management projects such as control burns Timber harvesting or brush clearing it is also given rise to Sue and settle litigation where environmental activists Sue Regulators for the purposes of imposing a friendly settlement agreement meanwhile the California Coastal commission has near dictor powers to approve or deny any project along the 840 miile Coastline this muscle was flexed in
▶ 0:23:042019 when the LA Department of Water and Power attempted to replace wooden power lines in the Pacific Palisades Palisades area steel they also tried to widen fire lanes and install fire resistant power lines but the coastal commission put the project to a halt and ordered water and power to pay a nearly $2 million fine due to the discovery of an endangered plant in the vicinity of the project governor nome's governor Newsome rightfully waved the requirements
▶ 0:23:34of the sequa and the coastal act to spare fire victims the burdensome permitting and and review requirements as they rebuild homes while waving the requirements exposes the very cumbersome nature of these regulations contributing to this crisis is the elected California State Commissioner who routinely has chosen to put artificial price caps on insurance rates this has led to Decades of stagnant insurance premiums as there
▶ 0:24:04an obvious political incentive to oppose R Heights and has caused insurers to pause issuing new policies or leave the state entirely it is also caused more Reliance on the state's insurers of The Last Resort the California FAIR Plan according to the LA Times and insurance companies that are leaving the state and the fair plan has been seen as a policy that could count and grow for a for a little as little as 200,000
▶ 0:24:35in two 2 2020 to more than 450,000 as September as of September 2024 taking together these regulations have fueled the frequency of and strength of wildfires in California state and local leaders have also deprioritized fire prevention in their budgets LA mayor Karen bass for example approved a budget for 2024 that cut more than 17 million from the LA fire department Governor Nome similarly reduced
▶ 0:25:05funding for numerous fire safety and prevention programs in the state budget including 101 million reduction for Wildfire and fire resilience programs I'm sure you can buy a lot of EV charging stations for $1 million today we will hear from a panel of experts who have been preaching for years to stop appeasing the environmental activists and begin implementing adequate water and Forest management policies it's my hope that these witnesses will be prepared to offer recommendations
▶ 0:25:36that state and federal lawmakers may use to protect California from future fires absent real regulatory reform in the state I fear history Is tragically bound to repeat itself I now recognize uh ranking member Mr Nadler uh for his opening statement thank you Mr chairman and I want to congratulate you on becoming chair of the subcommittee while I am sure that we will have many disagreements beginning with today's
▶ 0:26:06hearing I do look forward to working with you and to finding areas of Common Ground Mr chairman while tens of thousands of Californians are still reeling from the fires that forc them to evacuate and that destroyed their homes and their livelihoods Republicans are exploiting this crisis with a hearing that does nothing more than provide a sad excuse to further their long-held goal of dismantling the regulations that keep us safe rather than face the undeniable facts of climate change and the need for Urgent unfettered federal
▶ 0:26:36assistance to help Californians rebuild their lives Republicans want to change the subject but we should begin by remembering the tens of thousands of people whose lives have been upended by Disaster if you look back in the history of California for me this is comparable to the 1906 earthquake in California and the level of catastrophe and disaster here um is high and there's one reason that we're seeing a fire
▶ 0:27:07This ferocious it's the weather and the number one piece in the weather is the wind Anthony is chief of the LA County Fire Department one of the officials overseeing the firefight he told us the devil wins hurled Embers far ahead of the fire like snowfall from Hell May louder the devastation wrought by these fires is unimaginable and the only question we
▶ 0:27:37should be asking now is how we can help the people of California recover and despite the heroism of First Responders and plentiful water access all but one small Reservoir closed for maintenance the fires tragically destroyed Acres upon Acres of homes and communities instead of responding to this tragedy with Open Hearts Republican led by President Trump and his unelected co-president Elon Musk have resorted to a flurry of baseless accusations and scarless misinformation
▶ 0:28:07seeking to blame California's Democratic elected officials and when they claim to be helping the situation they've actually done more harm than good for example president Trump has falsely argued that Environmental Protection policies left Southern California without sufficient order to fight the wildfires despite clear evidence to the contrary now nevertheless he ordered the release of over 2 billion gallons of water in the Central Valley purportedly to support his unsubstantiated claims the president claimed that
▶ 0:28:37the water was quote heading to Farmers throughout the state and Los Angeles this critical agricultural resource desperately needed by California's Farmers for the spring was instead due to the present actions diverted into the Pacific Ocean 100 miles away from Los Angeles California does not need political photo ops that waste desperately needed water they they need real federal assistance and how does the president respond by insisting that any federal
▶ 0:29:08aid come with strings attached that further his own political agenda like voter ID laws never mind that California already has voter ID laws but the president wants to play politics rather than help those in need and Gavin nsam is going to sign those papers and if he doesn't sign those papers we won't give him money to put out all his fires and if we don't give him the money to put out his fires he's got problems he's a lousy Governor I said Gavin will you sign it took him like a month and
▶ 0:29:38a half or two months and then he decided for political reasons and then we got hit with Co and we had to solve another problem that is outrageous and it is outrageous that republicans in Congress including speaker Johnson have indicated that they are open to placing conditions on disaster Aid especially when ones that have nothing to do with wildfires not only is that wrong for California but it is simply wrong to treat the citizens of any state as porns in a political game
▶ 0:30:08natural disasters tragically affect millions of Americans across the country each year as FEMA's website explains its purpose is quote to help people before during and after disasters unquote to help people all people it is not there to help just the Republicans or just the Democrats or to promote part AR objectives it has always been and should always remain strictly neutral in its work members should be careful before they consider attaching political strings to the
▶ 0:30:38federal funds needed to recover from natural disasters if it can happen to California it can happen to your state too in 2024 alone the states my colleagues across the aisle represent collectively had 122 extreme weather events that necessitated theme assistance 122 extreme weather events made worse and made more frequent by the realities of climate change that the majority still will not acknowledge imagine if then President Biden
▶ 0:31:08had conditioned necessary FEMA disaster recovery funds on strings that bear no relation to the disasters their constituents are still recovering from they would have been outraged justifiably but today they remained silent and today instead of letting California recover from the blazes that were contained only only 5 days ago and to take stock of how to rebuild the majority is leveraging the pain and suffering of Americans to push a message of deregulation over all else
▶ 0:31:39instead of supporting our fellow Americans as they pick up the pieces instead of ensuring that our neighbors have the resources they need to recover from this disaster instead of working to slow the devastating effects of climate change that affect us all Republicans will return to their tired old Playbook and blame everything on over regulation today we are fortunate fortunate to be joined by Frank Falt a retired fire chief with actual experience on the ground fighting fires and saving lives
▶ 0:32:09I'm looking forward to hearing from a true expert on how we can best help California in its hour of need I yield back gentleman yields back and now recognized chairman of the full committee Mr Jordan for his opening statement thank you uh Mr chairman the ranking member started off his comments by saying that Republicans wanted to dismantle the regulations that keep us safe that keep us safe 28 Californians lost their lives 20,000 structures were destroyed 40,000 Acres where these fires took
▶ 0:32:39place and California is the most heavily regulated state in the country we're trying to figure out how we can stop this it's not about just mailing regul if if if regulations were going to solve the problem they would have been solved everything would have been solved in California because you got regulations more than any other place so I appreciate the chairman bring experts in here to tell us what's really going on appreciate this hearing and oh to be clear the clip that was shown by ranking member Nadler of President Trump was before the fires it was clear back in September for
▶ 0:33:09goodness sake so we're going to get to the truth with our Witnesses I want to thank the chairman for this important hearing about regulatory reform that really needs to happen and we want to make sure the regulations are in California don't come to the rest of the country because we don't want this happening all over our great nation and with that I yield back gentleman yields back uh without objection uh all other opening statements will be included in the record we will now introduce today's Witnesses and I recognize the gentleman from California Mr Kylie
▶ 0:33:39for that purpose thank you Mr chair we are fortunate to have with us today uh Witnesses who know as well as anyone what has gone so wrong in my state what has gone so wrong in the Golden State they will share with us the Titanic policy blunders and St staging failures of political leadership that have caused such harm to California and for which our citizens have paid such a high price I believe that today's hearing can be a moment where we
▶ 0:34:09turn the tide and restore some sanity to California fire and water policy while issuing a warning to the rest of the country about the devastating consequences of these failed policies as president Trump said there can be no Golden Age without the Golden State our first Witness is Steve Hilton now most probably know Mr Hilton uh as a British and American commentator uh for among other outlets Fox Fox News uh but he actually uh back in 2010
▶ 0:34:40to 2012 uh was the director of strategy for British Prime Minister David Cameron and he has now brought his unique mix of brilliant strategy passion and common a common sense approach to policy uh to found a nonprofit organization called Golden together which focuses on fixing the problems that are causing a mass Exodus of people from the state of California that mass exodus by the way is measurable for five straight years California has ranked number one in the country in outbound U-Haul
▶ 0:35:10rentals the greatest state in the country most beautiful state in the country has become the most popular state to leave Mr Hilton's testimony will cover the failures in leadership that have led to the lack of preparation for the fires in Los Angeles our uh second witness is someone uh who many of us in California know very well and uh whose insights we've been relying on for a long time Mr step greenhut is resident senior fellow and western region director for state affairs at R Street
▶ 0:35:40Institute he was a colonist for the San Diego Union trun who focused on California policy and state government uh he authored the book winning the water wars California can meet its water needs by promoting abundance rather than managing scarcity his testimony will identify many areas in which policy promises in California were made with no follow through from California leaders as a California resident he can speak to the personal impact many of these policy decisions have had on him and his family and finally uh Mr Edward ring
▶ 0:36:11uh who is perhaps as knowledgeable about water and fire policy in California uh as just about anyone uh Dr ring is the director of water and energy policy for the California policy Center he has a deep tactical knowledge of the poor decision-making of environmentalist California policy makers he'll speak directly to the prolonged environmental review process and the meddling of uh environmental groups that prevents proper fire mitigation and Water Management from happening in California
▶ 0:36:41and lest anyone think that the purpose of this hearing is simply uh to identify problems rather than present Solutions uh I'd encourage you to check out M uh Dr Ring's written testimony in which he has literally dozens and dozens of concrete policy changes that California could make right now to appr improve the situation uh thank you Mr chair for convening this important hearing and I yield back gentlemen yields back I now recognize the ranking member Mr Nadler to introduce the Democrat witness thank you before I introduce our witness I must take
▶ 0:37:12strong exception to what Mr Kylie said when he said California was the most beautiful state in the Union obviously New York is the most beautiful state in the Union Chief fro has served since 1979 with special district City County State and and federal fire agencies enrolls from firefighter to fire chief he holds an MS from Oklahoma State University in Fire and Emergency Management Administration and currently serves as director of the Wildland Urban interface fire Institute
▶ 0:37:42at Cali St Louie Obispo Frank is anme for the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation Wildfire advisory Council and previously served as a senior policy adviser to the Western Fire Chiefs association with an emphasis on the the development of resilient Wildland Urban interface communities his work is grounded in aligning key stakeholders around a core set of parcel and Community level mitigations that will disrupt the fire Pathways which lead to conflagration he is pursuing
▶ 0:38:13the Actuarial evaluation of risk mitigations for both the public and private sectors because we share the same desired outcome minimizing property loss to the Peril of wildfire I yield back the gentleman yields back back we want to welcome the witnesses and certainly thank you for appearing today uh we will Begin by swearing you in would you please rise and raise your hand do you swear
▶ 0:38:43or affirm under penalty of perjury that the testimony you are about to give is true and correct to the best of your knowledge information and belief so help you God let the the record reflect that the witnesses have answered in the affirmative thank you and you can be seated please know that your written testimony will be entered into the record in its entirety accordingly we ask that you summarize
▶ 0:39:13your testimony in five minutes today Mr Green Hut uh you begin um do I yeah chairman Fitzgerald ranking member Nadler and members of the subcommittee my name is Steven greenhut I'm western region director for the R Street Institute of free market Think Tank and have written extensively about California issues for newspapers and books for the past 27 years I love the state and want to see it Prosper one of the common themes in my writing has been the state's
▶ 0:39:44commitment to expanding bureaucracy and regulation without much regard for whether the new programs accomplish their stated goals but the Los Angeles wildfires have exposed festering regulatory hurdles that have exacerbated the crisis many are years in the making mingly complex and not given to Quick Solutions it's a Confluence of bad policy involving brush clearance water Insurance firefighting housing and climate change California has created a tangled web of Regulation that renders
▶ 0:40:14this once Innovative State incapable of accomplishing anything efficiently even Environmental Protection consider California's extensive climate change agenda instead of building a resilient system that handles whatever Mother Nature throws our way our state cons constantly uses it as an excuse for inaction on nuts and bolts issues by the way uncontrolled wildfires undermine whatever progress we're making in reducing carbon dioxide emissions University of Chicago research found that the
▶ 0:40:442020 wildfires emitted close to double the state's emissions reductions achieved over 16 years the governor has agreed that we need to step up brush clearance but very little happens the California Environmental Quality Act squa and other laws require environmental impact reports for clearance projects and two to three approvals for controlled Burns they can take years the state could for instance considering using more funds from the greenhouse gas reduction fund to pay for this rather than prioritizing a high-speed rail
▶ 0:41:14system that's unlikely to do much about the climate it's always an issue of priorities the wildfires have the wildfires have also highlighted California's counterproductive insurance regulations I've been writing for years about the coming Insurance catastrophe it can take many months close to a year for insurers to Wade through the process of hearings rate reviews and opposition to such hikes by Consumer Attorney interveners who earn large fees for their efforts the problem goes back to prop proposition
▶ 0:41:45103 the 1988 ballot initiative that instituted the prior approval system for rate increases and rolled back rates it created a price control system unable to easily adjust rates to reflect risk insurers quietly and then not so quietly began exiting the insurance commissioner crafted a suite of useful reforms that were showing some promise but why did it take so long with this catastrophic Wildfire it remains to be seen whether these changes will be enough to stop the continued Exodus
▶ 0:42:15of insurers many homeowners in the LA area didn't have coverage or were relying on the state created insur of Last Resort the FAIR Plan and there's much talk of that barebone system facing possible rather than addressing the insurance emergency the governor and lawmakers found time for a performative special legislative session about so-called oil industry price gouging again it's about priorities water policy is a tangential issue related to wildfires but California has built little
▶ 0:42:45new water infrastructure since the 70s when the population was roughly half what it is today the state passed a major water Bond a decade ago but we've seen little progress on building traditional infrastructure projects the California Coastal Commission in 2022 even rejected a privately funded desalination plan in Huntington Beach over concerns about Plankton more water would not have stopped the wildfires but additional Water Resources would bolster firefighting efforts and mitigate some of the effects of drought Seasons
▶ 0:43:15instead of building the basic water infrastructure prioritized under the Pat Brown Administration recent administrations have focused almost solely on conservation and rationing yet approximately 50% of California's water flows to the Pacific 40% is used for agriculture and 10% is for urban uses limiting swimming pools and car washing is no solution we've seen criticisms about an inadequate number of firefighters thanks to Union power we see abundance of La firefighters earning
▶ 0:43:45total compensation packages above $500,000 a year with one Captain earning more than $900,000 a year if pay reflected Market rates California state government and municipality could afford to hire more of them finally I want to touch on California's cumbersome building regulations which are a notable hurdle in the rebuilding process thankfully the governor issued an executive order suspending SQL in the coastal act but why is it taken disaster State officials have some relect some rules for for Arenas
▶ 0:44:16and highdensity housing but not in a far-reaching matter little by little California has built up a massive administrative state I'm hoping the heartbreaking nature of the wildfire will finally cause State officials to rethink this failed approach thank you for your time you may begin chairman Jordan ranking member nler chairman Fitzgerald ranking
▶ 0:44:46member Rasin and members of the subcommittee thank you for the invitation to appear today to testify regarding California fires and the consequences of overregulation my name is Edward ring and I'm the director of energy and water policy for the California policy Center a nonpartisan public policy Research Institute my observations over the past decade have led me to the conclusion that many of you may share overregulation over at least the past uh excuse me overregulation in California has made the state unaffordable to middle class and
▶ 0:45:17low-income families it has also endangered Our lives our homes and our communities and has harmed to the environment at least as much as it has helped today's Hearing Centers on the consequences of overregulation in California with a specific focus on the recent and catastrophic wildfires that consume thousands of homes in Los Angeles and cost many lives while no amount of preventive measures or properly applied firefighting resources can stop all of the wildfires in our state their frequency
▶ 0:45:47and their severity is a consequence of overregulation the regulations most damaging to our forests are ironically justified by misguided environmentalist values because of environmentalist regulations and litigation pursuant to the California Environmental Quality act the California Endangered Species Act and their Federal equivalents California's anual Timber Harvest is down to 1.5 billion board feet a year 25%
▶ 0:46:18of what it was as recently as the 1980s these and other environmental laws have nearly killed our logging industry while also making it much harder to do prescribed Burns or graze these forests are dried out unhealthy because there are now at least three times as many trees at least as at least three times as many trees per acre than the natural density competing for limited light water and soil nutrients there is an alternative for example in 2020 the creek
▶ 0:46:48fire burned 380,000 acres in the central Sierra mountains but 20,000 acres in the middle of that fire the Watershed around Shaver Lake didn't burn at all that's because for several decades the owners practiced what they call Total ecosystem management they used prescribed Burns mechanical thinning grazing and selective logging to manage their Forest Wildlife biologists who are on site claimed that species counts in the area actually exceed levels found in forests where state regulations have logging
▶ 0:47:19these practices need to be extended to all Wildland in California and in the Wildland Urban interface Los Angeles in particular the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy ought to completely reprioritize their actions to First ensure reducing fire risk California is only 5% urbanized and that is where 94% of our state's population lives we have the most densely populated urban areas of any state in America the point here
▶ 0:47:49is that our state has plenty of open space and Wilderness going to extreme lengths to return ecosystems to an untouched natural state is not appropriate along the perimeter of a city with 10 million people in any case our government at all levels has not outperformed private land owners in habitat California state government has enacted regulations and enabled litigation that rewards special interests while costing taxpayers literally hundreds of billions of dollars environmental
▶ 0:48:19regulations make housing unaffordable leaving subsidized developers to inadequately fulfill a mission that the private sector can do we pay higher utility rates to subsidize Renewables we have carbon sequestration carbon offset trading carbon accounting we have environmental litigation as a business model entire new Industries created by political decree producing nothing of value This Disaster in Los Angeles is a clarifying moment the leaders running California
▶ 0:48:50today can allow a deregulated private sector to create millions of good jobs delivering abundant Energy Water Lumber and housing including rebuilding the Lost homes in Los Angeles at a price normal people can afford or we can ration our water and energy in land expecting the government to subsidize millions of households that can no longer afford the essentials we can manage our environment and expand our suburbs redefining what what constitutes a reasonable environmental
▶ 0:49:20impact or we can Retreat into highdensity urban cores and pretend the entire Earth should be turned back back over to Nature I am including in my written testimony a list of laws that should be repealed regulations that should be scrapped and strategies whereby California hopefully with the help from the Federal Government Can Save Our State thank you thank you Mr Ring Mr Hilton you may begin thank you very much thank you very much Mr chairman and all your colleagues for
▶ 0:49:51giving me the opportunity to be here today my comments reflect both the policy work that I've done that Mr Kylie mentioned at my organization golden together specifically two reports which I'd like to draw your attention to uh reducing California's carbon emissions through Modern Forest management and secondly water abundance but my comments also reflect more recent conversations with firefighters in Los Angeles retired firefighters across the state and the victims of This Disaster
▶ 0:50:21and I have to say to the ranking member those victims will be offended by the s we just heard which were frankly outrageous and offensive preposterously claiming that regulations Keep Us Safe it is the regulations that put Californians in danger as we have all been highlighting it's described sometimes this disaster as a natural disaster it's not a natural disaster this was a man-made disaster
▶ 0:50:51more precisely a Democrat made disaster that is not hyperbole that is the only plausible explanation for the impact here we are still waiting of course to understand the ignition what precisely ignited these fires but the impact there's no question that it was the direct result of democrat policy and Democrat appointments to the bureaucracies who implemented those policies as we've been hearing fire is a natural part of life in these
▶ 0:51:21areas that burned that is not new we have had Fires for decades we have have had fire prevention for decades but in the last two decades that kind of sensible fire prevention was blocked by Democrat policy we have heard a lot as we've watched these disasters unfold about containment what does containment mean it doesn't mean putting out the fires it means clearing the perimeter fuel management fire prevention
▶ 0:51:52that is what's actually happening bulldozers and firefighters with axes there's a simple question we can do that before these fire disasters or we can do it after the choice that Democrats have made is to force it to be done by our brave firefighters after the event instead of preventively beforehand let's be specific there was an article in the New York Times about philli and Clare vote who designed and built one of the most fire resistant homes in America on a peak in the Santa Monica Mountains
▶ 0:52:22quote for months Phillip had been volunteering to clear clear away the dead undergrowth on the Parkland surrounding his property but California officials told him he could be fined for meddling with a sensitive habitat who are these California officials number one carb the California air resources board in 2000 they issued new smoke management regulations that effectively prohibited prohibited the kind of controlled Burns that were
▶ 0:52:52the norm for decades before as we were hearing the California Coastal commission prohibiting sensible fire prevention measures to save a brunton's milk vetch shrub which they claim is endangered and worst of all as we were hearing the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy every single firefighter that I spoke to in Los Angeles said what are these people doing stopping us from taking the sensible steps to
▶ 0:53:22keep our communities safe this is the direct result of overregulation and I could go on in 2020 State Senate bill in the California legislator SB 182 would have mandated fire prevention and resilience including evacuation routes vegetation management fire safe construction it was vetoed by Governor Nome here is a quote from his veto letter it fails to account for the consequences that could increase sprawl
▶ 0:53:53so yet again you have sensible fire preven ion blocked by overregulation because of ideology about the war on single family homes that's being waged in California on and on every single aspect of This Disaster the failures that led up to it the failures of response all of it the result of democrat policy who else is there to blame who else has been in charge in Los Angeles and across the state of California in these years so now
▶ 0:54:23we have some demands we have demands from the people affected who never want to see this happen again number one any support from Congress for what's happened must include a requirement for their sensible reforms the common sense measures that we have outlined here and is in the policy reports that we put before you safeguards to make sure this money the federal money is spent properly any money just as we saw with the 911 victim compensation we need a special Master appointed
▶ 0:54:54to make sure that money is not wasted and finally there is a bill on the desk of Governor Nome right now for Trump proofing California even as he goes to the office and begs for help for his State surely a condition of any support must be for governor new to veto that bill Mr children thank you thank you so much uh Mr fral uh you may begin good morning members of the committee my name is Frank folt I'm the current director of the Wildland Urban interface fire
▶ 0:55:24Institute at kpali St my opinions today are mine they don't not necessarily represent the CSU system to the experience in education that was covered initially I'd like to add that uh of my time serving in the fire service 19 of those years were in California 24 those years we outside of California I think this will be important as we look at Mr fral can you speak up just a little bit please make sure your mic's on the mic's on is that better
▶ 0:55:55very good my apologies I'm a soft talker as I said my name is Frank folt I am the Wildland Urban interface fire Institute director at kelp San Louis abiso my comments today aren't mine they do not necessarily represent those of the CSU California State University my experience that was discussed earlier I want to make clear that about half of that has been inside of California and about half of it has been outside of California Additionally the comments that I'll make uh are informed of I may service on
▶ 0:56:25the western Fire Chiefs Association which represents the states of Alaska Arizona California Hawaii Idaho Montana Nevada and Oregon and also have a multi-state mitigation alignment project underway that uh mitigations for Wildland Urban interface uh properties that involves California Oregon Washington Nevada Colorado Idaho and Arizona we are setting out really to solve two problems the first is unacceptable levels of life and property
▶ 0:56:55loss in the Wildland Urban interface when we talk about interface uh just like we have oceans and land connecting at the coastline think of the interface is where combustible vegetation meets Urban centers so when we say interface that's really the intent the second thing that we are solving for is an impending National financial crisis that will Cascade from the insurance Market to the realy mortgage lending and general obligation Municipal Bond markets in my opinion
▶ 0:57:27there is understandably a lot of polarization on this issue what I can tell you from my time working in the field on these types of disasters is that we need to reframe how we approach this going forward and I would suggest we do it in the following ways first this is an urban configration problem it is not a wildfire problem it starts as a wildfire problem through Embers entering communities and the reception of those communities on buildings uh this is
▶ 0:57:57well understood through jack Cohen's work second this is a national problem it is not just a California problem um lahina Hawaii the Marshall fire in Colorado CF Canyon hermit's Peak fire in New Mexico this one usually surprises people unless they lived back there or here the gber fires from 2016 246 structure 17,000 Acres you don't normally
▶ 0:58:28think about that there and it's not just here essentially if you look at the globe 30 degrees north and south of the Equator Spain Greece Chile Australia New Zealand um this is not just our issue unfortunately we can learn from those as well another reframing is that while climate accelerated this issue that's really just two of the three primary issues one is an accumulation of fuel
▶ 0:58:58since roughly 1910 due to National policy that made sense at the time led to unintended consequences and the second is continued develop it into fire dependent Landscapes these Landscapes have a return interval that that needs to be met and the third is that while this issue has state and federal consequences it is always a local government issue and unless we reframe our approach to the questions and the answers looking forward into what's coming versus Looking Backward into what
▶ 0:59:28has happened we're going to continue to pursue things that are not going to be relevant to changing towards the outcomes that we need I'd give you three things that I think we should commit to First is we need to prioritize selective management of combusted combustible vegetation within 1 half mile of Wildland Urban interface communities above all other vegetation management actions it's not to their inclusion exclusion but it's that we need to prioritize those spaces the second is that we need to retroactively
▶ 0:59:58Harden existing structures in Wild lad Urban interface communities through evidence-based mitigations and create and maintain defensible space around those structures and to clarify mitigations mean the various actions that you can take to make these structures less receptive first and foremost to Embers and later to structure to structure spread and third we need to require the evidence that the evidence-based mitigation ations are included in the part of
▶ 1:00:29the Actuarial pricing of risk and insurance rate setting we know enough now about those relative contributions to the disruption of fire to understand their value and I'll end with the first time I understood we had a serious disconnect as I had some property owners that passed our defensible space inspection brilliantly and had a non-renewal before the week was up and I realized at that point how
▶ 1:00:59the fire service and how the insurance industry were looking at the same place were not connected and that's where I think we need to go to thank you thank you Mr fival uh we'll now proceed under the fem minute rule with questions uh the chair recogn I'll recognize myself for a number of questions starting out the tragedy recent fires in Los Angeles undoubtedly made worse by some of the policies that make it impossible for California to manage long-standing fire risks inherent to the state so Mr Ring let me
▶ 1:01:29start with you why do you think there is such a uh resistance to these Common Sense approaches uh that that many of have just heard about this morning and certainly been hearing about since the the fires happened in La I can't think of a harder question to answer I find it inexplicable uh I do think that some of the uh motivation for the uh litigation for example that we see against sensible wild uh Wildland
▶ 1:02:00management uh comes uh as an economic motive uh the again the Regulatory and legal environment uh because of these laws are such that it's very easy uh to file a lawsuit to try to break uh any project that's going to develop land or manage Wildland so I think a lot of it would have would have to do with that I also think that there is a preoccupation with climate change uh that sort of uh diverts
▶ 1:02:30people from looking at I think what Steve referred to as the nuts and bolts uh if you're concerned truly concerned about climate change you should be uh wanting to uh you you would be wanting to pursue uh sensible policies with more urgency not less so uh I think it's partly ideology and I think it's partly uh some U perverse incentives caused by the legal environment that we've created so what could the federal government do what kind of steps could we take
▶ 1:03:00to ensure that all States including California have less roadblocks to mitigate an AC of Congress could for example uh make losers pay in frivolous lawsuits that have to do with environmental issues I think that would be a reform that would cut across every law or regulation that's being exploited currently whereas if you uh for example reform the endanger Species Act which is also necessary and reforming NEPA is also necessary
▶ 1:03:30but if you also assign a responsibility to uh litigants that uh that file frivolous lawsuits you would you would take care of every every regulation that's being exploited in manner do you think there's anything that we're seeing and experiencing with the fires in California that would lead you to maybe scrutinize some of the some of the statutes at the state level in other states that also experience forest fires
▶ 1:04:01wildfires that California just experienced that that makes sense that that there is a state to look towards to uh maybe fine-tune what's going on in California well I can I can say that in California it would uh probably be helpful to take away the waivers that permit California to enact all kinds of laws that go well in excess of federal regulations as far as an example of a state that's managing their wildlands
▶ 1:04:31responsibly uh I I can't answer that with uh specific knowledge but I think that in the southeastern United States a lot of uh Forest management is done in a way that makes a lot more sense very good thank you Mr Green Hut let me ask um many states require that State Insurance Commissioner has to approve uh a rate increase before it takes effect uh the fast rate approv are crucial component of healthy State Insurance markets uh many of us in Serv State Legislature
▶ 1:05:01worked in that area so is there something that you're seeing that that stands out when it comes to California that's lacking in this area or some of the moves or changes that have been made as a as a result of uh trying to better position themselves in unfortunately failing when it comes to uh insurance rates uh there are about 12 states with prior approval systems and California is is
▶ 1:05:31is the strictest you pointed out in the uh in your opening that uh well for one thing it made the insurance commissioner an elected position uh there aren't a lot of insurance Commissioners often are you know looking to hire office who want to be the person who approved a major rate hike um and and the the problem is uh this has been going on for years we're not able to to just adjust the rates and their process the there are things that could be done within the prop 103 process uh we could speed up uh the rate uh
▶ 1:06:02approval process in California is notoriously slow for that and uh it's supposed to by by the initiative uh these rate reviews are supposed to take place within 60 to 180 days and the average is somewhere like 293 days and then you know there's there's one example of it it it's we have these interveners who are consumer and and one of their uh uh consumer Watchdog is one of them and their predecessor uh
▶ 1:06:32group uh wrote the initiative and they they earn uh substantial fees essentially opposing uh any sort of rate increase and that you know that just drags it out I there's one quick example I think we'll have an opportunity to talk a little bit further on that issue sure I'm going to yield back and I'm going to recognize the ranking member for five minutes I thank the chairman I first must respond to Mr Hil inflammatory comments on my statement rules that prevent people's roofs from burning rules that get rid of inflammatory
▶ 1:07:02material around homes rules that mean that the house next door is less of a fire threat to your own these are rules that save lives blanket deregulation would heighten fire risk not lower it we have heard claims from Republicans including president Trump that the Water Systems in California were strained because of overregulation but with the exception of one small Reservoir that was down for scheduled maintenance the reservoirs were full when the fire started According to some estimates when the Palisades fire started there were 3 million gallons of water stored locally
▶ 1:07:33but the demand to fight the fires was four times greater than the system had ever encountered the widespread and simultaneous use of hydrants across the affected area did cause water pressure to drop but as experts have explained quote hydrant are designed for fighting fires at one or two houses at a time not hundreds as one expert in the field observed quote we have really no lack of water what we have is an infrastructure that is not made to fight cataclysmic fires biblical sized fires director freea
▶ 1:08:03for these large scale Urban fires like ones in Eaton and Palisades would you say that these are once in the career fires thank you for the question um initially when I started maybe um but we can look at you have plenty of access to uh the history records and severity of wildlife face fire institutes or uh incidents they're certainly on a
▶ 1:08:34rise but I would also mention that uh to date our largest acreage life and property losses um actually occurred a long time ago uh first one was at least it was recorded in this way 1871 in peso Wisconsin um that was burned somewhere between 1.5 million to 2 4 AC million Acres between 1,200 to 2500 people were killed it jumped Green Bay 16 towns
▶ 1:09:05were burned in that process thank you I have one other question after large fires like these which should be doing everything we can to help people in need not pointing fig fingers and trying and trying to blame elected leaders you made a number of recommendations but what would be most helpful to the people of California during this difficult time well right now we need to focus on the recovery part for sure as we move forward I'll go back to the three concurrent integrated
▶ 1:09:36actions that I mentioned in my opening statement we have to prioritize selective management of fuel treatment immediately around Wildland urac communities we need to retroactively Harden the existing inventory of structures and we need to require evidence-based mitigations to be included in the pricing of risk thank you I now yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from California Mr Lou who can speak to the devastation and the need for disaster relief funds uh thank you uh ranking
▶ 1:10:06member Natalie for eing your time thank you uh chairman fero for letting me attend Mr Hilton are you a firefighter I'm not a firefighter Mr Ring are you a firefighter R it's just a yes or no question Mr Ring are you a firefighter no all Mr greenhart are you a firefighter I'm not a firefighter northern part of my district was evacuated I've talked to numerous firefighters I've visited the Intensive damage I've had multiple briefings from firefighters First Responders and Fire Chiefs
▶ 1:10:37this is what they told me the reason these fires in Southern California spread so quickly caused so much damage was because of Santa Ana winds that reach unprecedented gusts of 100 miles per hour gust so high the helicopters and and uh their airplanes could not fly also because of very low relative humidity and the driest conditions in California history none of the firefighter said it was about overregulation or homeless people
▶ 1:11:07or the Delta spell fish or the timber Harvest or voter ID laws so shame on anyone who is exploiting the pain and suffering of disaster victims to jam through partisan ideological policies we should get disaster Aid to these disaster victims now without conditions just like we treat every other disaster victim Across America we just gave Aid this past December to South Carolina Florida Oklahoma
▶ 1:11:38the Democrats say hey we want you to do better on climate change policies in your state no we just gave that Aid because these are Americans who are suffering so do not exploit them i y back gentleman yields back ranking member has a unanimous consent request thank you Mr chairman since the majority is having this hearing in California fires without the participation of members who represent the Palisades in Eaton I seek unanimous consent to enter statements from Representatives Chu and Sherman into the record
▶ 1:12:08without objection uh we now recognize um the gentleman from North Carolina Mr Harris thank you Mr chairman and I think we're all here trying to learn more about how to prevent these situations from developing in the future and uh I want to just first of all thank all of you for being on the panel today and sharing and I want to address a question to Mr Steven green Hut if I may uh recently areas in my own home state of North Carolina that were devastated by
▶ 1:12:39Hurricane Helen are now dealing with wildfires ourselves unfortunately in the last couple of weeks the aftermath of the storm's Destruction has been providing fuel for these fires and I want to talk for a moment about the concept of utilizing controlled burn Burns to mitigate wildfires I know there are prescribed burn projects that happen in my district and I think it's important that they continue but it's my understanding that implementing prescribed Burns has become more
▶ 1:13:09difficult due to the regulations in California and Mr Green Hutt are there significant barriers that exist in California to exercising these prescribed Burns and if so what are they yeah the California environment Al quality act which continues to come up squa uh it just imposes enormous hurdles and delays to doing any sort of project so when we had these uh horrific wildfires up in Paradise in in but County after the
▶ 1:13:39fires it took two years uh before uh the county was even able to let out uh contracts for for brush clearance uh there was a previous fire uh where uh it took 18 months I believe to get get a squa approval to do some some brush clearance and the community was uh was destroyed shortly thereafter so sqa is a huge hurdle for everything and and one of the points about SQL we hear a lot that oh uh we need these regulations to protect protect the environment but the squel
▶ 1:14:09delays and lawsuit process doesn't help the environment I was just looking up 49% of lawsuits SQL lawsuits are public projects and many of them are environmental projects including Parks University Housing renewable energy um 80% of them are infill projects which are you know lot of the F A lot of people in California say we need more of those to deal with climate change and yet the lawsuits Target those projects and 64% of the lawsuits are from associations
▶ 1:14:39such as unions without having a which which don't have a history of environmental activism so in other words they use them to secure wage uh you concessions so this is this helping the environment and if we're slowing uh slowing prescribed Burns and brush clearance and we've done very little we're supposed to do about according to calfire about a million Acres of clearance a year on on Federal and and state land uh and have been doing around 125,000 Acres
▶ 1:15:09a year and and the governor said we need to do more of it it's just we haven't seen more of it and and so so yes well and that that was going to be a follow-up question I understand that Governor Nome publicly committed to step up the rate of mechanical thinning and prescribed Burns in order to clean up the excessive fuel in the forest and again I'll just ask you has Governor Nome followed through on that commitment at this point well I agree with what he's saying needs to be done what I'm looking at is that we have all these bureaucratic
▶ 1:15:40hurdles so I think even if a governor issues an executive order everything still gets just gummed up in the works and that and that's kind of what I want to address is some of these long-term regulatory issues not you know the short-term partisan issues yeah well let me let me ask you this and and I want you to use the balance of the time if you were in charge of setting policy related to Forest management and prescribed Burns what changes would you make well I
▶ 1:16:10I think the focus since I'm I'm not an expert in in Forest clearance is dealing with squa I mean that's that is an impediment to everything and our state whenever there's a project our state uh needs to some lawmaker wants to uh uh get through such as the the Kings arena in Sacramento what's the first thing they do they a squa uh exemption state has has offered SQL exemptions on different highdensity housing projects I agree with with that it's just that we need
▶ 1:16:40to do it far in a far-reaching manner so that all sorts of projects are are spared uh you know the delays the added costs and often developers don't even and public agencies don't even propose projects because they know it's going to lead to uh lawsuits and years of litigation and higher costs well and again let me just say in closing I want to thank all of you on the panel for what you're sharing I don't think anybody is here to exploit anything today I think we're here because we want to get the takeaways
▶ 1:17:10that can help us prevent anything like this from happening again certainly I feel that way for my own home state of North Carolina and others around the country so thank you gentlemen for sharing gentlemen neeld's back now recognize the gentleman from Maryland the ranking member the full committee Mr Rasin Mr chairman thank you very much and I appreciate the remark of the gentleman from North Carolina that we should not be here to engage in uh political rhetoric and exploitation uh of these terrible events uh
▶ 1:17:41States counties localities All Over America are affected by weather calamities uh that are coming on with extraordinary uh velocity because of climate change I want to yield to the distinguished gentleman from California Mr Mr Lou um several minutes in order to pursue his line of questions thank you ranking member Rasin so the majority's witnesses Mr Hilton Mr ring and Mr Green Hut are not firefighters but thank goodness we do have a firefighter
▶ 1:18:11on this panel today Mr Freo who Not only was a firefighter he was a fire chief and he in his testimony talks about that this is not a traditional Wildfire this is a wild land configeration and I'm going to show you in a little bit a video of what was happening but I just want to explain when you solve for the wrong problem not only do you not get the solution you can cause harm so Donal Trump has it in
▶ 1:18:42his mind that somehow there's a spigot in Northern California is going he's going to open a valve and dump water to Southern California here are the facts Southern California's reservoirs are at near record levels when this fire happened did matter because Donald Trump then ordered the Army Corps of Engineers to release over two billion gallons of water that almost Farmland if not for the local water districts that pushed back but guess what
▶ 1:19:12this water was saved for the farmers for the summer season when they needed the water and so the president wasted all this water that isn't even reaching Southern California is going to evaporate for a PR stunt so this was a harmful ludicrous action to solve for the wrong problem and so I want to show a video now of what was happening in the eaten fire uh that wiped out Altadena just watch this 15-second video
▶ 1:19:55that is not a Timber Harvest problem not a desalinization problem not a homeless person problem not a voter ID problem that is burning embers being blown by unprecedented Santa Ana winds that reach up to 100 milph and these burning embers that could be softball size would fly for miles and miles and miles and hit a structure and set that structure on fire and then that structure became the fuel for the fire that's what was happening
▶ 1:20:25the structures became the fuel for the fireing so Mr fra can you talk about first of all confirm that that is true and then explain in your testimony about strengthening sort of these structures with fire resistant materials uh concur with what you said initially repeat the last part of your question please uh in your test you talk about how to harden some of these structs with fire resistant materials which actually is something that might make sense not for the other random policies that the majority Witnesses are try and jam through on ID ological reasons
▶ 1:20:56I would point to two standing uh sets of work that we could start on yesterday the first is the Wildfire prepared home designation from the Insurance Institute for business and home safety that's a package of mitigations that has been proven to be effective on really two things uh it is preventative Embers getting into structures and then starting the structure itself on fire and it also helps with low duration low intensity fire in and around the structure while those are
▶ 1:21:26necessary they're insufficient when we get high concentrations of structure we need to get enough of those parcel level mitigations done to protect structure to structure spread if you just do one here one there you'll still lose that piece the second one comes out of uh the National Institute for standards technology technical note 20205 Hazard mitigation methodology excellent set of recommendations thank you and let me just say this it is parly out out rageous for witnesses to somehow blame
▶ 1:21:57Democrats you know who signed squa Ronald rean that's who signed SEL and Governor Nome pre-positioned assets before before this fire but those helicopters and airplanes could not fly over the Eden fire because of the 100 m hour winds that was a truth that is what happened go do your own research I yield back and I'll yield back to the chairman gentleman from Maryland yields back uh we now recognize
▶ 1:22:27gentleman from Texas Mr Gooden I yield my time to Mr talk I uh gentleman yields his time I thank the gentleman for for yielding uh first I want to assure Mr Lou that uh MERS Hilton and ring and green hun are three of the most insightful experts on California public policy that I've had the honor to work with during my 45 years of public service and I can't imagine a more distinguished panel than we have before us right now Mr Lou might also be surprised to learn that before the modern
▶ 1:22:58era California lost 4 and5 million Acres a year on average to catastrophic fire then in the 20th century we established Land Management agencies to do a little of the gardening ourselves instead of leaving it to Nature we auctioned off excess Timber to logging companies that paid us to remove the excess we leased public lands to cattle and sheep ranchers to suppress brush growth through grazing we did control burns to remove undergrowth we
▶ 1:23:28cut fire brakes to contain fires we used herbicides to keep brush from residential areas we put out fires before they could explode out of control and our for fire loss has declined from 4 and a half million Acres a year on average to just 250,000 Acres a year throughout the 20th century but we don't do those practices anymore our fire losses are now back up to an average of a million and a half acres in 2020 4 and a half million Acres uh Mr Green Hut what
▶ 1:23:59happened uh thanks Congressman uh it it just seems like an ideological shift we've moved uh we've moved towards uh land preservation at all costs and I I was just looking through U you know Thinking of U it doesn't preserve the land does it it's caused the incineration of the land exactly I mean the the idea is to uh preserve species I mean we pointed out before um that we um uh and some of it's growth control too pointed out that a a project was stopped for hardening
▶ 1:24:30the uh telephone poles um over concerns about an endangered weed uh it's it's the yeah M Mr ring is this a policy issue or is is is this an act everything's everything's an act of God but uh policy has a lot to do with what actually happens California's Forest since the uh uh enforc of environmental regulations became more aggressive are now overgrown I know you're very familiar with this
▶ 1:25:00the average tree density and this is verified by several studies from uh universities in California Merced Berkeley Davis elsewhere uh the tree density in the central Sierra is now about five times what's historically normal the latter fuels which would ordinarily that's the scrub and underbrush and young trees which would normally burn uh in uh controlled Burns or fire started by lightning strikes uh that when that doesn't happen anymore you have
▶ 1:25:30trees that are allegedly dying because of climate change but they're actually dying because you've got so many more trees competing with the same amount of nutrients you can actually tell the boundary between the private lands that are not subject to these laws and the public lands just by the condition of the forest on each side of that boundary line how clever of the climate to know exactly where the boundary lines are and only decimate the federal lands I off some good news and that is in in in 2016 we got a categorical exclusion from NEPA for Forest thinning projects in
▶ 1:26:00the Tahoe Basin management unit that simple change has taken the Environmental Studies from 4 and a half years down to just a few months uh it's uh taken the environmental reports from 800 Pages down to a few dozen it's increased the timber yield on the Tahoe Basin from 1 million board feed a year to 9 million board feed a year it's tripled the amount of uh treated aage that's what saved the town of South Lake Tahoe from the cdor fire unfortunately right across the boundary
▶ 1:26:31line uh was a town of Grizzly Flats that was not protected by this law it was completely incinerated by the same fire now we got those Provisions finally this year just a few weeks ago into the fixar forests act um it passed the house with 141 Democrats opposing it Mr Hilton I'll give you the final word what would you say to those Democrats I think on first of will say to to Mr Lou uh I think we' take his righteous indignation a little bit more seriously if he wasn't in
▶ 1:27:01uh nearly every single case the first to jump on one of the terrible tragedies that we see too often in our country of uh mass shooting to immediately call for the kinds of reforms that would stop it happen fires have nothing to do with mass shootings exactly and that's what we're here to do to stop people dying to stop people losing their homes to stop the Terrible and economic cost of these fires that's what we are here arguing for those kinds of changes that could be made
▶ 1:27:31and would stop the severity and impact of these kinds of fires gentlemen's time has expired uh we'll now go to uh gentleman from California Mr Korea thank you Mr chairman I also want to thank and welcome our Witnesses here today very important issue for California as well as the rest of the country I'm a live flong Californian I know the Santana winds they're hot dry strong unpredictable and unforgiving you
▶ 1:28:01just heard Mr Lou talk about 100 m hour winds this time this area it was The Perfect Storm hurricane strength winds along with pronged droughts in Southern California may just fighting these fires impossible led to Devastation loss of and terribly loss of life but natural disasters are plaguing every state floods
▶ 1:28:32hurricanes fires and insurance companies are leaving many states not just California in Texas led the nation when it came to natural disasters from 2004 2024 there were $ 179 billion doll plus natural disasters North Carolina had 82 Virginia had 80 Wisconsin had 49 whyoming
▶ 1:29:02had 31 Florida had 61 and California had 31 these disasters occur in every state and their frequency is increasing these disasters these perfect storms I would say occur more and more last May in Texas a storm with hurricane force winds knocked out power to over a million homes and businesses and in Florida
▶ 1:29:32and North Carolina hurricane Helen caused historic flooding and damage catastrophic wildiers have occurred Across the Nation including the German Road fire in Wisconsin and the Great Smoky Mountains wildfire in Tennessee and ures are fleeing these states in Florida and in Louisiana many insurers have either left or gone bankrupt and in
▶ 1:30:02Texas and North Carolina and many other states you're seeing tremendous rate increases in Texas which experienced $16 billion weather related events in 2023 five major insurers have ended or limited their coverage Florida Louisiana and North Carolina all have reported non-renewal rates greater than that in California in
▶ 1:30:322023 and Nationwide nonrenewal rates have jumped up 30% from 2018 to 2022 so we're trying to say is this is not a California crisis this is a crisis we California everybody likes the bashes we are the center of the universe that I'd say we're the center of
▶ 1:31:05biotech and we are the center of the entertainment industry and by the way we're the number five economy in the world I hope that doesn't bring us any tariffs we're also home to 70% of the venture capital in the US and and of course home to 40 million people let's be clear disaster Aid should never be preconditioned on
▶ 1:31:36agendas all of us here have voted for aid for other states when they needed it and we do learn from every disaster in California right now California has dedicated billions of dollars nearly doubling the amount we spent in 2019 to address the causes of forest fires and calire and others have worked on over a million acres to reduce these activities
▶ 1:32:06that would lead fires California we're doing our job it's just the situations have been impossible we're all Americans and I hope all of us remember that when it comes to disaster relief when one American suffers the rest of us need to show up and help that's what we do best Mr chair I'm out of time I yield gentleman yields back now recognize
▶ 1:32:37the gentleman from Wyoming he miss hangan thank you Mr chairman climate change and global warming are the scapegoats for the de Democrats and radical environmentalists to deflect attention from their failed policies and the destruction caused by their own actions in 2001 under Bill Clinton they ad the forest service adopted the roadless rule which was designed to deny access management and use to 58.5 million
▶ 1:33:07Acres of National Forest Service lands we warned at the time that this rule would cause catastrophic forest fires reduce the amount of water available for communities for farming and other uses and also result in catastrophic Pine uh Beetle outbreaks which is in fact exactly what has occurred every single one of the things that we described what happen has in fact happened and California has suffered maybe more
▶ 1:33:37than many of the states um recently the uh B the gentleman who ran the forest service under Joe Biden actually admitted in a hearing that the roadless rule was one of the primary roadblocks to proper and effective Forest range management so to say that the government is always trying to uh fix its last solution I don't think you need to look any further than the roadless rule California has essentially the same water infrastructure in place today
▶ 1:34:07with 40 million people that it had in the 1960s with 16 million people so when we talk about putting conditions on uh the kind of of relief that is going to be necessary to help to rebuild California it must include additional water infrastructure and fire G mitigation methods to avoid having these kinds of catastrophes happen ever again I have an article that I have just recently pulled up
▶ 1:34:37it stated that new some veto to Bill to enhance fire mitigation so he could grab the land for affordable housing this was a bill that was introduced in 2020 SB 182 it was authored by then state senator Hannah Beth Jackson a Democrat from Santa Barbara uh whose District had just suffered the Thomas fire this bill sought to increase local planning requirements and guidelines for permitting development in certain fire hazard severity zones
▶ 1:35:08uh but what happened to that bill it passed through both the Senate and the house it was actually a very good bill what happened Mr Nome vetoed it why did he veto it because it did not comport with his idea of of uh getting rid of single family homes and pushing people into multifam homes and in his letter veto he letter he actually stated Wildfire resilience must become a more consistent part of land use and development
▶ 1:35:40however whenever a politician uses the word however you know they're going in the opposite direction don't you however it must be done while meeting our housing needs and for him he wanted the money and the attention and the policy to focus on multif family homes not in protecting and hardening the resources available for the existing homes so call me a bit skeptical when I hear the folks on the other side jump up and down and scream and yell
▶ 1:36:10about the fact that they've been doing everything necessary to try to harden and try to address these catastrophes when the exact opposite is in fact true these catastrophes that we have seen over the last couple of months did not need to happen this is not about climate change this is not about global warming this is about bad land use decisions bad policies and restrictions of being able to actually
▶ 1:36:41make the the the kinds of changes that must be made Mr ring while you were being questioned earlier you have you mentioned uh the need for Esa reform and penalties for frivolous loss suits but I don't think that you had sufficient time to explain what you were referring to would you please explain what you were talking about well Steve uh talked about this as well and it applies to almost any kind of development or land use decision in
▶ 1:37:11California uh there are laws and it's not just squa it's the California air quality management uh the carb uh is a agency as long and the coastal Commission which came up but there's countless uh laws and regulations that provide grounds for lawsuits one of the things that might uh be a very meaningful reform to squa would be to uh takeway standing uh to thirdparty attorneys that truly have used squa as a
▶ 1:37:41business model and restrict squa lawsuits to uh District Attorneys and the state attorney general and by the way when squa was signed by Governor Reagan in 1970 uh it was a two-page document that could be uh filed within weeks and now it's an 800 page document Mr Ring the Gent time has expired thank you thank you for your test we're not going to go to Mr Korea for a uh for a UC Mr chairman i' like to submit
▶ 1:38:12some documents for the record yeah without objection uh first one Progressive Insurance becomes the latest insurer to flea Texas October 19th 20 24 second one 15 states facing imminent Insurance crisis October 4th 2024 Third One Insurance crisis that started in Florida in California is now spreading your state could be next July 2nd 2024 fourth
▶ 1:38:42one California isn't the only place where insurers are dropping homeowners January 18th 2025 fifth one letter from Congressman Costa to secretary hgarth dated February 1st 2025 concerning unplanned water releases and the sixth one a letter from members of the California delegation to the chairman Fitzgerald and ranking member nler dated February 5th 2025 supporting California's Insurance regulation thank you
▶ 1:39:12without objection uh the chair now recognizes the gentoman from Vermont Miss ballant thank you Mr chair the scale of This Disaster is really almost impossible to comprehend hand we've got 29 people who are dead we've got 16,000 structures that were destroyed so many Californians injured and while these devastating fires were raging on Republicans first reaction was to blame the wildfires on quote Dei so I'd like every witness to answer this simple
▶ 1:39:42question yes or no starting with Mr Green uh green Hut do you believe that people in Los Angeles died because the fire chief is a lesbian yes or no do you no okay Mr Ring do you believe people in Los Angeles died because the fire chief is a lesbian no great uh Mis I don't know because your name is now upside down Mr Hilton do you believe that people in Los Angeles died because the fire chief is a lesbian no Mr freal do you believe that the
▶ 1:40:12people of Los Angeles died because the fire chief is a lesbian no great so glad we established that but I want to remind everyone that while fires raged through through Main Street and Palisades Elon Musk said that Dei means people die in reference to the Los Angeles F Department's response and my house colleagues seem to agree this here is a tweet from representative Margie Taylor green posted on her official social media it says how's your Dei mayor of Los Angeles
▶ 1:40:43working out for you so it's become crystal clear that the phrase Dei is used in place of much more offensive terms to talk about people of color to talk about women queer people in this country it's sickening and they are literally saying this while people were dying so obviously this has nothing to do with the families who lost everything it does not do anything for the communities that were destroyed it's an absolutely wrong way to deal when you have a natural
▶ 1:41:13disaster and I know because the last two summers in Vermont we've had catastrophic flooding what people need in this moment is leadership Americans need us to get the resources that they need out to them immediately America does not need a president that is hellbent on dismantling our federal emergency management system or conditioning Aid to California to profit off of a community's Devastation all this talk of Dei is a complete and utter distraction from the fact that we
▶ 1:41:43need a plan an actual plan to help the people of California who lost everything at this point I'm going to yield back the balance of my time to the gentle lady from California Miss kamov thank you congresswoman um for yielding me your time um and thank you Mr chair for allowing me to uh be here you know I love California and I don't like people shading my State uh but sometimes funding disparities and a national election
▶ 1:42:13out of the fifth largest economy in the world California can Royal a person's feelings about our state as a whole but these frail emot should not debilitate a Leader's execution of their job serving all of the American people California fires and the consequences of overregulation is a gross tital misnomer Mr freva I have a few yes or no questions
▶ 1:42:44for you would you agree that the eaten fire happened in Altadena an unincorporated portion of Los Angeles County yes or no yes okay is it safe to say that LA county has more relaxed zoning ordinances and building regulations than the city of Los Angeles I do not have enough knowledge to give you a
▶ 1:43:14yes or no answer the answer is yes would you agree that permissive building codes the notion of permissive building codes are antithetical to overregulation sure the details in that question are it's a very simp answer yes or no permissive building codes does not equal overregulation I can't answer the question all right I'm going to answer that for
▶ 1:43:44you yes because at the end of day I would say and I don't know if you would agree that the entire framing of this hearing is actually based on a premise yes or no I believe we're approaching the discussion from a legacy standpoint we're looking in backwards in the discussions and the questions we need to be looking forwards we do and instead of blaming California for overregulation we
▶ 1:44:14should be talking about ways to help the thousands of people who lost their lives in these fires including some of my own family members that gentle ladies time has expired yields back now recognize the chairman of the committee Mr Jordan thank you uh Mr chairman Mr Hilton you said in your testimony the speed scale and destructiveness of the fires was the direct result of democrat policies I want to know why and I assume those policies are like why they stop logging in California why they stop clearing controlled Burns and other things that's been mentioned by all the
▶ 1:44:44experts and some of our colleagues why would they stop those things if they were working the answer is that as we were discussing earlier there's an ideology in play which is um extreme and it avoids the kind of Common Sense action that had been taken for years and that's what is at the heart of the fuel load that is the key concept here of course it's true that there are winds but it's not true to say that these Santa Ana winds were unprecedented they were high the highest in
▶ 1:45:1414 years but not unprecedented when we hear about Los Angeles of course I agree about the points that were made in relation to the fire chief but there is an important if we could use a different take one letter from the acronym Dei and just take the I and start a different word with it incompetence because you did see a total lack of coordination between the city firefighting force and the county and other leadership you saw um a massive delay in getting equipment to that first fire which could
▶ 1:45:44have made a big difference in containing it 44 minutes before anyone was there you had the warnings of this disaster on January the 2 of severe winds on January the 3D lifethreatening winds on January the 4th the mayor leaves the country you saw a total unprecedented set of incompetent responses in preparation the policy failures we've outlined them the brush clearance was stopped and so the fuel load was higher
▶ 1:46:15and that meant that spread this configuration spread so much quicker than it need have been a point that Mr M Nadler made about the reservoir we need to address this he talked about a small Reservoir no it was 117 million gallons it was built in the 1960s precisely for the purposes of dealing with wildfires that's why it was built it was offline for one year why was it offline for a year because it was in action to comply with Federal Regulation about the covers a small tear in
▶ 1:46:45the cover and they clo and they empty the reservoir for a year these are serious points I hear all the time we mustn't politicize mustn't make it political I agree with that but it is about policy it is about policy choices that were made that led up to the scale and severity and impact of that on insurance as well I hear this talk about Florida no it's a different reason you had a crisis in Florida with insurance it's about scam frivolous lawsuits which has been addressed by the governor in California one of the reasons
▶ 1:47:15that insurance cost are so high is because it cost four or five times as much to build the exact same floor plan for a building in California as it does in neighboring states why because of the building codes because of the SEL legislation exactly as my colleague was saying we need to end the private right of action under squa that would make a huge difference you can help with that we are all here to stop this kind of thing happening again and there are practical Common Sense things we can do which all of us have laid out
▶ 1:47:46I'm I'm going to yield my time to the gentleman from California to remain time uh thank you very much and uh in response to the gentlewoman uh from Vermont I think the issue here is that for example there was one firefighter turned whistleblower who said that La will only purchase from vendors that support Dei resulting in the fire department having to go with a vendor that will have to pay twice as much or the shipment may take twice as long uh because of that requirement and so I think the point is that a public safety organization should be singularly focused on public safety and this is not the place
▶ 1:48:16for ideology or social engineering uh but uh you know Mr Hilton one of the things that was appalling to many of us in the middle of the fires was that our governor Gavin Nome set up a political website that was devoted to promoting himself and defending his record and trying to deflect blame and a rapid response organization uh designed to attack people uh and uh call any criticism of his record misinformation so I do think it's important to set the record straight this is a story from uh Capital public radio from a few years ago
▶ 1:48:46and I was cap radio is that the local Fox news affiliate or something Mr I don't think it is yeah it's the NPR not known to be a right leaning conservative Outlet here's the headline NSA misled the public about Wildfire prevention efforts ahead of the worst Fire season on record an investigation from cap radio in NPR's California Newsroom found the Governor has misrepresented his accomplishments and even disinvested in Wildfire prevention the investigation found usum overstated by an astounding 690 per the number of
▶ 1:49:16Acres treated with fuel braks and prescribed Burns in the very forestry projects He said needed to be prioritized to protect the state's most vulnerable communities so if it's true that fuel management and fuel reduction projects are so unimportant as we're hearing from the other side today then why did the governor feel the need to lie about it I yield back gentleman yields back now recognize the gentleman from Illinois Mr Garcia thank you uh Mr chair and to all the witnesses here today now in my opinion uh the
▶ 1:49:47topic of this hearing is missing the point what we should be focusing on is one how to help now and two how to address the root causes of drought and intensifying fires to prevent this from happening again but instead we've seen officials in the Trump Administration are talking about Dei instead of how we're going to help people my colleague representative blint has already made that point they're talking about how to cut disaster Aid
▶ 1:50:17instead of letting fimat do its job which is literally to help people after disasters I'd like to hear from Mr freval our witness who's a retired Fire Chief and please a yes or no answer the the question won't be that difficult um yes or no is Dei making firefighters effective no thank you uh and that's so right so contrary to Elon Musk claims that the LA firefighters did not
▶ 1:50:48prioritize uh Dei over saving lives that is a lie and is it's a slap in the face to Dedicated professionals and volunteers across the country who undergo rigorous training and risk their lives to save others it was offensive when President Trump used Dei to blame air traffic controllers and it's offensive here too and despite Trump's lies about FEMA the agency continues to help disaster impacted communities during times of great
▶ 1:51:18need so again I'd like to ask a question to Mr fral Mr freea yes or no is climate change disasters from the fire perspective the one element of climate change I can speak to is vapor pressure deficit is that a yes that part is making it more severe yes thank you sir so as climate change worsens disasters across the country and as FEMA disaster declarations rise districts across the country
▶ 1:51:48represented members across the political Spectrum are at risk in fact in two Illinois counties from my district that it runs through Cook County and DuPage County we've had no fewer than five disasters declared since 2019 two of those disasters both flooding related hit my district real hard and many of my constituents were able to receive femal assistance for repairs and losses
▶ 1:52:19uh without further Ado Mr chair I would like to to yield my time to my friend from California Mr swell thank you uh Mr Garcia I've toured the Altadena area I visited the Palisades I've had disasters in my own District fire and flood and every person in those disasters and experiences told me the same thing they just want the government to help them
▶ 1:52:49they just want the government to help them that's what a woman told me when she stood on a pile of ashes in the Palisades and brought gloves and a large garbage bag and searched for any momento for her child and walked away with a tin bowl that her daughter uses in her makeb believe kitchen she's not worried about the red team or The Blue Team she's not worried about did Dei s cause this or not she just wants the government to help them my colleagues including Mr Isa we walked
▶ 1:53:20aladina last week together we heard the fire chief say these were 80 mph winds he said it would have taken every fire engine in California to stop the devastation that occurred in California so I just ask my colleagues let's work together on this let's be in the solutions business don't use Dei as an alibi because when the president Dei on an air disaster and blames Dei on
▶ 1:53:50a fire disaster what what that tells me is Dei to you stands for didn't even investigate that's what it means to fire victims in California as well so we're in the solutions business here and chief freev Vault I'd like for you to just tell us as we move forward as we look at code and Zoning what can we do to better protect against unseasonable winds uh in this new era that we're in I'd return back to my opening statements on the three concurrent integrated actions
▶ 1:54:21um I don't believe you're here for there essentially prioritize selective management of combustible fuels immediately adjacent to Wildland Urban interface communities retroactively Harden and existing structures in wooi communities through evidence-based mitigations with defensible space and require evidence-based mitigations to be included in part of the actual pricing of insurance rate setting thank you and thank you Mr Garcia yield back gentlemen yields back now go to uh congressman from California Mr Isa thank you
▶ 1:54:51Mr chairman and couldn't hello Mr Hilton I'm going to direct my questions toward you but I'm going to first thank my uh my friend and colleague Mr swell because we were there together we did Stand Together We heard the same Chiefs say the same thing problem is he mentioned something that absolutely is true those people the firefighters and the residents of Altadena could not have stopped that fire it
▶ 1:55:21was not going to going to happen with 80 mph sustained winds whether there was unlimited water or not it would have gone sideways it wouldn't have gone down if they dropped it we heard that together we also heard uh a question from one of our Mayors who asked looking up at the hill where we were told the fire began and they actually had camera footage of it beginning could you have stopped it no exactly as Mr swell wall said then they
▶ 1:55:51he asked well but if it had been cleared would this have happened and he said not so we have two truisms one is no amount of water no amount of uh fire uh equipment in the state in any way shap or form could have stopped a sustained 80 mph wind with an unlimited amount of fuel that had built up over 30 years never having been cleared under California law follow-up questions Mr Hilton mayor mayor
▶ 1:56:21of vist to ask the question well why wasn't it cleared he said we can't get the authority he said on the other side of the mountain on on more federal land some of it has been but we have not been able to get a controlled burn on that in 30 years and I'm going to ask you just one more followup uh give you one more followup uh question and then I'll explain it to amazingly we asked is this fire could it happen again he said oh after what happened there it couldn't
▶ 1:56:51happen again for a decade because it's been cleared yes so Mr Hilton is that what you're trying to achieve is that what you're bringing to us is the common sense question of why didn't we clear it and when are we going to clear similar hillsides so that people not suffer again exactly it is the best and most simple Common Sense preventative measure we can take here it is this is the California air resources board 2000 their new smoke management
▶ 1:57:22guidelines which prevented the clearance those Hills haven't been cleared for 25 years how's the smoke now I mean it's just so counterproductive I'm not saying it's ill-intentioned but the consequences have been deadly and devastating as I mentioned earlier the Santa Monica Mountain Conservancy stopping people saying you're going to be fin if you take responsible action to clear the brush as I said earlier it's our firefighters
▶ 1:57:53who end up having to clear the brush after the event that's what they're doing when they say we're containing the fire they're using bulldozers and axes to stop the perimeter from spreading why don't we do it before and then we can prevent this loss of life I agree with Mr swalwell we need Solutions I totally agree that's why my organization golden together we published a a document rescue reform rebuild with specific recommendations for how we can stop it happening again even on the question of firefighting
▶ 1:58:23we can learn from other countries who do this better using technology to spot fires much more early so they can be extinguished earlier so they don't spread and turn into these kinds of if I can uh call on my colleague Mr swell again last month I introduced HR 71 and oddly enough what you see behind me is the amount of pages of green tape wrapped bureaucracy we would eliminate if HR 731 passes yes that's 5T
▶ 1:58:54of single uh uh line printing that we would eliminate that's what we're trying to do and I would hope that my colleague would look at the bill join me in cutting through some of that red tape I I want to uh leave with one thing we have a lot to do together hopefully this hearing is going to cause people to realize that we can't blame just the water reservoir we can't blame uh not enough firemen
▶ 1:59:24or some or we certainly can't blame the homeowners we have to blame the fact that we created an in an event that was going to happen sooner or later it happened to happen there but Mr Hilton what you brought to us today that and all of you is the the reality that this will happen again the next time there's a spark and a sustained wind in California and fuel that has not been taken away way for more than 30 years so I'm hoping
▶ 1:59:55that we learned from this I'm hoping that my colleagues and I can work together on the points that we can agree on and I want to thank the witnesses for bringing up the fact that this was preventable the problem was your government thank you yield back gentleman yields back now recognize the gentl woman from California M LOF uh thank you Mr chairman I was also able to visit uh the scene of the fire last week with uh uh my colleague Mr
▶ 2:00:25I and swell uh it was just tragic I mean really the devastation is hard to comprehend and the people uh thousands and thousands of people who lost everything it's really uh tragic um we need to work together to make sure that we do our very best to prevent something like that from ever happening again but I do think it's important that we have the facts in front of us for example um
▶ 2:00:55under uh the state's leadership the number of cow fire Personnel nearly doubled from 2019 to the present um the state has now invested $2 billion in uh managing and reducing fuel load in forests and in fact the prescribed fire activity is more than doubled uh from 2021 to 2023 so I'd like to ask unanimous consent to put a fact sheet into the record Mr chairman without objection
▶ 2:01:25uh I I understand that the r street has connections to uh insure there've been representatives from insurance companies nothing illegal or wrong about that but what's being proposed is really um in in the insurance area something that is uh I don't think workable I mean for Florida tried it and didn't work um the premiums are 2 and a half times as high in Florida they are in California and uh but there is a problem with insurance
▶ 2:01:56in California and across the United States that we don't have an answer to and I would ask unanimous consent to put that information in the record Mr chairman without objection I would just uh like to know you know looking at the mountains in back of the fire uh in Altadena you know you talk about force that wasn't a forest um you know it was a chaparal it was scrub and one one of the things that happens in California is we go from you know the
▶ 2:02:26uh the rivers to the the drought in 2023 Los Angeles County got 200% of average rainfall I mean it just soaked the place and the vegetation took off the next year 2024 was the second driest year in history in LA county so that all that vegetation that got you know um spurred by the rain dried to a Tinder it was a Tinder
▶ 2:02:56Box one of the things that the uh fire chief told us when we visited last week is they want to do prescribed burns when it's wet it's just about ter Rin because they don't want in New Mexico they had a configuration because a prescribed burn took off it hasn't done that kind of rain and La except for this week from uh last April I mean there was no rain at all they couldn't do a prescribed burn in in those hillsides they're too steep
▶ 2:03:27to do um you know put bulldozers in that's impossible so I'm just wondering uh Mr preval I mean as a fire chief what do you do in a situation like that I mean I grew up with the with the mission that only you can prevent forest fires right Smokey the Bear told us that and we didn't realize when we did that that we were building up this fuel load that needed to I mean it was it's a Tinder Box it needs to be removed but it's going to
▶ 2:03:57take a while to sort through the accumulation of that fire what do you do in a situation like in Altadena where you have that chaparal it's dry as a Tinder and it's not wet you can't burn it what do you do Mr prolt this is why I keep coming back to we need to rethink the problem this is not a wildfire problem and we have Embers that will travel miles fire brakes won't accomplish what you're looking for uh we will have fires and ignitions
▶ 2:04:27in the conditions we have now long before any the policy discussions we're going to have the current ones we're having are going to have an effect we must as fast as possible deal with the ignitability of the structures in these fire dependent Landscapes if this is really about dropping losses of property and life in those settings if that's what we're setting out to do with laser focus we we have to mitigate those structures and do it at a density that will keep the
▶ 2:04:57FL structures from becoming the fuel type you've heard it from everybody those conditions you cannot stop the fire spread those conditions are going to get worse they're not going to Plateau so this discussion about fire brakes and you know and the idea about treading Acres you know millions of Acres we need to get there but to your point uh if we there P there called Pur prescribed Fires for a reason there's a prescription which means there are parameters that you do them in if you don't
▶ 2:05:27do them in the right way you do have things like the peso Fire or the hermit's Peak fire so we absolutely need to harden the structures first gentle gentlewoman's time has expired now recognize the gentleman from Washington Mr Brom Gardner well thank you Mr chair and to the members of the committee and to our distinguished panelists here uh I was able to visit uh the fires uh last week saw that immense destruction also have some some personal background here my father was 40 years a professor of Forestry
▶ 2:05:58my uncle was a smoke jumper my other Uncle laid out more Timber sales than anyone in Oregon history and I work two summers on fire science research teams and frankly we have way too much fuel load in our Western Forest given 100 Years of fire suppression I'd like to get to the solutions uh so I'm going to show show a short video from some folks in Northeast Washington that can go in and do the kind of Forest management that we need to reduce these fuel loads this is uh from vagen uh Timber what they do is they can take very
▶ 2:06:28small diameter trees and still get some value out of them and clean out the forest so this is what the solution would look like if we could play the video hello there my name is Dwayne ven with vogen Brothers Lumber in cville Washington we are surrounded by the cville national forest here we've been working on it for over 50 years we're doing a lot of fuels reduction and thinning we want to show that how that works here and how it may show in other areas and we really appreciate people that want to come
▶ 2:06:58up and see what we're doing how we're doing it and why it works and what needs to be done yet to make it work even better or on a larger scale we've got projects that are big up here called a toz uh we could handle more than double that so we could thin more Acres uh technology is the key here if you had to do it by hand it would take you a week to to do an acre with these machines they can do 20 acres a day which is economy of scale and
▶ 2:07:28you got to have that critical mass because we have so many acres that need to be treated even here but on all forest in the west so this fuel reduction work is very important to our forest but all the forest unfortunately uh quite the tragedy happened down in California with the uh La fires uh it's not necessary Forest like here but it has fuel reductions that are needed some Forest treatments that are needed we're showing you what we think will
▶ 2:07:58work in many many places so I will I will show and explain what this is all about so we take a thick forest we thin it out we try to remove 50% of all fuels if not more some forests have more than that some a little less but it takes incredible technology and here we're doing brush piling but we're doing it we're raking it up because you got a lot of fine fuels so we put it in a pile where it dries and later in
▶ 2:08:29the season you burn it and it burns very well but this machine we used to do it by hand and it took forever so now we have a brush rake on the front of that machine and the guys are really good at it sometimes it's so steep we have to tie a cable on the machine to hold it as it goes down the hill and rakes all this so he rakes coming and going and they do a a very good job the piles are mostly Woody debris and they burn fast they burn hot but you can see it protects that fuel brake from the rest
▶ 2:08:59of the forest and we're going around various places of the forest to build all these fuel brakes so again the raking the piling and the burning is very very critical and fortunately we have some value in this small material that it pays for the raking the piling and the burning and also the road maintenance so we think we're on to something that is going to lead us into future to treat the Acres that are available need treating treated to protect our communities make
▶ 2:09:29them healthy make the forest healthy gives us clean water habitat and clean air well thank you so this is the solution that we need to implement in many of our forests in the western us my question perhaps Mr Ring here would be uh what would it take for California to be able to implement these kind of Common Sense Forest policies uh to rebalance our forest for a healthy Forest well we'd have to bring back the timber industry we'd have to have a a way to bring back
▶ 2:09:59for example 130 uh Mills we're in California you need to be about within 60 mies of a forest to have an economical Mill and we're down to 30 MS so that's an example of something where there needs to be some revolving loan funds for example to help the timber industry get back up to speed we need to allow logging in national forests which is very hard 57% of California's Forest forests marketable Timbers in national forests we also have to recognize that private uh companies thin the forests uh far more
▶ 2:10:29efficiently I talked with firefighters as well Congressman Lou and the firefighters that I talked with said that calire typically has so many people on a job and does uh Forest Clearing with so many rules and command and control and so forth that they uh they are about well he he gave me an example one of the firefighters there was 28 people uh doing half the work that a three-man crew on an adjacent property was able to do from a private company thank you Mr ring
▶ 2:11:00uh I'm going to ask unanimous consent to enter into the record the statement from Namek without objection we now go to the gentleman from Georgia Mr Johnson for five minutes thank you Mr chairman and it's good to be with you all today thank you for your testimony on January 24th president Trump announced that he wanted to dismantle FEMA saying that quote I think we're going to recommend that FEMA go away now what FEMA does is helps people before
▶ 2:11:31during and after disasters um and they've uh got a track record of Effectiveness now uh Mr Hilton uh yes or no do you agree with President Trump that uh we should get rid of FEMA I don't think that question is relevant to this hearing frankly well we're talking about the overation wild sir resp hold on sir I'm the one that ask the questions now I'm responding by saying I don't think
▶ 2:12:01it's relevant to the you don't want to if you don't want to answer the question that's something different and I understand why you would I just think we should focus our time probably afraid to answer the question but let me ask you Mr Ring do you agree that uh FEMA should be eliminated reform not eliminate no and uh what about you uh Mr Green Hut I don't have any opinion on FEMA that's not why I'm here okay and um well I and I understand why you wouldn't want to opine on it either
▶ 2:12:31you're probably also I'm not afraid I just don't like to take opinions on things that I haven't not afraid of Crossing uh Donald Trump I'm I'm not here on a partisan basis I know that you not even a republican well you know you still don't want to cross swords with Donald Trump I understand a lot of our Witnesses feel the same way that you do and for good reason but now um let me ask you uh this question
▶ 2:13:01Mr freevolt um you know last week uh in his esteemed wisdom uh president Trump ordered the release of billions of gallons of water from uh two dams in the California Central Valley in a different Basin than uh Los Angeles sits and his reason was to uh uh enable
▶ 2:13:32uh Los Angeles to have more water to put out the fires now neither of those dams um would Supply water to Los Angeles isn't that correct that is my understanding and uh there's no way to move water from uh one Basin to the correct that is my understanding and so instead of releasing water that goes to fight
▶ 2:14:02the fires in Los Angeles from San Francisco uh those billions of gallons of water that President Trump ordered the Corp of Engineers to release uh just went to waste correct I do not know the final outcome of the water or the water system at that it went on into the ocean and the plan had been for that water uh to
▶ 2:14:32um enable farmers in the Central Valley to uh be able to water their crops uh during the um upcoming um um season of growth isn't that right I'm sorry restate the last so in other words the water that President Trump wasted putting it in the Pacific Ocean was meant for farmers in the Central Valley
▶ 2:15:03to use in this current growing season to water their correct would you like me to help you with this question sir no cuz I can give you the answers you're looking I'm not interested in talking you're not interested in actual answers since you are afraid to answer my questions I'm the to answer your asking the questions you're the one that should be answering them but you've already to do so but you're not letting I'm not asking you this one though Mr freea I'm talking to Mr frea
▶ 2:15:34uh he said he he's not focused on it I can help you with it if you'll only ask me if you would just be quiet that that would be helpful Mr freea I do not understand the operational benefit to the LA fires and the release of the water yeah um it was a ridiculous uh decision and Reckless uh and unhelpful uh Mr freefa you have 40 years of experience in the fire service the other Witnesses
▶ 2:16:04said that California's air quality regulations stopped the controlled Burns that would have prevented the fires but given Southern California's chaparal dominated ecosystems those kinds of control burns gentleman's time has expired would have have actually put them at greater risk of uncontrolled fires isn't that correct gentlemen time has expired uh so the chair is not going to afford me the same leeway that it has afforded other
▶ 2:16:34members of the panel to go over their time W witness can answer the question thank you sir I believe the question was did the air quality management rules impede the ability to do prescribe fire is that the yeah would those uh controlled Burns have actually put the community at greater risk of uncontrolled fires prescribed fires conducted outside of
▶ 2:17:04prescription can cause greater risk prescribed fires done within prescription can be a tremendous benefit all right gentleman's time has expired recognize the gentleman from Virginia Mr Klein thank you I want to ask uh Mr Green Hut California's home Insurance markets being held hostage by Insurance Commissioners and a judicial system that punishes insurers for attempting to price Insurance based on risk for example in 2014 State Farm requested a rate increase of 6.9% which was opposed by the insurance commissioner and an
▶ 2:17:34advocacy group initially State Farm was told that instead of a rate increase they were to retrospectively reduce rates by 7% and rebate their customers $100 million in excess premiums after years of litigation the courts ruled that State Farm didn't have to pay back the excessive premium but they were ordered to pay 2.2 million to the consumer group for their legal fees and my understanding is this is a a uh allowing outside interveners as it were to challenge proposed insurance rate increases and
▶ 2:18:04being paid in expenses for doing so is it reasonable to expect insurance companies to operate in an environment that required them to pay off their Challengers even when they went in court well imagine they this started in 2016 and it was resolved what a a year or two ago and they yeah so the whole system and it was designed by um by by the consumer organization and they get paid uh you know intervenor fees for supposedly standing up for consumers so so that whole
▶ 2:18:35process took several years and and they imagine going if you have a business and you propose a raise in rate increase and then uh the government says no you have to decrease rates by x amount and then you get launched into this long Court battle and even after you win the court battle which State Farm did and it was a pretty strong verdict in their favor uh they still had to pay these interveners around a couple million dollars and now under prop 103 there there are things that
▶ 2:19:05the state could do without going back to the initiative process to uh look more closely at how these interveners are paid and make sure that they contribute substantially to the process a lot of this is languages in prop 103 we need to enforce that language as it exists so there are things that could be done about that intervener process without uh going back to the ballot it it sounds like a once again California way of thinking but uh uh to that end let me yield the remainder of my time to my colleague from
▶ 2:19:35California Mr Kylie uh thank you very much you know one of the problems with making climate change the sole focus of these discussions is that it leads to a sense of fatalism like there's nothing we can do uh or it leads to measures that are absurdly misaligned to the nature of problem uh so for example in 2020 in in the midst of the worst Fire season of California history just unimaginable suffering uh the governor Gavin Nome came up with a grand solution which was to ban gas powerered cars this is actually what he did
▶ 2:20:05his reasoning was look the cars cause emissions which cause climate change which cause the fires therefore we just need to ban the cars and in fact uh followed up with a ban on trucks on trains even on lawn mowers and leaf blowers uh so Mr ring in your opinion what is the more effective strategy uh when it comes to fire prevention is it Banning cars and leaf blowers uh or is it reducing fuel through things like prescrib Burns and strategic free removal well the the answer to me is obvious
▶ 2:20:35uh you're not going to uh have any sort of short-term impact certainly uh or even long-term impact if the rest of the world doesn't do the same thing uh with respect to whatever the theories May hold with respect to greenhouse gas and climate change but what you can do is uh bring back uh logging uh bring back grazing uh and also mechanical thinning which would be effective in the chapero and on the Steep hillsides you can do mechanical thinning and you can do grazing there's equipment that that can do that nowadays
▶ 2:21:05and of course grazing they've been able to do that for Millennia so bringing back logging thinning grazing and prescribed Burns is the solution and a lot of that can be done commercially which would actually generate tax revenue and good jobs instead of costing hundreds of billions of dollars and by the way which is more effective at reducing or limiting emissions uh those sort of fire prevention measures or Banning certain consumer goods well I think Banning consumer goods has almost no impact on emissions uh compared
▶ 2:21:35to being able to properly manage our forests and wildlands and in fact wasn't there a study showing and Mr greenard I think you can speak to this that in the 2020 fires uh the emissions that were let out there was twice as much as any savings California had for what was it the previous 16 16 years so we're undermining any gains we're making in every every Wildfire that's right um I I'll just uh close uh by pointing to an example that was brought up earlier my district uh was hit by one of the most devastating fires in State history where hundreds of people lost their
▶ 2:22:05homes and Grizzly Flats and that fire might not have happened or been as severe as it had been if it had not been for delays through squa and NEPA uh with a fire forest management project that had dragged on for years and years and years uh on the other hand the fire was limited from going into South Tahoe because of the categorical exclusion that Mr mclin talk spoke of in the Christmas Valley so you had the fire that might not have started if we done our job properly but because we had this narrow form of relief at least we were able to stop it from spreading even further I think that that uh
▶ 2:22:35is the recipe for how we can reform these policies and restore some common sense going forward I yield back gentleman yields back that concludes today's hearing we thank our Witnesses for appearing before the committee today without objection all members will have five legislative days to submit additional written questions for the witness Witnesses or additional materials for the record without objection the hearing is
▶ 2:25:49e e