▶ 0:15:01Chair Johnson: This hearing will come to order. The title of this hearing is one
▶ 0:15:07Year After Disaster: Experts weigh in on the palisades fire. I want to thank all of the witnesses for taking the time to appear and prepare your testimony. I just want to start out with an article that I have asked to be entered into the record without objection, written by congressman tom mcclintock of california.
▶ 0:15:26Year After Disaster: In this letter, he states prior to, 1800, on average california had 4.5 million acres of land burned annually. 4.5 million acres. By the end of the 20th century, prior to the year 2000, by proper land management, they reduced that to on average about 250,000 acres.
▶ 0:15:53Year After Disaster: From 4.5 million to 250,000 because of good leadership, good governmental policies. Unfortunately, 2020, california software .3 million acres burned again. Between the years 2019 and 2023, averaged 1.5 million acres. Didn't have to happen. It's a failure of leadership.
▶ 0:16:18Year After Disaster: A lot of people have asked, why is psi, why are you investigating the palisades fire? The story really starts with senator scott, who is the governor of the state and had to deal with a number of naturals -- natural disasters, who was made aware of the after of the palisades fire. How things were not being built. As part of a trip, he went to australia, came back to the states, and into los angeles.
▶ 0:16:50Year After Disaster: He toured that, found out this is something that needs to be investigated. Let's face it, the federal government will be called upon to provide funding for disaster relief. It's very appropriate for the subcommittee to find a where prior dallas went, how was california, how they used that, but what haven't they done well? I think all of the testimony here is something that never should have gotten out of control. That these disasters should not have been as they actually were.
▶ 0:17:22Year After Disaster: Again, what I think this committee needs to do is investigate what happened before, what happened during, what happened after. I don't think we will cover all of those topics in testimony today, but I think the before and after -- the before and during we will cover quite well. The other reason senator scott asked to do this investigation under psi is we have subpoena authority. We will use it if we have to.
▶ 0:17:51Year After Disaster: We have gotten, according to staff, 234,000 pages of documents that we appreciate. Some of them not particularly relevant. We are used to getting document dumps here. We will start targeting our requests, and this is just to put everybody on notice. We intend to investigate this thoroughly. . If necessary, we will compel testimony, compel document production.
▶ 0:18:19Year After Disaster: This really is an investigation led by senator scott, he is the expert of this and I will turn it over to senator scott for a more formal opening remark.
▶ 0:18:26Sen. Scott: I want to thank you for being here. And share your stories. I want to thank senator johnson, chairman johnson, for doing this. This committee, and his role in this committee, he does have subpoena authority so he can make sure we get to the bottom of this. The victims deserve to know what happened.
▶ 0:18:52Sen. Scott: The way this -- what chairman johnson said, I came back from a trip last august and I went to see the palisades. I was shocked. There was block after block, there was nothing. Burnout homes. And there was nothing happening. There was absolutely nothing happening. We have hurricanes in florida. We have floods, we have tornadoes.
▶ 0:19:21Sen. Scott: And what we do there is keep everybody alive if we can, that is our first goal. Number two, as soon as the storm passes, we get going. How can we get things rebuilt? How can we get businesses reopen? Nothing. That was eight months after it happened. It shocked me. I came back and talked to chairman johnson. We traveled down to the pacific palisades in november to hear from victims.
▶ 0:19:51Sen. Scott: Do you did a hearing out there and heard from victims directly. They were just frustrated. No answers. One thing we do in florida after a hurricane, we do after action reports. Because -- I have four big hurricanes, I learned from everyone of them. I was better on my fourth that I was on my first. You learn what is important. This is not the first time this is happened to california.
▶ 0:20:21Sen. Scott: Where is the learning experience with this? What we do florida, which I'm sure the goal in california is, everybody has responsibility. The homeowner, the individual has response ability, local government, state government, federal government. What what you hear is there was not a lot of coordination. And what's worse is people died. It is one thing to lose your house, and that's horrible. But we lost people.
▶ 0:20:50Sen. Scott: And you heard the stories of how the evacuation happened, and you can't imagine -- we do evacuation's. I got 6 million people evacuated from hurricane irma. . We did orderly evacuations. Our police departments, fire departments, emergency management, everybody, we all worked together to get it done. The federal government has spent billions of dollars in california. For fire management and disaster mitigation.
▶ 0:21:20Sen. Scott: So, was there any value out of that? The question -- that is the question we have to ask. We have to understand what happened to the local fire departments. I can just tell you, I'm sure fire departments in california are like firefighters in florida, they bust there butt. I have a nephew who is a firefighter. They put their lives on the line every day. You don't know what is going to happen. You are walking into dangerous situations.
▶ 0:21:48Sen. Scott: Everything you hear, the firefighters did everything they were asked to do and more. But it seems like there was a lot of politics involved. When the fire broke out, the fire hydrants were dry. How in god's green earth did that happen? The reservoirs were empty. The mayor was missing in action. . The deputy mayor for public safety was on administrative leave.
▶ 0:22:10Sen. Scott: The firefighters that tried to extinguish a fire that later reignited consumed the palisades fire and faced interference from environment to scientists. I'm not an expert on firefighting, but where we get some of -- some wildfires in florida is in the everglades. The firefighters stay there. I was always shocked how long they stayed there to make sure they put so much water on this stuff. How could the fire be left smoldering?
▶ 0:22:40Sen. Scott: I don't think it was the firefighter's decision. Everybody has tried to shift the blame. That's what happens in politics. Our goal, for the benefit of the victims, let's find out what happened, why it happened and let's make sure it never happens again. If there needs to be accountability, there ought to be accountability. I want to thank chairman johnson for hosting this hearing. Otherwise we would not be able to get this done.
▶ 0:23:04Chair Johnson: Thank you, senator scott. Now I will turn to the ranking member for his opening statement.
▶ 0:23:10Sen. Blumenthal: Thank you, Mr. chairman. Thank you to the witnesses for being here today. There is no question that the palisades fire was a horrific calamity. Communities were wiped out, thousands of homes were burned to the ground. And 13 people lost their lives.
▶ 0:23:35Sen. Blumenthal: It was also far from the only natural disaster our country has faced in very recent years. In texas last summer, more than 135 people died in historic floods. Communities across the south are still struggling to recover from hurricane elaine, 2024.
▶ 0:23:56Sen. Blumenthal: My home state of connecticut, a severe rain storm in august 2024 unleashed deadly flash flooding, causing millions of dollars in damages and killing two people. And we have seen this weekend, the storm that occurred dumping snow and freezing rain across all of our states, I think represented here, except for maybe a few, florida.
▶ 0:24:29Sen. Blumenthal: And my concern is about the national response to these natural disasters. Not just in california, but in all of those states. Red and blue. Where cuts in fema funding are crippling the resilience and robustness of the federal response in those areas.
▶ 0:24:53Sen. Blumenthal: In april 2025, fema sought to cancel funding for building resilient infrastructure in communities, bric communities which help communities approval for natural disasters. Fema slashed the reimbursements it provides to fire departments, when they send vehicles to help fight fires outside their jurisdiction. The type of mutual aid operations that are essential to fighting fires.
▶ 0:25:22Sen. Blumenthal: Responsibility for these cuts goes to secretary noem, who has weakened the federal emergency management agency making it harder for americans to be prepared for and recover from these kind of natural disasters. I just want to make clear, the effect is on red and blue states alike.
▶ 0:25:46Sen. Blumenthal: Secretary noem's insistence on personally approving every contract worth $100,000 has delayed critical aid to survivors, including the deployment of search and rescue teams in the texas flooding. My home state of connecticut is waiting on a $5 million in hazardous mitigation funds and some $80 million in public assistance funds.
▶ 0:26:14Sen. Blumenthal: This repayment for expenses fema has already approved are stuck in secretary noem's endless queue. Survivors of hurricane helene in north carolina have received only $1 billion of the estimated $60 billion in damages the state experienced from the storm.
▶ 0:26:39Sen. Blumenthal: And fema has been withholding millions of dollars in mitigation funding from florida, louisiana, and texas. Fema has lost thousands of employees in the first half of the 2020 five. Its resources have been decimated.
▶ 0:27:00Sen. Blumenthal: And I believe that we should devote the same kind of scrutiny we are devoting to this fire and the recovery from it to fema, and the crippling effects of cuts and cancellations of contracts, and the review process that has been established by secretary noem.
▶ 0:27:23Sen. Blumenthal: Finally, I just want to say, I'm grateful to spencer hawkins for appearing here today to address how policy changes at fema over the past year have made the work of local emergency response offices, like the one he leads coming even harder and more peerless. Thank you, chairman johnson.
▶ 0:27:42Chair Johnson: Thank you, senator blumenthal. If you will all rise and raise your right hand. Do you swear the testimony you will give before the subcommittee will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you god? Please be seated. Our first witness is a fire chief, patrick butler. Chief butler is a fire chief of an harbormaster for the city of redondo beach and california.
▶ 0:28:11Chair Johnson: He has over 36 years of experience in the fire service including 32 years with the los angeles fire department where he retired as an assistant fire chief. He holds a doctorate from the university of southern california and a masters degree. Chief butler.
▶ 0:28:28Mr. Butler: Chair, ranking member, and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. My name is patrick butler. I spent 36 years in the fire service, including 32 years with los angeles fire department where I rose to the rank of assistant chief. I currently serve as a fire chief in harbormaster for the city ever donned a beach. I have lived in los angeles for more than 50 years, and raised my family here.
▶ 0:28:58Mr. Butler: This is my home. And I have a direct stake in the safety of the region. I appeared today and my personal, professional capacity to draw my experience managing large-scale wildfires to address los angeles's failure to properly plan for and execute effective suppression and incident management during the palisades fire. And I'm here to explain how this disaster departed from long-established wildfire doctrine.
▶ 0:29:27Mr. Butler: My central finding is unequivocal. The palisades fire was preventable. Over my career, I have commanded and operated during the largest and most complex wildfires in los angeles and southern california. I have served and commanded operations aviation, and interagency coordination rules during extreme wind driven wildland urban interface fires.
▶ 0:29:55Mr. Butler: This assessment is grounded in executive level command experience across more than 50 wildfire incidents, including numerous large-scale pre-deployments supported by operational records and after russian reports. In the early hours of january 8, 2025, I responded under mutual aid to the palisades fire. What I observed was not simply a difficult fire under extreme conditions.
▶ 0:30:22Mr. Butler: It was a protectable outcome for breakdown in leadership, preparedness, and command discipline. Firefighters were forced to improvise without adequate resources, unified command, or consistent safety oversight. This is not a failure of effort by firefighters. It was a failure of leadership above them. The fire that began on january 1, known as the lockman fire, was never fully extinguished.
▶ 0:30:50Mr. Butler: It became a holdover fire, a well-known and predictable hazard in the chaparral environment such as the pacific palisades. In my experience, 1 -- when holdover fires are not progressively extinguished, and are not continuously monitored, they rekindle. That is not rare. That is expected. When the forecasted life-threatening winds arrived january 7, the unmonitored fire predictably reignited and spread rapidly.
▶ 0:31:22Mr. Butler: What followed was not unforeseeable. It was the expected result of leaving a holdover fire unmanaged in a densely populated, high-risk community with limited evacuation routes. Los angeles possesses decades of wildfire experience. Establish redeployment doctrine and areas of specific operational plans for every major wildland urban interface corridor, including the pacific palisades.
▶ 0:31:50Mr. Butler: These plans were written, trained, exercised and proven effective. I was directly involved in their development and personally executed them during prior wind driven fires in the same communities. For more than a week before this fire, the national weather service issued repeated warnings of a life-threatening wind event.
▶ 0:32:12Mr. Butler: Fire weather intelligence clearly identified the pacific palisades and those still smoldering other fire within the projected impact area. This failure was not a lack of warning, it was a failure to act. In incidence I previously commanded forecasted this immediate escalation large-scale deployment, extended staffing, and full activation of emergency management systems.
▶ 0:32:41Mr. Butler: Forecasts were treated as operational decision points, not background information. That did not occur here. Once a fire becomes fully wind driven, outcomes are largely determined by what leaders did or failed to do before the wind arrived. That decision window existed, and it was missed. These failures extend beyond the fire department, during critical preparedness period, the mayor was out of the country despite knowledge of the forecasted life-threatening conditions.
▶ 0:33:13Mr. Butler: For continuity of leadership in the citywide coronation rests with the mayor and in this case, that responsibility was not met. After the fire, internal after action findings were altered, despite documented objections from the independent review team. I will follow-up in closing here. Based on my experience, the fire was not inevitable disaster. It was a preventable event shaped by decisions made before the wind arrived.
▶ 0:33:44Mr. Butler: When leaders act early on known risks, disasters are prevented. When leaders delay, differ, or minimize risk, disasters are manufactured. The palisades fire was not caused by the weather alone. It was caused by leadership decisions.
▶ 0:33:58Chair Johnson: Thank you, chief butler. Our next witness is a former battalion chief, rick crawford. Chief crawford has 34 years of experience with los angeles fire department, including services as battalion chief. He is a graduate of multiple advanced leadership and crisis management programs, including cornell university and harvard university. Chief crawford.
▶ 0:34:20Mr. Crawford: Good afternoon chairman, ranking member, and distinguished members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to testify. I am a retired battalion chief from the los angeles fire department where I served more than three decades in executive incident command roles. I served as an incident commander, deputy operations section t -- chief, and public information on complex, high-profile type one incidents.
▶ 0:34:53Mr. Crawford: I commanded one of the busiest 911 communication centers in the world where I directly handled pre-deployment and pre-positioning of resources. I responded to some of california's most catastrophic wildfires and my experience spans active shooter incidents, infrastructure failures, natural disasters and large-scale multi agency crisis operations. Beyond operations, I served as a chief negotiator author of the fire departments 23 automatic and mutual aid agreements. Strengthening response capabilities across local, state and federal partners. I'm a california level 1 fire investigator and fire and explosion this -- investigator.
▶ 0:35:26Mr. Crawford: I've let the interagency response ordering capability to improve how resources are requested and deployed during major incidents in the city of los angeles. I serve on the board of directors for a nash -- national crisis management academy. I rise leaders across the country on preparedness, response and governance. I serve as the national media commentator, providing live on air analysis. I appear before you today to discuss the palisades fire.
▶ 0:35:51Mr. Crawford: Not cynthia as a wildfire but as a case study in how known risk, protectable conditions and fragmented leadership and governance can convert into catastrophic impact. This fire was not unforeseeable. Southern california persists in a permanent state of wildfire risk with wind corridors, seasonal weather patterns that are well documented. What fell was not the tactics of strategy, courage or professionalism of firefighters and first responders. What failed was not the willingness of agencies to act.
▶ 0:36:22Mr. Crawford: What failed us the leadership and system's ability to convert known risk into coordinated action early enough to change outcomes. From decades in commanded coordination roles, I can state, wildfires are not disasters at ignition. They become disasters when warnings are not recognized -- are recognized but failed, and when preparedness exists on paper rather than in execution. The palisades fire exposed three systematic vulnerabilities.
▶ 0:36:51Mr. Crawford: First, risk recognition did not translate to risk ownership. While the fright was widely understood, fiscal -- and timely escalation. Predictive fire modeling tools were available but unused, and interagency coordination was not fully integrated into preincident decision-making. Allowing known risk to persist without decisive action. Second, governors did not move at the speed of conditions.
▶ 0:37:20Mr. Crawford: Wildfires escalated minutes and government systems often move in hours or days. That gap between emerging threat and unified decision-making can determine whether an incident remains manageable or catastrophic. Third, our systems remain overwhelmingly reactive. We continue to rely on extraordinary effort by responders to overcome governance gaps rather than design systems that reduce the likelihood of catastrophe before deployment begins. This pattern is not unique to the palisades. It reflects a broader national challenge. I use a simple framework.
▶ 0:37:52Mr. Crawford: Recognize, respond, resolve. Recognition requires early action to emerging threats. Stomp adaptable leadership. Resolve with the mission completion mindset, with accountability, institutional learning and structural reform, not some play rebuilding what existed before. This is why I have advocated for what is known as an all risk governance doctrine.
▶ 0:38:17Mr. Crawford: A 10 point plan, all risk governance establishes clear authority, predefined escalation triggers an unified executive accountability across all hazards before an incident occurs. It moves decision-making upstream, insurers warning signals trigger action and aligns fire kamala, utilities, emergency management and you -- and mutual aid under a governance framework. My testimony is not about assigning blame after the fact.
▶ 0:38:44Mr. Crawford: It is about asking the right questions and implementing actionable solutions so the next fire does not follow the same script. Disasters like the palisades are not environmental events simply, they are a stress test of leadership and institutional readiness. The american do not expect perfection but they expect foresight, coordination, and accountability that leads to safer communities. I appreciate the attention to this matter and look forward to your questions. Thank you.
▶ 0:39:11Chair Johnson: Thank you. Our final witness is Mr. spencer hawkins. Mr. hawkins is the director of county georgia, he has spent over 20 years as a professional merck -- emergency manager. He holds a masters degree in criminal justice. Mr. hawkins.
▶ 0:39:28Mr. Hawkins: Chairman johnson, ranking member blumenthal and members of the committee, thank you for this opportunity to testify today. My name is spencer hawkins, I'm the chair of the government affairs committee with the international association of emergency managers. An organization of more than 5000 emergency management professionals who serve communities of every size across this nation. I am also a local emergency manager serving macon bibb county, georgia.
▶ 0:39:59Mr. Hawkins: Emergency management is built on a long-standing partnership that is locally managed, state-supported, and federally funded. This system has worked for decades through hurricanes, wildfires, and floods. However, local and state emergency managers are deeply concerned the rapid shifts in federal policy and funding levels could destabilize the system. The federal emergency management agency, fema, provides the backbone of our national preparedness, response, and recovery efforts.
▶ 0:40:31Mr. Hawkins: Areas such as training, financial grants, response, recovery, mitigation operations, are key to our holistic, national emergency management posture. For decades, local emergency managers have led disaster response. States provide support for locals. And fema provides funding and resources.
▶ 0:40:55Mr. Hawkins: Training ensures stakeholders who are not emergency managers, including public works, law enforcement, health officials, and many more, can operate together under a unified system. Emergency management preparedness grants provide vision essential funding to emergency management programs. Programs like the emergency management performance grant that are not handouts. They require a dollar for dollar nonfederal match, meaning local governments are true partners alongside the federal government.
▶ 0:41:26Mr. Hawkins: In times of crisis, fema's response elements are indispensable. From coordinating incident management assistance teams and urban search and rescue, to supporting the emergency management assistance compact. Fema ensures that states can help one another when local resources are overwhelmed.
▶ 0:41:45Mr. Hawkins: Fema also manages the integrated public alert and warning system, a mission that depends on a highly voluntary partnership with private providers making fema's coordinating role is essential to life safety. The recovery phase is where the federal role is most visible. During hurricane helene, local governments in the southeast did everything they could, but no city or county can shoulder millions of dollars in damage alone.
▶ 0:42:13Mr. Hawkins: Fema's assistance for the individual assistance and public assistance process was not just helpful, it was the only path to every housing and stabilizing local economies. However, as an example of the current unstable recovery environment, communities devastated by hurricane helene are still waiting on recovery funds from fema. Typically, these dollars would have already been in place to facilitate the rebuilding process. To break the cycle of disasters, we rely on mitigation and risk reduction funding.
▶ 0:42:44Mr. Hawkins: This includes everything from major infrastructure projects, to small but critical efforts like vegetation management, to reduce wildfire risk. Despite these successes and decades of experience working with fema, emergency managers across the nation feel the ground moving under their feet without enough warning. Uncertainty makes it harder to plan budgets, hire staff, and prepare residents for the next worst day scenario. This is not an ideological or partisan issue.
▶ 0:43:13Mr. Hawkins: A shift federal disaster support affects california residents, as well as west virginia residents equally. Disasters do not differentiate by state or political affiliation, and neither do we. Iaea urges congress to safeguard the core capabilities of fema -- that fema provides to ensure any reforms to the federal role are developed in partnership with emergency managers, specifically
▶ 0:43:44Mr. Hawkins: Local emergency managers, and professional organizations like iaem. And that they are included in the collaborative process to shape the future of fema and emergency management funding with phased timelines and meaningful considerations on the reforms. Immunities cannot turn on a dime. But with their communications and sustained partnerships, we can meet the challenges ahead. Thank you and I look forward to your questions.
▶ 0:44:09Chair Johnson: Thank you, Mr. hawkins. Based on Mr. hawkins testimony, you kind of think the federal government is the primary one responsible for preventing disasters and making sure everything goes well afterwards. I think he has it completely backwards. I think the hirer is local -- hierarchy is local response, supported by the state, in the federal government comes in, it does provide funding after the fact.
▶ 0:44:39Chair Johnson: One of the reasons we are holding these hearings as we will be asked to spend billions that never should have been required to be spent. Had the state and local officials done their job. I started out with tom mcclintock's op-ed where he talks about california, prior to 1800s, on average, burning 4.5 million acres. And we reduced that to 250 thousand acres by the year 2000.
▶ 0:45:09Chair Johnson: Now it is back up there almost as high as it was prior to the 1800s. I want to focus on the before and during. I won't talk a lot about the after, that is probably for a different hearing. Both chiefs, I don't think in your written testimony, you addressed the fact that the reservoirs were not filled. That the brush and the combustibles weren't managed, weren't taken care of.
▶ 0:45:38Chair Johnson: We will start with you, chief butler. What do you know about what happened with the reservoirs and why you did not have proper water resources? Is your mic on?
▶ 0:45:54Mr. Butler: Excellent question. In my experience being an incident commander, any time there is a water infrastructure issue, the first and foremost thing I do is ensure the systems I will be in charge of our working properly. That involves, engaged with all of the department agencies involved in the city, I have had incidents where water mains were going to be shut off.
▶ 0:46:19Mr. Butler: And my expectation was to city government is if you are going to shut it off, you shall have 15 water trucks standing by. And that shut off will not last 36 hours. The infrastructure will amplify the issues.
▶ 0:46:39Chair Johnson: Let's talk specifically. In palisades, there were two reservoirs, they were both empty, correct? For how long?
▶ 0:46:49Mr. Butler: The reservoir was empty for about 11 months.
▶ 0:46:50Chair Johnson: Is that the one they were preparing to cover?
▶ 0:46:53Mr. Butler: The cover was being prepared and it was one of the primary helicopter filling reservoirs we use in the city.
▶ 0:47:00Chair Johnson: And another reservoir was not available that was empty.
▶ 0:47:04Mr. Butler: I was not familiar, I think that is chautauqua. To your point, infrastructure like that should have water in it and ready to go.
▶ 0:47:12Chair Johnson: Chief crawford, do you have anything to add?
▶ 0:47:16Mr. Crawford: Thank you. Part of this is what I call a trigger point. Aziz we get that predictive, particularly dangerous situation, this should require triggered conversations of all of the agencies combined. We have fire kamala, in the department of water and power.
▶ 0:47:38Mr. Crawford: If those conversations that are the things that need to take place, if you have a reservoir sitting for 11 months, it gets discussed prior to the water before a fire starts to happen. Two chief butler's point, this allows for a potential plan to be able to have water tenders and those things on standby. The bigger question I would like to bring up here is, why are those trigger points not being discussed at the top of the leadership of the l afd and across the spectrum of all of the other agencies? That is where this lies.
▶ 0:48:09Mr. Crawford: If you have a reservoir sitting for 11 months, this cannot be missed anymore. The solution that I see in this --
▶ 0:48:15Chair Johnson: Who missed it?
▶ 0:48:17Mr. Crawford: It was missed on multiple fronts. It was missed by the department of water and sales by not being able to state they had reservoirs empty. It was missed by the fire department by not asking the questions. It was missed by the southern california edison. All of the utility companies should be coming together and having this conversation.
▶ 0:48:40Chair Johnson: Has anybody been held accountable? Has names been named? It was your response ability to make sure that reservoir was filled up, your responsibility to make sure the lockman fire was pulled out. Who pulled the fire crews from the lockman fire? It was half the crews themselves are they were ordered away from that fire.
▶ 0:48:59Mr. Crawford: To finish that portion of the question, yes, they were pulled away from the fire.
▶ 0:49:05Chair Johnson: And who pulled them away?
▶ 0:49:12Mr. Crawford: It was the patent -- the battalion chief in charge, mario garcia. Chief garcia, the question I would like to bring up is for a battalion chief with his experience level to say to roll up the hose and leave, the bigger question is this his leadership failure that goes to the top. Not just at chief garcia's feet. If I'm with chief butler and he is my superior, I am letting him know what my actions are.
▶ 0:49:37Chair Johnson: Do we know where the buck stops?
▶ 0:49:41Mr. Crawford: We do not.
▶ 0:49:42Chair Johnson: Why don't we know?
▶ 0:49:44Mr. Crawford: We have to ask those right questions. Who was the superior offer on chief garcia, and the superior offer above that. That is where the buck stops.
▶ 0:49:56Chair Johnson: Has anybody been fired? Has anybody been held accountable? Has anybody resigned from this?
▶ 0:50:03Mr. Crawford: No.
▶ 0:50:04Mr. Butler: To your point, I think that is one of my closing pieces. You can't have a disaster, the most costliest in the history of the world of a scale like this, and not anybody get fired. My expectation is when I take command, that I will be relieved of command if something were to go wrong.
▶ 0:50:20Chair Johnson: After action reports were Dr.. Do we know who doctored them? Do we know who directed the fact that they pulled out information that was not particularly flattering for political leaders?
▶ 0:50:36Mr. Butler: The record shows the department staff internally had created their own preferred narrative. I believe a committee like this can go forward and say, we want to know who specifically --
▶ 0:50:50Chair Johnson: The reasons I'm asking these questions is not necessarily you have the answers. These are the questions we will be asking and demanding answers to. Because I think the people of california, the palisades, and I want to talk about the eaton fire next, but I'm running out of time. They need to understand this. I think you both made important points in your testimony. If you don't have an honest after action report, the failures will continue. There will be more disasters and lives lost and property damage.
▶ 0:51:20Chair Johnson: These are the kind of questions this investigation has to get to the bottom of. We need to find out who made these disastrous decisions, or lack of decisions. Who failed california by the lack of action or overt actions? I will turn it over to the ranking member.
▶ 0:51:34Sen. Blumenthal: Thanks, senator johnson. Mr. hawkins, thank you for being here. I think in your testimony, you referred to emergency response as locally managed, state-supported, and federally funded. In essence, a three legged stool.
▶ 0:52:02Sen. Blumenthal: You didn't intend to minimize the importance of local involvement, did you?
▶ 0:52:05Mr. Hawkins: No, senator. As a local emergency manager, absolutely not. I've been doing this for 25 years. We have a saying, disasters start and end locally. We live that paradigm that it is locally managed, locally led, supported by the states, and federally funded.
▶ 0:52:28Sen. Blumenthal: When federal funding is reduced, what's the impact on local capacity to foresee and prevent as well as recover from natural disasters like palisades?
▶ 0:52:44Mr. Hawkins: Local capacity for emergency management is already at an extremely low level. Our national labs did a study that highlighted this. When you start reducing funding for communities that are already at risk, especially our small and rural communities, that -- those federal funds, federal grants, could be the lifeblood that enhances and operates their local emergency management offices.
▶ 0:53:13Mr. Hawkins: This shift in funding or the unknown of funding can be very detrimental to how we as local emergency managers protect our communities and keep our neighbors safe.
▶ 0:53:22Sen. Blumenthal: Just as one example, federal reimbursement for vehicles used in fighting wildfires is important. Is it not, to local authorities?
▶ 0:53:33Mr. Hawkins: Yes. Any federal funding that locals can utilize to help enhance our emergency management operations are critical to what we do.
▶ 0:53:43Sen. Blumenthal: Mr. chairman, I want to note that there have been delays, as I said in my opening statement, to local governments and authorities all across the country, including florida and louisiana, connecticut, and yes, in california, despite numerous requests from california's congressional delegation.
▶ 0:54:10Sen. Blumenthal: The administration has yet to transmit to congress the state's request for $33 billion in a supplemental appropriation for wildlife recovery. I share your concern, senator johnson, about the victims of that wildfire. I invite you to join me in asking the trump administration to release that additional federal aid. You can respond later or now.
▶ 0:54:41Sen. Blumenthal: Thank you. Mr. hawkins, would you say your views on the importance of this federal funding are shared by your colleagues in the international association of emergency managers?
▶ 0:54:54Mr. Hawkins: Yes, it is. As the chair of the government affairs committee, we meet once a month and we discussed legislation and what is going on at the federal level. We have representation across the country, small cities, small towns, across the country. And federal funding can and is extremely important to what we do, and helps take some of the burden off of our local governments.
▶ 0:55:24Mr. Hawkins: Yes, that sentiment is shared by our community members.
▶ 0:55:27Sen. Blumenthal: Let me ask chief butler and Mr. crawford, would you agree that those federal funds, in particular, fema funds, are important to preparing for and preventing the effects of natural disasters and recovering from them?
▶ 0:55:45Mr. Butler: For me, disasters start at the local level. That has been my experience throughout my career. And it moves up to the state from there. After we are in a mode where we can no longer manage something at the local level, then federal support comes in, I personally have been involved with putting forward declarations. You are not always guaranteed to get the funding.
▶ 0:56:12Mr. Butler: So when I run an incident, I don't make it with the assumption that I'm going to get reimbursed. But it definitely helps and it definitely helps with some of the long-term work we do on the fire. But disasters are local and it starts at that level.
▶ 0:56:31Sen. Blumenthal: I appreciate that. It definitely helps.
▶ 0:56:32Mr. Crawford: I agree with both points. To piggyback on chief butler's point, it does start at the local level. In my experience, we have a raging fire that is going on and there is a determination that has to be made within a certain time to make the request of the fire management assisted grant that has to go out. In my experience, the one that is starting to facilitate that, knowing that may be the possibility that has to be worked out later.
▶ 0:57:00Mr. Crawford: However, the thing of it is that this is bigger than just california. This is something that happens across the country. That's why I mention to the all risk government doctrine. This puts together the type of framework that handles things prior to the incident, during the incident and post incident, in a disaster recovery authority type of framework.
▶ 0:57:21Mr. Crawford: I just think we should -- or feel that we should be looking at this from a broader perspective using california as a very much case study, because we do have all different types of incidents that occur there do not occur in different sections of the country. They do start locally and they do end locally.
▶ 0:57:40Sen. Blumenthal: That is exactly the point I'm making. It is much bigger than california. These delays have been disastrous. $33 billion for california, billions in florida, we -- louisiana, texas, connecticut, all across the country. The cuts and cancellations. New at the local level have to plan. You can't be guaranteed of reimbursements. But they are critical for communities across the country. Let me ask you, Mr.
▶ 0:58:08Sen. Blumenthal: Hawkins, in the time I have left, laying off a cadre of on-call response recovery staff at fema, these drastic cuts, have you seen the effects?
▶ 0:58:23Mr. Hawkins: Not personally in my community. But I do know that post-disaster, a lot of our communities who have local emergency managers and local emergency management officers -- offices whose staffing numbers are very small below on that on-call fema core staff to come in and support the local emergency managers in the immediate recovery, and immediate response and recovery operations.
▶ 0:58:51Sen. Blumenthal: Thank you.
▶ 0:58:52Chair Johnson: Before I turn it over to senator scott, let's make something clear. The reason californians are requesting $33 billion of after action support is because of the utter incompetence and failure of los angeles and california's elected officials paired let's be clear about that. $33 billion should not be needed. Mr. hawkins, I want to ask you a question. Seems like it is all about federal funding.
▶ 0:59:20Chair Johnson: What percent of -- let's say los angeles's fire department budget comes from local government or state government. What percent of the total fire department budget?
▶ 0:59:32Mr. Hawkins: I don't have visibility on a specific government --
▶ 0:59:36Chair Johnson: Would you have any idea of it on the police department? ? Do you know what percent is paid for by state and local funds versus the federal government?
▶ 0:59:47Mr. Hawkins: That is going to vary community to community across the nation.
▶ 0:59:49Chair Johnson: Senator scott, because you are a former governor. Isn't it true that most local fire departments and local police departments are funded by local resources and state resources?
▶ 1:00:00Sen. Scott: State and local.
▶ 1:00:02Chair Johnson: A huge percentage.
▶ 1:00:06Sen. Scott: You are not relying on the federal government. It is outside your control.
▶ 1:00:09Sen. Blumenthal: If I can just add a point.
▶ 1:00:10Chair Johnson: Not right now. $39 trillion in debt. The federal government is bankrupt. Most of these funds are provided by local and state, as is the hierarchy of emergency management. It starts at local and state. Fema does finance after these disasters occur. Some are unpreventable. Some, like the palisades fire, is entirely preventable.
▶ 1:00:36Chair Johnson: American taxpayers -- I'm supposed to join in for a request of $33 billion because cattle -- california leadership utterly failed. I'm sorry, we have to start questioning this when we are $39 trillion in debt. I will turn it over to senator scott.
▶ 1:01:01Sen. Scott: Chief butler, I understand one of the major obstacles firefighters face when responding to the palisades fire was simply getting there. The palisades neighborhood is on the outskirts of l.a. And has a lot of wind you wrote. -- winding roads. There is no sort of, they explained to me, no evacuation plan that anybody seemed to follow. Some questioned when I was out there, they said, if the fire department knew there was a fire risk in the area, why didn't they pre-deploy trucks with water?
▶ 1:01:31Sen. Scott: Especially knowing the reservoirs were and do, why didn't they pre-deploy trucks and firefighters? Can you tell us what happened?
▶ 1:01:35Mr. Butler: Specifically, what I would like to focus on is what they did before. Pre-deployment, and tell folks, it's not a slogan. Get the resources in their quick and early. Because you have forecasted winds events.
▶ 1:01:54Mr. Butler: What I would do in my command is if I knew this was going to happen, we would put resources into those communities first, federal protection, limits your point of the response time and allows us to get a jump on any fire. But all of these plans are actually well written and documented and trained. Every promotional exam I have taken in this department, you need to know the palisades plan, the evacuation plans.
▶ 1:02:25Mr. Butler: It wasn't that they did not exist, it's that they were not executed upon. Once the fire got started, that became completely unmanageable, because wind driven fires at that point, it's unrealistic you will stop it. Pre-deployment is the reason we do this. The weather forecasting is a reason we do this. . I have done it well over 30 times in my career. It's not something that I invented. It's something that is institutionalized in the fire department.
▶ 1:02:55Sen. Scott: So why didn't they pre-deploy?
▶ 1:02:57Mr. Butler: That would be a leadership decision.
▶ 1:03:00Sen. Scott: Let's go through it. You have the chief of the l.a. Fire department, who is right above the chief?
▶ 1:03:08Mr. Butler: The mayor.
▶ 1:03:08Sen. Scott: The leadership is just one person.
▶ 1:03:15Mr. Butler: It is the hierarchy of the department that has command staff and each of those individuals, including when I was part of it, has an absolute responsibility to ensure although systems are in place. For a 10 day weather event to be brought upon them with all of that knowledge, not to take action, I think it is important to find out exactly what happened, who didn't make the decision, and who put the public at risk.
▶ 1:03:38Sen. Scott: So, somebody at the fire department or the mayor's office made the decision.
▶ 1:03:45Mr. Butler: Absolutely.
▶ 1:03:47Sen. Scott: That would be in the after action report, right? There was a specifically what happened.
▶ 1:03:53Mr. Butler: That should absolutely be in it. After action reports in california, they are governed by state law. They have to have all of this information in them.
▶ 1:04:01Sen. Scott: Have you read it?
▶ 1:04:03Mr. Butler: I have read it. They have no reference to it. I read some of the drafts. But I think by the department's own admission, it was watered down to protect reputations, in their own words, they were quoted as saying.
▶ 1:04:19Sen. Scott: Chief crawford, you have read the after action reports. Did they say how the decisions were made?
▶ 1:04:29Mr. Crawford: I have read the after action report and it does not state those decisions.
▶ 1:04:31Sen. Scott: Does that surprise you?
▶ 1:04:34Mr. Crawford: Yeah, it doesn't surprise me, no, it does not appear the reason being, there is typically after action reviews in previous incidents or things that have been put out. There has always been a discussion of how much is for public and how much is for private. I'm going to say I'm not surprised that happened. One other point I would like to make to piggyback on chief butler when it comes to resources and pre-positioning, there was plenty of opportunities to get this right.
▶ 1:05:06Mr. Crawford: They even have technology tools. There is a wildfire threat intelligence integration center in california, and they have a predictive services tool that shows seasonal weather patterns, where the heaviest winds are going to be. None of those were used. None of that was talked about in the after action report. One other thing is a predictive fire modeling with wifire. It is a tool that the department used in 2017. . I helped instrument it with uc san diego.
▶ 1:05:35Mr. Crawford: It is the -- it is 95% to 98% accurate. That gives you a footprint of how many homes and what the population of the fire in its path, using the nearest weather station, that data, is used to create the footprint. It is very accurate. That is an important tool to understand who is at risk and where the fire will be with impact times. That was not used nor was that in the after action review.
▶ 1:06:02Mr. Crawford: The question is, how did you arrive at the decision not to staff properly, and why did you not pre-deploy? That was not inside of the after action review and I think it is a glaring question.
▶ 1:06:14Sen. Scott: Would not be a decision by somebody in the mayor's office or in the fire department?
▶ 1:06:19Mr. Crawford: It would be at the fire department. You have the fire chief, below the fire chief is what is known as the command staff comprised of nine deputy chief officers. Than there is a flow of assistant chiefs. The total chiefs on the l afd is 96 to 99 chief officers. They typically have a conference call and they get on with this and there are people on the call, but the decision typically is made to pre-deploy and not pre-deploy.
▶ 1:06:49Mr. Crawford: Staffing is different than pre-deployment. Pre-deployment is location where you are putting resources. Staffing is how many people you will have on duty. Those are two critical decisions that needed to be determined during these calls. The actions to not arise to the level of particularly dangerous situations. That is the type of preincident decision-making that highlighted why we are at a 33 billion-dollar request.
▶ 1:07:13Sen. Scott: When we had a hurricane, we had twice a day maybe, every emergency manager in the state on with the state emergency management team. Did they do daily briefings for the fire department before the fire?
▶ 1:07:35Mr. Butler: I can speak to that, senator. In redondo beach, there was at least half a dozen conference calls. Because our city was worried about a gale force wind in our harbor. I personally sat on three or four of those calls. My staff did as well. Because those calls started on december 27, and I look at those risks for my city to begin planning what it might do in our city.
▶ 1:08:07Mr. Butler: Those conference calls exist. I submitted records, probably over 422 pages, more than folks are interested in. But I have all of the conference call notes. This is part of what we do.
▶ 1:08:20Sen. Scott: In florida, the way they do it is you would have -- like miami, has an emergency mention team. They would all coordinate on their own. Everybody would coordinate through the state. Did you do the same thing in l.a. County?
▶ 1:08:39Mr. Butler: We use a similar model where the city agencies each have their own risk and they have county emergency operations, and through that system, the national weather service feeds information. So they are not feeding into 50 different agencies. Then we have routine calls, sometimes as many as three times a day, updates on the weather and forecasting. That is how the system works.
▶ 1:09:07Mr. Butler: That is why on this event, starting 10 days out, these discussions were going on.
▶ 1:09:15Sen. Scott: But nobody acted?
▶ 1:09:17Mr. Butler: In the city of los angeles, from my observation, what I saw, what I witnessed, not an -- not in a meaningful level.
▶ 1:09:27Chair Johnson: Senator moreno.
▶ 1:09:31Sen. Moreno: Thank you for another good hearing. Mr. crawford, some very quick questions. Did the l.a. Fire department failed to complete a thorough mop above the fire which led to the rekindling of un-extinguisher roots and causing the palisades fire?
▶ 1:09:45Mr. Crawford: Yes, that was one of the major factors. When the lockman fire occurred on the early morning of january 1, and the fire was extinguished. And as they started to scale down, typically --
▶ 1:10:00Sen. Moreno: They didn't do a full model? And that is standard practice, you want to make sure you do that? That is not new, that is best practices.
▶ 1:10:10Mr. Crawford: There should be a full mockup of the incident.
▶ 1:10:15Sen. Moreno: The key point is they did not do it.
▶ 1:10:16Mr. Crawford: That's correct.
▶ 1:10:18Sen. Moreno: You want to add anything?
▶ 1:10:20Mr. Butler: I do. I have done several holdover fires. The operation is this, especially with forecasted winds. You have a fire indents vegetation, my expectation is nobody is going to go home for at least five days. Water underground, digging out the roots and all of that.
▶ 1:10:38Sen. Moreno: They failed to follow basic processes that are pretty standard across the industry, is that for?
▶ 1:10:47Mr. Butler: Absolutely.
▶ 1:10:50Sen. Moreno: Did the state parks ignore signs of un-extinguished. Smoke, embers after the l.a. Fire department left the fire site, and failed to monitor proactively?
▶ 1:11:00Mr. Crawford: The responsibility is not what -- not with the state parks. The response ability for extinguishment lies with the los angeles fire department. It lies within the mountainous zone of the santa monica mountains. I have written the agreement between state parks that who is responsible for monitoring that. In my opinion, even if the state officer shows up and I am a chief officer on scene, I'm responsible for that fire if it re-ignites.
▶ 1:11:30Mr. Crawford: I will continue to maintain my people there and include my superiors as far to the top.
▶ 1:11:32Sen. Moreno: To be clear, they did not do that.
▶ 1:11:35Mr. Crawford: Correct.
▶ 1:11:40Sen. Moreno: Did the mayor approve overtime for the firefighters to pre-deploy to palisades?
▶ 1:11:42Mr. Crawford: That was one of the fiscal concerns. In my opinion, they never reached the mayor's office of the request. They used their own particular budget line item for overtime. So trying to have those fiscal savings is one reason they did not pre-deploy.
▶ 1:11:58Sen. Moreno: The money that they saved on overtime cost how much millions of dollars? Now they are coming here to the federal government to ask us to bail them out for their own incompetence. I guess I would ask any three of you, and even if he is willing, ask the former governor of florida the same question. How much federal money is required to fight local incompetence? What is the dollar value?
▶ 1:12:32Sen. Moreno: If you have completely incompetent state leaders, how much money does it take?
▶ 1:12:36Mr. Crawford: Let me add to the record how little it would have cost to actually hire the right amount of stuffing. The lafd has 1000 firefighters across three different shifts. All it would have taken is 126 personnel to staff 42 additional engines to put those on the street. I'm not saying that would have stopped the fire.
▶ 1:12:58Sen. Moreno: What's the total?
▶ 1:13:00Mr. Crawford: I don't have the exact numbers.
▶ 1:13:04Sen. Moreno: A couple million bucks. The taxpayers of ohio are willing to pay one 49th of the $2 million. That is what the offer is for the state of ohio to help the state of california. . I think the idea that the taxpayers of the united states are burdened with this idea to pay billions of dollars to cover up local incompetence is totally outrageous. I'm not a big california guy. Where in california, palisades is near l.a., I know that.
▶ 1:13:36Sen. Moreno: What part of l.a. Is gonna -- ghana? Why would the mayor of los angeles be in ghana.
▶ 1:13:53Sen. Moreno: That is a question 4 --
▶ 1:13:57Sen. Moreno: She must have been there prepared. I look at what my colleague here, senator scott did, when he was governor of florida. What governor desantis did, being on the ground every day, managing, making sure you are ready before the storm, during the storm, after the storm. You look at florida, where they rebuilt we look at florida where they rebuild the west coast of florida in a period of time seemed unbelievable.
▶ 1:14:28Sen. Moreno: The governor was pump having a fancy dinner at whatever restaurant he eats at in california that he doesn't allow other people to eat at during covid. The mayor of los angeles is in a different continent. And then they come back and they say we are complete idiots, would you mind handing over $36 billion? I'm just a little disappointed in my calling from connecticut saying the problem is we didn't give the money fast enough. Why would we reward that level of bad behavior? I don't understand this conversation.
▶ 1:14:58Sen. Moreno: Are and if you familiar with the lawsuits going on right now and a request from the citizens of california requesting the federal government take over this? The fire happened, which was avoidable. Glycolic from wisconsin as clearly--my colleague from wisconsin has clearly laid out. You have insurance companies and citizens suing the state of california because of total incompetence in the rebuild. There are people willing to put the money interview building that houses and get the community going again, and because of bureaucracy from the state, they won't do it.
▶ 1:15:29Sen. Moreno: This is totally outrageous. What is even more outrageous -- I give my time back on this -- is what is so outrageous is that somebody who has such an incredible track record of being so bad at their job as governor of california come only in the world of politics could you say, hey, take my incompetence that was highlighted for the world to see in california and make me president of the united states. Only in our U.S.
▶ 1:15:55Sen. Moreno: Political system would somebody have the gall to actually do that. It is a total disgrace, and I can tell you, speaking for myself in ohio, I don't think california deserves a dollar of the taxpayer dollars from the people of ohio to cover up their disgusting incompetence.
▶ 1:16:14Chair Johnson: I will point out california spent close to $14 billion on high-speed rail system which will probably never be completed. They spent billions on illegal immigrants, offering themselves as a sanctuary state, sanctuary city. These are just of the realities we need to face when we are asking ohio or florida or wisconsin taxpayers to pay for their grotesque incompetence and mismanagement and poor governance. Appreciate the points you made.
▶ 1:16:43Chair Johnson: As I toured the palisades with senator scott and others, what struck me is -- I mean, there were homes that were still standing, there were structures still standing. Part of that is luck of the draw. When you watch things on tv, you just see these huge walls of fire and you see this massive wall of fire consuming everything in its wake.
▶ 1:17:05Chair Johnson: In some areas that happens, but as it was described to me is what happens with these high winds, there will take different types of vegetation off of plumtree pluma palm tree and fling that o the air and that goes into the events of homes and that is what starts at. If you had the reservoirs filled, if you edit trucks pre-position -- we were told the trucks were down at the beach.
▶ 1:17:31Chair Johnson: And you tour pacific palisades right in the middle there is this four-lane, very large boulevard, having firetrucks pre-positioned and water available, so much of it -- so much of the physical destruction could have been prevented, to say nothing of the fact that they would've extinguished the fire. Am I describing that right in terms of how these fires just keep perpetuating themselves?
▶ 1:17:57Chair Johnson: In some cases it is a massive wall of fire, but just being set in the winds and going into vents, that type of thing?
▶ 1:18:08Mr. Crawford: Typically -- you're talking about fire behavior is what do you are talking about. Depending on the weather event, we have a modeling system telling us what the forecast will look like. Part of that is spotting, where you're taking a piece of a house or tree or bark and it can blow. Sometimes it can blow as far as two miles downwind spotting. Those start additional fires and things start to merge.
▶ 1:18:37Mr. Crawford: When a wind-driven fire gets out of control, it is hard to stop. The concept like in los angeles is the hit it hard, hit it fast concept. California has the 90-10 rule, 90% of the fires to 10 acres or less, the typical standard you try to have.
▶ 1:18:56Mr. Crawford: Part of this is aggressive repositioning, but is aggressive and -- prepositioning, part of it is aggressive conversations with conference calls, but it should result in decision-making that your posture should look common across all agencies, common operating picture. Part of that common operating picture is getting those reservoirs and understanding what is online and off-line so you have contingency plans to implement if something is faulty.
▶ 1:19:22Chair Johnson: So one of the questions asked is why aren't you concentrating on the canyon fire. Palisades, 12 deaths, 7000 buildings. Eaton canyon was 19 deaths, 14,000 acres. As I've read reports, that might've been started biological wires. Mitigation efforts, get those things underground. They spent $14 billion on high-speed rail and they don't try to eliminate electrical fire.
▶ 1:19:51Chair Johnson: Why is there so much emphasis on palisades versus eaton? I will start with you, chief butler.
▶ 1:19:58Mr. Butler: My expense was strictly focused on the palisades incident and that is where my expertise came from. I don't have any background on the eaton fire, I didn't respond to it. I think it's important that all the fires get the attention, but for me personally, I really focused on what folks did or didn't do before the wind came --
▶ 1:20:25Chair Johnson: Was it because you have the lockman fire and the palisades that could have been established, vs. Maybe electrical fire in eaton canyon? Chief crawford, can you answer that? It just puzzles me.
▶ 1:20:37Mr. Crawford: Truly understand it as a domino effect that took place here. The lack of staffing properly led into a large resource request onto the palisades fire, which had a cascading effect to the agencies next to los angeles. Los angeles county fire and other agencies. They sent resources to assist the palisades. Now you have other areas of the county that is resource-light.
▶ 1:21:04Mr. Crawford: When the eaton canyon fire happened later that evening, you have a ton of resources over at the palisades. Proper staffing and pre-positioning eliminates having the need to request mutual aid as quick as they did in the palisades. The response times to the eaton canyon fire if you look at even all of the tv reports and video footage, it took a very long time for them to get resources just on scene of that fire to begin with.
▶ 1:21:32Chair Johnson: Is it fair to say the failure which led to the palisades fire growing out of control then contributed to the in canyon fire growing out of control? The same people responsible for palisades -- there is a relationship there as well.
▶ 1:21:50Mr. Crawford: Although the two fires are far apart by mileage, they're interconnected with the amount of resources put on the palisades from outside the lafd, and the resource request further than los angeles, it takes time to get those resources on the road and moving down towards los angeles, which goes back to the preincident conversations when you have to circle back to that is where the cracks of all of this lies-- crux of all of this lies, preincident
▶ 1:22:23Mr. Crawford: Conversations, decisions made that did not meet the speed and level of conditions.
▶ 1:22:25Chair Johnson: Can I get back to my original question on pre-position? If you hadn't contended a lot earlier and had the reservoirs filled, firetrucks not on the beach but up there, it could have prevented some of the loss of life? Still would've been a pretty big disaster, but I mean, couldn't that mitigate the extent of the damage, chief butler?
▶ 1:22:47Mr. Butler: The reason we redeployed is that precisely. -- predeployed is that precisely. Winds come, fire whether, seen it before. When I have fires, the job is to see if we can contain it and keep it in an area at least we can manage it. We are knocking to put out a wind-driven fire -- not going to put out a wind-driven fire.
▶ 1:23:14Mr. Butler: To the point of the eaton fire, the county chief put resources and redeployment in his own department. He pre-deployed resources in catalina island because of the threat. When los angeles didn't pre deploy, the city had to re- draw what the county had done to prepare themselves. It was a cascading effect of one agency not predeploy and five other agencies having to fill in the gap.
▶ 1:23:44Chair Johnson: Thank you. Senator blumenthal.
▶ 1:23:46Sen. Blumenthal: Thanks, Mr. chairman. I think this emphasis on prevention is really important, because as the saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Do you agree? Chief butler?
▶ 1:24:01Mr. Butler: Yeah, prevention -- 100%, experts talk prevention --
▶ 1:24:08Sen. Blumenthal: And fema funding plays a part in helping local authorities do more prevention, correct?
▶ 1:24:15Mr. Butler: To that point, preventative efforts start locally, but if there is federal funding for big programs --
▶ 1:24:22Sen. Blumenthal: You wouldn't turn it away?
▶ 1:24:25Mr. Butler: Oh, I would not, sir.
▶ 1:24:29Sen. Blumenthal: I just want to say I think there is some common ground, which is local authorities have clear responsibilities. They are part of that three-legged stool that Mr. hawkins described from his 25 years of experience in emergency response and preparedness. But fema also helps homeon but fema also helps homeowners, small businesses recover.
▶ 1:24:59Sen. Blumenthal: States like florida, where they are still awaiting funding. Those are individuals. They are personal stories of disaster, destroying dreams as well as physical structures, depriving people of homes that they are still struggling to rebuild. Wisconsin suffered floods in august of last year, really disastrous floods.
▶ 1:25:28Sen. Blumenthal: And the president provided $29.8 million in september for recovery. Bravo. My point is that fema, namely, the current administrator is delaying the funding that communities are due to recover, those individuals who have been struck with disaster, but also to make them more resilient.
▶ 1:25:59Sen. Blumenthal: So in the future they can better prevent those disasters. That is what the federal emergency management administration agency is supposed to do, cannot make it harder for americans to -- not make it harder for americans to prevent and recover from disasters. This idea that the secretary has to approve every contract worth $100,000 has delayed critical aid to those survivors.
▶ 1:26:30Sen. Blumenthal: There is no reason for it, there is no precedent. And I would simply urge my colleagues to join me in demanding that fema do better. In december, fema started terminating staff with draft plans showing up to 85% of its staff, 85% of its staff would be let go.
▶ 1:26:54Sen. Blumenthal: They rescinded it because they were warned about winter storm fern, not clear how long that pause will last. We are dealing with an emergency, federal emergency management agency, and I think it will affect communities like Mr. hawkins's and chief butler.
▶ 1:27:25Sen. Blumenthal: Mr. crawford, you have retired, but I think U.S. and pathetic to the needs of these communities --you are sympathetic to the needs of these communities. It is bigger than california. Absolutely right, Mr. crawford, it bigger than california. It is national in scope.
▶ 1:27:44Sen. Blumenthal: My colleague states may not have suffered personally the way connecticut, wisconsin, florida have, but we have all seen fema at work helping local businesses, small businesses, who show up the next morning and they find that the flood or hurricane or tornado has ripped apart decades of hard work, destroy their homes, roofs are gone.
▶ 1:28:14Sen. Blumenthal: And fema appears there. At least it did. But not now. So I think this hearing, I hope, will enable us to realize what's at stake here. And it's not red or blue. Tornadoes, hurricanes don't know the difference between red or blue states. I hope we have a bipartisan approach to this issue. Thanks, Mr. chairman.
▶ 1:28:44Chair Johnson: Thank you. I will just remind the ranking member that fema funding is included in the dhs appropriation bill which right now there are threats of shutting down the government because they don't want to fund dhs. If you will see what happens in the three days in terms of funding --we will see what happens in the next three days in terms of funding dhs and fema .
▶ 1:29:04Sen. Scott: The l.a. Fire department has been a political lightning rod in the last few decades. Seems like it is always in the news over-issues like race, gender, vaccine mandates. Can you talk about the politicization of the department by city leaders and hasn't caused any problems?
▶ 1:29:22Mr. Butler: For me, everything is about operations, and operations of the department, doing the job, accountability, all the pieces that make us good at aircraft. And -- our craft. And so external forces on the department, they do have an impact.
▶ 1:29:46Mr. Butler: Personally, what I focus on myself is value, that you need to know your job first above all else, and that being good at your job is really what finds successful damp successful d. In terms of the outside political discussions of the department, racism, discrimination, all those aspects, the department has had a long history of discrimination since the 1950's.
▶ 1:30:13Mr. Butler: But what I've seen personally, too, is that it's a department that is pretty diverse and works hard together. For me, the piece of the department most important to me as a command officer is to beget the support to make sure that the people are in the right places and are qualified and competent to do the job, and other qualifications are rigorously scrutinized.
▶ 1:30:44Mr. Butler: End of the day, that is what matters most. That is my position on it.
▶ 1:30:50Sen. Scott: Chief crawford, early draft of the fire department's after action report containing a frank discussion about the failure to predeploy assets and keep firefighters on duty. The final version simply stated that preparations "went above and beyond the standard l.a. Fire department predeployment matrix." do you agree with the early draft for the final version?
▶ 1:31:17Mr. Crawford: Neither. I agree with neither draft. The draft that was put forth that talked about the pre deployment issues really just doesn't cut it. I do national media commentary, as I said before, and my first interview on the eighth of january, I said specifically that that was the first misstep, not withholding the off going platoon and seeing those folks home.
▶ 1:31:44Mr. Crawford: That just is not -- it is hard to get people back once you send them home and then have them return back. Secondly, another point is using the limited recall, it allows you to tell the third shift, be prepared to also be able to come and if we get something that is going to expanded beyond the normal scope. When they decided to predeploy and say that in the final direction it went above the matrix, and never showed what matrix levels are to determine where that stoppeda.
▶ 1:32:15Mr. Crawford: And so if you look at this from the perspective of this was supposed to be a historical, particularly dangerous situation wind event, and I would survey most of the department and ask if they have ever heard of what we call a pds, most of them have not. Therefore, this cannot be business as usual, and that is how the department performed that day.
▶ 1:32:39Mr. Crawford: You need to be going above and beyond even what you -- always ask the question, are we doing enough, and what is the next level of planning. It just does not cut it to say that we went above and beyond the pre-deployment tricks. It should have been something that was off the charts. And in conjunction and looks like what the other departments around you were doing and match the level of pre deployment.
▶ 1:33:03Sen. Scott: Thank you. Yes? Mr. hawkins Mr. ha
▶ 1:33:08Mr. Butler: If I could add to that, I added some bar charts -- the department deployed less than half normal and customary.
▶ 1:33:17Sen. Scott: You went back and look at history and then looked at what they allocated for the palisades fire, and it was different.
▶ 1:33:24Mr. Butler: It was absolutely different. It was at a scale I had never seen in my career. The notion to go above and beyond, I think for the community it is a completely different narrative to see what they lost and then to hear somebody went above and beyond. There is a clear departure, absolutely clear departure from what deployment has been in the past. I only picked some of the ones I did.
▶ 1:33:54Mr. Butler: Overall, it was a big departure. Not only that, but I used weather prediction on the prior events I looked at, and none of them were close to the level of threat of the palisades. And so I believe that the report I have here will provide some context and eight as documentatio--it has document ation.
▶ 1:34:25Mr. Butler: This was decisions made before the wind arrived, decisions that were the downstream effects of not putting money into infrastructure and resiliency, budget issues. But when the disaster hit, when the disaster hit, funding at that point is not the issue. When the disaster hits, you fund it. They will make me whole a few month later in front of the council. It's exactly what it was supposed to do.
▶ 1:34:54Mr. Butler: But I believed also talk about you crawford, I kind of--chief crawford, I kind of joke that sometimes your first draft is the best draft, because by the time you get to your final draft, you have scripted of stuff you should left into begin with. -- stripped it of stuff you should've left in to begin with. The individual who wrote the report has publicly come out and stated that it was highly unprofessional for the department to have done that to the after-action report.
▶ 1:35:26Mr. Butler: I think the records show that it's not even speculation on my part, this is exactly what happened.
▶ 1:35:33Sen. Scott: Neither of you question the hard work of the firefighters. What you question is the leadership they were given and the resources they were given. The firefighters on their own showed up, they were doing what they were asked to do.
▶ 1:35:48Mr. Butler: The firefighters on the front line do what they always do. It doesn't matter what you give them. If you give them a buggy, car, whatever, they are going to make it happen. I know that's how it is. That's how it was when I was young 500 -- I still consider myself one today -- firefighters, they have all here was on the front lines. They even lost their own homes. They expose themselves to a lot of hazards and toxins that will be long-term effects.
▶ 1:36:18Mr. Butler: I'm a cancer survivor. The recent passage of congress and the president of the united states, the heroes act, is something that is going to benefit folks like me and families of firefighters out there. Heroics of the firefighters, it's unbelievable the stuff they do.
▶ 1:36:34Sen. Scott: Thank you.
▶ 1:36:35Chair Johnson: Senator moreno.
▶ 1:36:38Sen. Moreno: I know the expression we shouldn't let facts get in the way of a good story, but we should do with facts, especially the committee as important as this. I want to clarify for the record that the secretary of dhs approves contracts over $5 million. I think the ranking member said it was $100,000. I would ask that the record be corrected, unless the ranking member has proof that that is inaccurate.
▶ 1:37:03Chair Johnson: Without objection.
▶ 1:37:04Sen. Moreno: Also, by the way, to note for the record that congress itself through the appropriations subcommittees have to approve any words above $1 million. So this notion that somehow secretary noem has micromanaged fema to turchynov is totally impact -- to choke it off is totally and patently false, and we should not be trafficking in misinformation. I will give you a chance for a follow-up answer, but a quick yes or no.
▶ 1:37:34Sen. Moreno: Given the discussion we just had today -- start with you, Mr. butler -- should congress cease all funding of fema?
▶ 1:37:41Mr. Butler: My answer is no.
▶ 1:37:43Sen. Moreno: Definitely no or maybe no?
▶ 1:37:47Mr. Butler: We need to continue to fund fema.
▶ 1:37:50Sen. Moreno: It's a bad idea to defund it?
▶ 1:37:54Mr. Butler: It would be a bad idea.
▶ 1:37:58Sen. Moreno: Mr. crawford, do you think congress should provide no more funds to fema?
▶ 1:38:04Mr. Crawford: No.
▶ 1:38:05Sen. Moreno: Mr. hawkins?
▶ 1:38:06Mr. Hawkins: No.
▶ 1:38:08Sen. Moreno: The ranking member could do an infomercial on the importance of fema based on his performance today. Next question, and the chairman brought this up, but I'm sure you are aware that 35% of the budget in the department of homeland security's budget is fema. 35% of what we are going to vote to appropriate of the dhs budget is fema. What would be the effects, Mr.
▶ 1:38:35Sen. Moreno: Butler, of actually ending all funding to fema as of midnight on saturday, meaning that we are in the middle of a tough winter situation, we have got a cyclone heading to new york and boston, who knows what other disasters are in play around the country, and of course california is always proud to be incompetently stepped into a crisis?
▶ 1:39:00Sen. Moreno: What would be the implications of namor fema funding as of-- no more fema funding as of saturday midnight from your perspective on the ground?
▶ 1:39:08Mr. Butler: It would have a long-term impact on fire operations. But also, I see funding for fema affects local agencies like us, the homeland security grants that provide us all the advanced equipment training and whatnot. Stopping fema funding will definitely impact fire operations.
▶ 1:39:29Sen. Moreno: Would be hyperbolic, Mr. crawford, to say that ending fema funding would cost the lives of american citizens en masse?
▶ 1:39:39Mr. Crawford: When the storm hits, your local people are going to be responding. Fema is honestly not there at the time the engineering occurs --incident occurs. The cascading effect --
▶ 1:39:52Sen. Moreno: So lives could be lost?
▶ 1:39:55Mr. Crawford: Any of that is a potential, yes. If it has to do with sheltering, the long-term effects of housing, yeah, that is going to cause problems and issues. But I do believe that because it is the local people that start first, you don't see it immediately. It is the cascading effects. When the cameras have gone away and everyone is gone home, when the smoke has cleared, that is when you see the effects of lack of fema funding.
▶ 1:40:17Sen. Moreno: Mr. hawkins, your view, the implications of not funding fema as of saturday midnight?
▶ 1:40:23Mr. Hawkins: It would have an impact on look emergency managers --
▶ 1:40:28Sen. Moreno: Add some adjectives. Slight impact, catastrophic impact, negligible impact?
▶ 1:40:34Mr. Hawkins: It depends on the community you are talking about.
▶ 1:40:38Sen. Moreno: Not having fema would have a depends impact? If fema is shut down completely, you are saying it depends? A huge snowstorm that could be catastrophic to the coast, connecticut, it might impact people?
▶ 1:40:57Mr. Hawkins: No, if there was a major disaster, yes, obviously if there was no fema funding, it would be impactful to the community, but on a steady-state operation, much like the other two chiefs said, yes, there would be an impact on two communities across our nation.
▶ 1:41:13Sen. Moreno: Mr. chairman, it is really important to emphasize what we are talking about today, wednesday, january 28, that the democrats right now are going to make a decision whether to shut down federal government, which would end the funding for fema, because they are mad about ice operations that are fully funded for the next four years. So talk about cutting your nose off to spite your face.
▶ 1:41:44Sen. Moreno: It is cutting your nose, ears, and everything else. They're going to put american lives at risk. Senator scott, when you were governor, did you know when a hurricane was going to hit? To detect an appointment on your calendar?--didn't set an appointment on your calendar? You just don't know. We could have a major catastrophe in this country.
▶ 1:42:07Sen. Moreno: In the democrats are playing with the lives of millions of americans by even talking about the idea of not approving the dhs funding bill, which one third of it goes to fema, and none of it which will affect the funding of ice. It is extraordinarily important -- you made the point, Mr.
▶ 1:42:28Sen. Moreno: Chairman, I'm highlighting it -- how grossly irresponsible that is, especially disingenuous from the ranking member, who is doing an infomercial on the importance of fema. That's all I have to say.
▶ 1:42:40Chair Johnson: Senator scott has the final question.
▶ 1:42:43Sen. Scott: Chief butler, chief crawford, can you list the three biggest blunders of leadership during the palisades fire? Chief butler, what would your top three be?
▶ 1:42:55Mr. Butler: I would say, one, failure of imagination, probably the top. Being aware of the weather in is running situational ordinance. Number two, failure to take initiative on the weather that is coming your way. Lastly, I think absolutely a failure of leadership to understand the gravity of this and essentially not to anything meaningful to address it.
▶ 1:43:26Mr. Butler: I say and a sometimes joking but sad way, had they extinguished the january 1 fire, there wouldn't have been a january 7 fire.
▶ 1:43:39Sen. Scott: Chief crawford?
▶ 1:43:42Mr. Crawford: Thank you, chief, on those three points. To add to those, I want to talk about the tone of the top, which is leadership. The mayor doesn't extinguish fires, but the presence of leadership is nonnegotiable.
▶ 1:43:57Mr. Crawford: With the aspect of not having a mayor present, what that does is not having a person in charge of the city out in front of the press conference that needed to happen on january 5 that says, hey, this is what you need to have in your go bag, this is the tool you need to sign up for, this is what we are doing with resources. Being out front, the citizens get behind that message. You have to have that executive leadership.
▶ 1:44:21Sen. Scott: There is only a couple people that can do that. The mayor can do it with the governor can do it. --the mayor can do it or the governor can do it.
▶ 1:44:30Mr. Crawford: That is correct. Failure to imagine, I've been up and down for fires california, and you can burn down a town, you understand the magnitude of 80-mile an hour winds and what they can do. Not acting on those threats, recognize, respond, resolve, not recognizing and having the appropriate action. Lastly, not having a mission-completion culture.
▶ 1:44:56Mr. Crawford: After action reviews need to have not just lessons learned, the lessons institutionalized. You need actionable items that have executive ownership to someone with benchmarks and trigger points and timelines that lead to accountability. If you don't have those three, beginning of leadership, failure to imagine in the middle, after-action review, you will complete the mistakes that history will repeat itself, excuse me.
▶ 1:45:23Sen. Scott: I want to thank all three of you for coming in testifying. The victims of the palisades deserve answers. There needs to become really.-- there needs to be accountability. And we need to stop wasting our money at the federal level. 30 naturally dollars of debt, we cannot--$39 trillion of that we cannot just keep writing checks for incumbents.
▶ 1:45:47Chair Johnson: Opportunity for closing comments -- do you have anything you would like to add?
▶ 1:45:51Mr. Hawkins: Yes, thank you, sandra. I would just like to say--thank you, senator. I would just like to say, this is a really important issue for our local communities, local managers, local firefighters, local law enforcement, who are in our communities every day trying to do their best to keep our communities safe and protect our neighbors.
▶ 1:46:14Mr. Hawkins: The work that we do across the board, from the local level to the state level to the federal level, is critically important, and whether that funding comes from your local community that is providing your emergency management staff information, whether there are state grants or federal grants that support what you are doing, I don't want us to forget how important it is to support our local communities and our local emergency managers, like we've said, disastrous start and end
▶ 1:46:46Mr. Hawkins: Locally--disasters start and end locally. It takes a whole spectrum of response, and that includes federal funding, state partnership, and local leadership.
▶ 1:46:54Chair Johnson: Again, I want to thank all the witnesses. You can't cure incompetence with money, unless you remove the incompetence, unless you expose it and make sure that those individuals who aren't qualified, who are incompetent, are no longer serving those roles.
▶ 1:47:17Chair Johnson: That is the main part of this investigation, is to expose what happened, name names, identify the incompetence so it doesn't happen again. I think the testimony said this shouldn't be a blame game. It has to be a blame game. You can't avoid that. If you doctor after-action reports, you will never get to the truth, you won't solve it for the next time, you want prevented in the future. People have to be held accountable.
▶ 1:47:48Chair Johnson: People left their lives. The property damage is perfect -- people lost their lives. The property damage is profound. This is a serious investigation. Not one I would have undertaken. I appreciate the fact that senator scott was awakened to the need here, because it is not being undertaken by california and los angeles officials. It's simply not, it's a whitewash. We intend to get the answers. We need to find out who is accountable. This will be transcribed interviews. We need to documents.
▶ 1:48:18Chair Johnson: We need to get to the bottom of this so we prevent this disaster, this preventable disaster, from happening again. With that, the hearing record will remain open until thursday, for very 12, 2026. This hearing is adjourned. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap.org]