Governor Directs Coordinated Firefighting Efforts and Resources to Combat Wildfires

GOVERNOR SCHWARZENEGGER: Well, good afternoon, everybody. I want to say thank you to Chief Del Walters and thank you very much to Chief George Morris and Frank McCarton from the OES for giving us a little briefing here to bring us up to date on what's going on here with the firefighting. I also want to thank Assemblywoman Lois Wolk for being here today with us and Mayor Price from Fairfield and Mayor Augustine from Vacaville. And I want to thank, also, the law enforcement officials and the leaders for working so well together to make all this a successful mission.

You can imagine how shocked I was yesterday when I got my briefings last night and I was told that we have 520 fires all over the state of California. Now, I've been governor now for more than four years, I've never heard that number before. So it was quite shocking to me, only to find out this morning that that number has actually gone up to 700 and some fires. So I changed my schedule around a little bit to make sure that I could come up here to the most important location, which is right here, to get a briefing and see what we can do in order to work together and put out those fires as quickly as possible.

But the latest is that there are approximately 4,000 acres that have been destroyed and burned so far and 40 percent has been contained. This number changes, of course, all the time. We have two buildings that have been destroyed and 250 structures are threatened right now.

Now, there were mandatory evacuations of 250 homes, there are recommendations of an additional 250 homes that should be evacuated. Shelters have been set up and they have been very successful and the combination of Red Cross and volunteers has been working on that.

Of course, statewide, the numbers change drastically. There are over 100,000 acres that have burned so far and approximately 40 structures that have been destroyed, 13 homes and 27 other structures. There has been a great response.

We have locally here 438 personnel, 63 engines have been deployed and of course the National Guard has been very helpful with their aircraft, with helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft and helping us put out those fires.

On a statewide level there are 4,300 CAL FIRE fighters, that are working right now putting out those fires and 372 engines. And again, everyone has been working together. I want to say it has been a great effort between the locals, the state and the federal government working together on this and I want to thank CAL FIRE again for their great effort.

And I want to thank our firefighters, because as I have said many times, we have firefighters that we all can be very proud of. They're the toughest firefighters, the most experienced firefighters, the most selfless firefighters. They risk their lives all the time to save other people's lives, so it's extraordinary and I'm very proud of them when I see the quick action.

And I think if there are any detailed questions we have Chief Walters here, who has just brought me up to date, who can answer some of those questions. But we just want to make sure that we have the resources available -- obviously, you always can use more resources, because how many times do you have 700 fires, more than 700 fires?

So I think the important thing is, as everyone here will tell you, is to put out the fires around here in this area as quickly as possible so we can move resources into other areas. But again, I'm very proud of our team here in California because they are so experienced and there is such quick action here all the time.

And I would like to maybe have Assemblywoman Lois Wolk say a few words here, because she has been very, very concerned and I've been talking to her, so if you maybe want to say a few words also about this, please?

ASSEMBLYMEMBER WOLK: Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. I want to thank the Governor very much for coming to Fairfield, Vacaville, this area, in order to draw attention to the extraordinary efforts that are being put forward by the communities, by Fairfield and Vacaville and Solano County, along with CAL FIRE and the federal government, to work at restoring public safety. And I want to thank him for drawing the attention of everyone to this incredible effort and I want to thank everyone who has been a part of this. When communities are in danger it is very important that people come together and this is an example of how Californians, in response to major disasters, just come forward, led by the Governor, supported by the local community. Thank you, Governor, again.

GOVERNOR SCHWARZENEGGER: Thank you very much. And I would like to have Chief Walters come out and give us a little bit of the details and all the challenges that are ahead. Please.

CHIEF WALTERS: We've got a long ways to go. This is an unprecedented lightning storm in California, that it lasted as long as it did, 5,000 to 6,000 lightning strikes. We are finding fires all the time. The last estimate I heard statewide was 842 fires and it just continues to grow. The acreage is up around 100,000 acres. Once again, that changes all the time.

The thing that I'm probably the proudest of in all of this is the cooperation with the fire service, law enforcement, the military. A lot of what we do has to do with what we do before things happen and I'm particularly pleased to see how things came together. When you see this many fires start at once you can really never do enough but we certainly have gotten all of our resources and people back online, everybody is working right now, working together. And it's going to be a long haul. Our federal cooperators, as well as the state and local, are going to be fighting these fires for some time to come. We have 101 fires as of an hour ago that we still haven't staffed yet. Some of these are in very remote areas in timbered country.

So we have put state-wise four teams out, which I don't recall doing ever in northern California before; this team that was on the wildfire here, there is a team that is doing the Mendocino County complex, one in Shasta County and one in Butte County. So my hat is off to all the firefighters out there on the ground, dirty, hot, smoky. And it's going to be a long road for us.

QUESTION/ANSWER:

QUESTION:                                                 Could you identify yourself?

CHIEF WALTERS:                                      I'm sorry. My name is Dale Walters and I'm the assistant region chief for northern California. Thank you.

GOVERNOR:                                               Any other questions you have for the Chief?

QUESTION:                                                 A question for Mr. Walters. We hear like 700 fires -- I'm sorry, that sounds like Armageddon, you know? The whole state should be burning up but it's not. So why is 700 fires not a calamity, not a catastrophe?

CHIEF WALTERS:                                      Why isn't' it a calamity? One, again, is preparation. There are six elements that contribute to your success in an emergency incident, whether it's a small one or a big one and one of that has to do with luck, just whatever you're presented with at the time. We didn't get real lucky with this lighting storm. It wasn't predicted -- which often happens with these storms that come in off the Pacific, there's no history of the weather as it approaches the shore -- and so we got hammered.

The second is that preparation that I mentioned. Cooperation, coordination, communication and execution are the others. And we have performed and we have to. Some people look at us and say, "How can you do this, for something this large?" But we approach it systematically with the incident command system, much like we would a smaller incident and you just have to get on it, get organized and keep after it until you're done.

QUESTION:                                                 Governor, how worried are you about this fire season, given what's already happened?

GOVERNOR:                                               Well, I think that we have seen last year that the normal fire seasons, the way we have known it in the past, that is pretty much gone, where we know that by late fall the fires start. Like this kind of a situation is normally something that happens in October, November but we haven't seen it that early in the year.

So I think there is fire season now all year round and I think the key thing for us is to prepare for that and to make the adjustments and to create more resources as quickly as possible, because that means, you know, that the firefighters, they are stretched to the limit with the resources. There are only so many engines, there are so many aircraft, we have so many helicopters. We already have asked the National Guard to come in and also help and to be ready and they have been very helpful, so luckily we have everyone working together.

But I am very concerned, because when you hear those reports, like I have heard last night, I was very concerned because, you see, there are 700 fires and they are very close to one another. And so the danger was for them to join and to connect and when that happens, you know it gets really quickly out of control. And luckily, like I said, that we all know and the experts here know, that the first few hours are the most important. And so they worked very quickly to create the action and to fight those fires so that now they are more than 40 percent contained. And we're going to do that statewide. But I think the more we work together and the more quickly we create the extra resources, the better it is for the firefighters.

QUESTION:                                                 Governor, you talked about the need for more resources in California, given the size of the fires that are burning right now. There are assets already requested under mutual aid, they've organized that effort. Are your people telling you that you're expecting more mutual aid help from other states as well (Inaudible)

GOVERNOR:                                               We are asking other states, yes, because you can never prepare for 500 or 700 or 800 fires all at the same time. So I think whenever you have an unusual situation, we have agreements with those states that we can go to those states -- if it's Nevada, Oregon, Washington or other states -- and get help from them. And they have been really quick in responding and we respond to them when they have an emergency. So I think the key thing is everyone working together under those circumstances.

But, no matter what we talk about here, I think the key thing is to have firefighters the way we have them in California. I mean, they are really extraordinary and tough firefighters that don't work 10 hours or 14 hours, they work sometimes 24 hours straight without any rest. I think it's that tremendous will that they have to succeed that really makes us always successful in the end. But they need the support, like I said, of the resources also.

QUESTION:                                                 Governor, can you explain your wildfire initiative that would put a surcharge on property tax, property insurance, why that's important, why it's necessary and how you will sell it to the legislature?

GOVERNOR:                                                I think that the legislators are very much aware of that, we need to raise more revenues in order to buy the equipment and get the resources to fight all of those fires. And so I think our idea is to raise the homeowners insurance. And I think everyone will benefit, even though there are some people that have said, "Well, I'm not living really where the wildfires normally are."

But there is really no 'normal' anymore. As you can see now, this is not normal to have 700 fires start simultaneously and to have this kind of lightning as there was, without any rain and to have the dry weather, to have the heat and the wind and all of those things come together and lighting. So there are unusual circumstances. Is it global warming? Is it some other change? That's a whole other issue. But we see that it's happening and I think we have to respond. That's our responsibility. And I think that Democrats and Republicans are going to work together on this and we're going to come up with a way of creating the extra revenues.

QUESTION:                                                 Governor, if I could follow up on that -- how would you make sure that when you surcharge money it would actually add to the exiting firefighting budget as opposed to replacing (Inaudible)

GOVERNOR:                                                I think that it's very important that it's written the right way, so that the money goes for additional equipment and additional resources.

QUESTION:                                                 Governor, fire season just started, it's already been horrendous, we have at least another four months. What discussions are taking place about long term, when these firefighters are not so fresh, they've had months and months of this onslaught of work? Will we have adequate manpower and equipment?

GOVERNOR:                                               Well, we have manpower and we have equipment. But like I said, not when you have this kind of a situation where you have that many fires at one given time. And that's why we are trying to get help not only from the federal government but also from our neighboring states.

QUESTION:                                                 When you say federal help?

GOVERNOR:                                               Federal help has been terrific. I think that I feel like that they have learned, when Katrina happened, that there's a better way of going. And we have seen it last year, when we had the fires, how quickly they responded and we have seen it this year. Each time they responded very quickly, so we are very happy about that.

Anyway, thank you very much for being here today. Thank you.