Oversight Hearing titled: “Fix Our Forests: The Need for Urgent Action One Year After the L.A. Wildfires”
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House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Federal Lands U.S. House of Representatives
Follow its sittingsSpeaker 1
I appreciate the bipartisan support this bill has received in both the House and the Senate. It's time for us to get this legislation over the finish line and send the bill to President Trump's desk. I stand willing to work with any of my colleagues across the aisle and across the capital to make sure no community has to experience what LA had to undergo last year. Before I yield back, I want to thank the witnesses for being here today. I look forward to hearing your testimony and discussing ways that we can prevent wildfires and fix our forests.
With that, I yield back and recognize Ranking Member Huffman for an opening statement.
Speaker 2
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning, folks. Mister chairman, I have lost track now of the number of hearings we've had on FOFA. Certainly, fire resiliency is important. And even though we passed this legislation over a year ago, we continue to have hearings about it.
Here's the disconnect. There were some good things in FOFA as I tried to make clear in the hearing that we were allowed to have on it. We have a witness here today, I'm grateful that Mister Mills from my district is here. He's developed an amazing information tool called Watch Duty that will help first responders and communities navigate the chaos of real-time disaster management. What are fires doing?
What are first responders doing? How can people keep themselves and their families safe? This is great stuff. And some of the authorities in FOFA will help communities use tools like this, and build partnerships that will help a lot with resilience. Those authorities are also in the Padilla bill.
I have a separate bipartisan bill that would actually put some money on the table so that communities could do these things that we all agree are important, to make us safer. I hope the Senate will fix some of the disconnects in FOFA. There is too much environmental scapegoating, too much damage to environmental laws that is not necessary to make us safer, to make forests healthier, to make communities more resilient. And there are not nearly enough real funding solutions to help some of the things we say we support actually happen on the ground. But I hope the Senate will fix those things, and then I'll be able to support the bill that comes through the process.
The biggest disconnect, though, mister chairman, is the ongoing challenge we have getting our friends across the aisle to pay any attention to what the Trump administration is actually doing. And we can put lots of good ideas on the table in legislation. We can have hearings. But if we're ignoring the huge damage that is taking place to the agencies that we count on to manage public lands, to be first responders, to the budgets. I mean, there is a reorganization happening right now within federal agencies to consolidate them in order to carry out firefighting.
This could have profound impacts on our ability to be safer and more resilient in the face of fire risk. And you haven't had a single hearing on it. You haven't done a bit of oversight. How is it going? How much is it going to cost?
Is it going to save money? Is it gonna make us safer? Nothing. Crickets. So I would love to bridge this disconnect where we say we care about these things, but we will never ask any hard questions of the Trump administration, even as it runs roughshod over the budgets and the agencies that we count on to do these things.
As the Forest Service and other agencies have been gutted, massive funding has been redirected to this new unaccountable army of secret police that is terrorizing our cities right now. This reign of terror, including a budget for ICE that is bigger than the defense budget of most European countries. That's funding that could be spent on resilience, on forest management, on these other things that we say that we care about while we're going backward in real budgetary terms on walking the walk about these things. So I just wanna say something about immigrants, which, of course, are being targeted by these secret police thugs with no accountability. Immigrants are the people who do the work that help us when wildfires strike.
They risk their lives to fight wildfires. They are the cleanup crews doing the dirty work most folks don't want to do. They are the construction workers building our homes, and you are letting the Trump administration terrorize, kidnap. And in the case of people who peacefully protest in support of these communities, murder people without any accountability. So we all want to stop catastrophic wildfires.
We also should be talking about this bigger picture and these tremendous disconnects. We have redirected funding that could be used to keep us safer to do many of these things we say we care about, in order to support this massive unaccountable reign of terror by ICE, and that must stop. Another reality check is the climate crisis. Now I know that tremendous effort has been taken to sort of airbrush climate change out of federal websites and pretend that it's not a reality. Anyone in the real world that fights fires or that is impacted by fires knows the reality of the climate crisis.
It was part of what happened in Los Angeles last year. It was a perfect storm, a climate-driven drought, record-shattering Santa Ana winds, and old abandoned infrastructure, and then throw in some arson. And you have what happened in Los Angeles. So, mister chairman, I look forward to the conversation. I hope we can bring it back to real solutions, and take some of the politics out of it.
And with that, I yield back.
Speaker 3
Ranking member's time has expired. I'll now share my opening statement. Just over one year ago, devastating wildfires erupted in Los Angeles County, the most populous county in the United States. The world watched in horror as the fires tore through dry, overgrown vegetation towards the communities of Palisades, Altadena, and Pasadena. In just a few days, these fires driven by hurricane-force winds destroyed more than 16,000 structures, including homes, businesses, schools, grocery stores, and even places of worship.
The LA fires caused an estimated $131000000000 in property and casualty losses. For context, in a single month, the LA fires generated costs exceeding those of the entire 2020 wildfire year, which is one of the most devastating wildfire years on record. The scope of this disaster is difficult to comprehend, and the financial cost of the fires is just one part of the story. For thousands of people, the emotional cost of these fires is as fresh today as it was last January. While these communities will never truly be the same, a combination of rising prices, lack of insurance, and burdensome red tape have made any kind of rebuilding efforts virtually impossible.
As chairman Westerman noted, of the more than 200,000 people who were forced to evacuate, roughly 70% have not been able to return to their homes. In fact, of the thousands upon thousands of homes that were destroyed, only ten have been rebuilt. Unlike hurricanes or tornadoes, we can stop these wildfires from happening in the first place, and prevent communities across the country from suffering the same fate as Los Angeles. And we know that if we do not act now, it is a question of when, not if, we will see more towns and neighborhoods across the West reduced to ash. Paradise, California in 2018, Boulder, Colorado in 2021, Lahaina, Hawaii in 2023.
These devastating fires should have been wake-up calls. We need more proactive forest management and community protection efforts put in place. I've seen this devastation firsthand. Days after the Maui fires in 2023, I was on the ground with a bipartisan delegation, and the level of destruction we saw was shocking. In mere hours, this once vibrant community had been reduced into a moonscape of rubble.
Block after block of homes were completely destroyed. The heat from this fire was so intense, we walked past cars that had melted into the ground. And yet, year after year, we failed to heed these warning calls and see more fires bringing similar devastation, destroying homes, claiming lives, and obliterating entire communities. We cannot allow ourselves to do the same with the LA fires. We cannot let another moment pass where we accept these devastating wildfires as our new normal.
We cannot sit idly by while thousands of western communities turn into tinderboxes. Across the federal government, we have traded in proactive management for reactive responses. Land managers will start clearing hazardous fuels and cutting fire lines, but only when a fire is on their doorstep and the sky has turned orange, not when it's blue and nothing is on fire. And for too long in Congress, we've sat idly by while ominous new benchmarks are hit and then surpassed. The most destructive wildfire, the largest wildfire, the costliest wildfire, the deadliest wildfire in a century.
By the way, each of these record-breaking fires has occurred within the past five years. Enough is enough. That's why one year ago, the house did its job. We passed the bipartisan Fix Our Force Act with the support of roughly two thirds of the House, an overwhelming majority. It's time for the Senate to finish the job.
We must send this vital legislation to the president's desk, and do so before the next wildfire season starts. Before I yield back, I'd like to thank the witnesses for being here with us today. I appreciate your willingness to share your experience, expertise, and insights on ways we can better protect our communities and fix our forests. With that.
Speaker 3
With that, we are going to go to our panel. I'd like to remind our witnesses that are here today that under committee rules, you must limit your oral statement to five minutes, but your entire statement will appear in the hearing record. To begin your testimony, please press the on button. We use timing lights. When you begin, the light will turn green.
At the end of five minutes, the light will turn red, and I will ask you to please wrap up your statement. First, I would like to introduce the honorable Steven Crowder, mayor of the town of Paradise, California. Mayor Crowder, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
Speaker 4
Chair Westerman, ranking member Nikias, and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to share Paradise's experience before, during, and after the 2018 Camp Fire, and to speak about what we have learned in rebuilding a more resilient community. Paradise is a town of about 26,500 people before the fire, located in Northern California on a forested ridge between two steep canyons. Residents chose Paradise for its natural beauty and small town charm, but that's the geography that placed us at high fire risk. I was elected to town council on 11/06/2018, just two days before the campfire.
When I learned a fire had started in Polga on the morning of November 8, I rushed to town hall to help. It quickly became clear that this was not a normal wildfire. As evacuation routes became congested and conditions deteriorated, I went into the community and began directing traffic to help residents escape. For hours, I remained in town as flames advanced, assisting evacuees alongside the first responders. Like thousands of Paradise residents, I lost everything that day.
My home was destroyed. My business was destroyed. I survived. Eighty-five of our neighbors did not. The Camp Fire became the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history at the time.
It burned over 158,000 acres, destroyed more than 19,000 structures, forced the evacuation of nearly 52,000 people, and forever changed our community. The trauma of that day remains with us today. The conditions that led to the campfire were years in the making. Northern California had gone more than 200 days without significant rainfall. Vegetation was extremely dry and overgrown.
National forests surrounding Paradise contained heavy fuel loads. On November 8, strong winds combined with those conditions. And when a Pacific Gas and Electric transmission line failed eight miles away, the fire reached Paradise in less than two hours. Once the fire was out, we made a deliberate decision not just to rebuild, but to rebuild safer and more resiliently. We improved the evacuation planning and traffic flow.
We invested in a modern town-wide early warning siren system and voice capability, along with in-home alerting devices for residents who may be hard of hearing. We transformed our approach to defensible space. What was once encouraged is now strictly forbidden. Every property in Paradise is inspected annually, and compliance now exceeds 90%, significantly reducing ignition near homes. As we rebuild, Paradise has adopted some of the most stringent local building standards in California, aligning with the Institute for Business and Home Safety wildfire prepared home standards.
We have experienced participation in firewise communities, empowering the neighborhoods to work together on fuel reduction and preparedness, and we are creating strategic fuel reduction buffers along the perimeter of town. Independent studies have found that the combined resilience measures Paradise has implemented can reduce wildfire risk by up to 70%. The campfire did not start in Paradise. It started on federal land. Local government can act aggressively within our boundaries, but we cannot protect our communities without effective forest management.
For that reason, I strongly support the Fix Our Forest legislation. Paradise's experience demonstrates that proactive forest management, thinning, prescribed fire, and faster project delivery is essential to public safety. Delays and insufficient scale put communities like mine in danger. Forest health must be treated as a life safety issue and not just an environmental one. Paradise lost nearly everything on November 8, but we did not lose our resolve.
With those to rebuild stronger, safer, and more resilient, and to share what we have learned so other communities did not have to endure the same tragedy. Thank you for the opportunity to tell our story. I look forward to your questions and to working with you to make our force healthy, and our community safer.
Speaker 3
Thank you, Mayor Crowder. I'll now recognize Mr. John Clark Mills, CEO and cofounder of WatchDuty. Mister Mills, you are recognized for five minutes.
Speaker 5
Chairman Tiffany, ranking member Gosar, and members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. My name is John Mills, and I live in fire country, deep in the wild land forests in Northern California. I'm also the CEO and cofounder of Watch Judy, a nonprofit organization that provides real-time wildfire alerts and intelligence to millions of Americans and first responders. While I'm proud of what we've built, to be frank, I shouldn't have had to build this at all. Last January, during the LA fires, WatchDuty became the most downloaded app in the country, surpassing ChatGPT and TikTok.
In just one week, 2.5 million people, one quarter of all of LA County, downloaded WatchDuty to find safety during their worst wildfires in history. Make no mistake, this is not a tech success story. This is a story of failure. As one of America's largest cities burned, both residents and first responders were unable to get the information they needed to survive. As a result, everyone turning to us for information, including the emergency managers and the first responders themselves.
Our government is failing to alert people of their risk during an emergency, and the consequences are deadly. Simply put, the status quo is not working. Today, emergency alerts are crippled by a fragmented bureaucracy and crumbling infrastructure. Emergency managers are pushed to their limits and cannot keep up with the speed of today's wind-driven fires. As a result, official warnings usually go out only after a community is on fire, houses are burning, aircraft are buzzing overhead, and people are already running for their lives.
By that point, panic has set in. As we just saw in the Palisades fire, when hundreds of people abandoned their cars on the road, blocking egress for residents and ingress for fire personnel. The same thing happened in Paradise, La Haina, and Santa Rosa. Every time this happens, we are told these events are unprecedented, meaning without precedents. But these events are anything but unprecedented.
From California to Wisconsin, Idaho to Minnesota, New Jersey to New Mexico, the frequency and intensity is increasing, and it's not contained to the American West anymore. Years of research, user interviews, and lived experience tell us the opposite of what our systems assume. People need early and actionable information to save lives and support the first responders. The reality is bureaucratic delays cause confusion and give room for misinformation to spread. Our alerts are delivered rapidly and contain a storyline of events so that you have the context as the situation unfolds.
We use verified on-the-ground reports from first responders and emergency managers. We tell people how fast a fire is moving, which direction it's heading, and when it crosses the containment lines. That early context, sometimes hours before officials, gives communities time to prepare, like my 81-year-old arthritic neighbor Martha or the rancher with 50 head of cattle. That head start saves lives and livelihoods. But timing isn't the only issue.
Quality matters. Many official alerts are hard to read, poorly formatted, and lack maps that give context. Many government officials say, evacuate now, but don't tell you where to go, what roads are safe, or give any context about the broader incident to give residents situational awareness. In the 2018 Camp Fire in Paradise, California, confusion caused residents to flee from fairly safe areas directly into the path of the fire. And finally, the delivery mechanisms are failing us.
Increasingly, agencies post updates on social media, where misinformation and distortion immediately drown out lifesaving instructions. Emergency alerts do not belong buried in the comments section. But some agencies warn the public not to rely on watch-duty and similar platforms. They prefer people to visit their websites. Well, guess what?
So would we. But websites don't wake you up at night. Alerts do. We want public agencies to modernize alerting by sharing information directly with residents as well as with watch duty. Trust Americans with more information, and communicate early and often.
The entire system needs an overhaul. This is one reason why the Fix Our Forest Act is so urgent. I want to express my appreciation for the speed at which the House has passed this bill, and I encourage the Senate to do the same. I would also like to add my own perspective on what can make the Wildfire Intelligence Center more successful. I implore you to recognize the work that Wash Duty has already accomplished without the financial support of taxpayers, and to integrate our work into the Intelligence Center.
I fear that if the government stands this up on its own or with the help of contractors, it will yield the same results, siloed intelligence that helps the few, not the many. We've seen this play out before with single source providers who prioritize profit, not people like me who live in underserved communities deep in the wildland forest under the constant threat of fire. Rather than trying to duplicate or smother solutions like ours, embrace a multi-source approach that gives Americans what they need, addressing their root causes to make evacuations less chaotic and warnings more effective. No one should have needed to watch duty. But we're here.
We're proven essential for fire-impacted communities, and we're not going anywhere. Please join us in bringing watch duty service to every American family and first responder. Thank you.
Speaker 3
Thank you, Mr. Males. I now recognize Doctor David Culkin, principal at Culkin Wildfire Consulting. Doctor Culkin, you are recognized for five minutes.
Speaker 6
Thank you very much. Members of the subcommittee, I'm honored to have the opportunity to share my thoughts on the critical issues and legislative efforts to address the continued destruction of our communities, the degradation of our wildlands, and the well-being of our responders. I'm doctor David Cauquen, principal of Cauquen Wildfire Consulting, and courtesy faculty at Oregon State University. Last April, I concluded a 23 year career as a senior scientist with Forest Service Research, studying how risk science could improve wildfire management. Approximately 4 years ago, I participated in a retreat with some of the most prominent wildfire scientists to discuss the challenges facing wildfire management.
We reached consensus that the single biggest challenge is that we have fundamentally misdefined the wildfire problem. To be successful, we will need to address both the problem of communities' destruction from fire, and address issues within the wildfire management system. And the strategies to achieve these objectives are not the same. Our attempts to remove wildfire have both increased the risk to communities and made our landscapes less healthy. Slowing the rate of community destruction must start with a focus on the individual homes, then community infrastructure, and finally, adjacent wild lands.
My research has consistently shown that the slightest perception of homes being at risk formed the basis of decisions to suppress fires. Short term problem solving wired into human nature perpetuates a suppression-first mindset and helps to create the wildfire paradox. That is, removing wildfire eliminates the mechanism that keeps fuels in check, making future fires more difficult to suppress and more damaging. Further, this reactive cycle distorts agency budgets. Suppression funding consistently dwarfs investments in mitigation and recovery.
As a result of our misplaced but well-intentioned desires to reduce short-term risk, firefighter health has been sacrificed. This long-standing effort to eliminate wildfire supported a massive increase in the value of residential development in fire-prone areas. Landscapes loaded with highly combustible fuels, including ignition-susceptible homes, represent a debt that has come due. Our focus on removing wildfires distracted us from work to make our communities more prepared for the eventuality of a fire. In the last 10 years, our nation has experienced the most devastating wildfires of the last century throughout the Western US.
And approximately one year ago, the Eton and Palisades fires in Southern California. These fires all share several important characteristics that are critical to understand if we are to reduce future destruction. One, they were human-caused. Two ignitions occurred under extreme fire weather conditions in close proximity to a community that was destroyed. Three, despite rapid detection, suppression was almost immediately overwhelmed.
And for the most part, forest management was largely irrelevant. Last February, I went to Altadena and Pacific Palisades with colleagues from Oregon State University. I was humbled by the scale of loss. Entire suburban neighborhoods, miles away from mile lands, were destroyed. This experience confirmed that once ignition has occurred under extreme conditions, the only way to prevent catastrophe is to prevent the disaster sequence from starting.
Burning structures become the primary source of urban fire spread. Actions to harden homes to prevent the initiation of the disaster sequence is the key. Many.
Speaker 6
Our public lands are also at extreme risk of wildfire. If exposed to wildfire under increasingly frequent extreme conditions, landscapes will be fundamentally degraded and may never recover. However, the solution is not the exclusion of fire, nor is it active fire management alone. More of the right fire at the right place and time can fundamentally alter the risk to landscapes and communities. We can develop risk-based strategies to balance short-term and long-term risk.
We should be deploying our resources only when and where they can effectively and safely prevent loss. I've seen these strategies used to both aggressively fight a wildfire, saving a community from imminent destruction, and, in another instance, to reintroduce 50,000 acres of ecologically and culturally appropriate fire in a high risk landscape. If we're to reduce community destruction, we must invest. As the recent nonpartisan welfare commission recommended, Congress can create interagency partnerships to address risk in the built environment. I'm supportive of many of the provisions within recent legislation, particularly those that focus on preparing communities for the eventuality of fire, protecting the most vulnerable in these communities, and investing in hardening our infrastructure and our homes.
I'm also supportive of legislation that results in getting more good fire on the ground. Lastly, I'd like to share some brief thoughts on consolidation. The fire management system in the US is strained to the point of breaking and lacks the ability to keep pace with the increasingly complex threats. However, for any new agency to succeed, it will need a well-defined long-range mission, achievable objectives, accountability to local decision makers, and insulation from the political whims of the day. Making fire go away is not achievable.
The objectives established under the cohesive strategy are solid, but implementation lags due to our short-sighted nature. Fire-adapted communities start at the individual home. Resilient landscapes require fire, and the only way to be safer and more effective in responding to fire is to do less of it. Thank you for your time, and I look forward to questions.
Speaker 3
Thank you, Doctor Colcon. Finally, I now recognize Mister Robert Gordon, senior vice president of policy research and international at the American Property Casualty Insurance Association. Mister Gordon, you who are recognized for five minutes.
Speaker 7
Thank you. Chairman Tiffany and ranking member Huffman, I appreciate today's hearing on the Fix Our Forests Act. I am Robert Gordon, senior vice president for the American Property Casualty Insurance Association. We represent about two-thirds of the home auto business insurance sector, and we strongly support the Fix Our Forest Act. We think this is legislation that will save lives and reduce losses from wildfires.
Insurers for over 50 years have been investing in building safety standards, funding the Institute for Business and Home Safety, IBHS. They're the entity that researches and develops scientific evidence-based safety standards and loss mitigation standards. And over the last several years, they've been publishing new fire safety standards referenced by Mayor Crowder called Wildfire Prepared Home. And those safety standards are now being increasingly adopted by builders, county and state governments, neighborhoods like Paradise. In improving wildfire safety standards, it's becoming a sustainability imperative.
The wildfire risk in the United States is dramatically escalating. The losses from wildfire over the last decade have been 5 times higher than any previous decade. Eight of the 10 costliest insured wildfires ever occurred in California just in the last decade, including the record $40,000,000,000-plus insured loss event last January. Thousands of Americans die every year from fire, and yet we still see a majority of new homes being built in areas that have significant fire risk without the protection of the current best practices, fire safety standards. And we think the Fix Our Forest Act is an essential solution.
Most importantly, the bill improves the federal coordination of wildfire preparedness, mitigation, and response. And this is important because a lot of weather hazards like wind, individual property owners can implement their own risk mitigation. You can install storm-proof windows. You can seal your roof from the rain. You can protect yourself.
But wildfire risk requires a much broader, coordinated community response. You need to have local and federal landowners working together with the private sector. A study last December by the IBHS and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection found that even homes that had the top four fire-resistant improvements had a less than 50% chance of escaping damage if they're within 10 feet of other buildings, especially those that don't have those fire protection characteristics and standards. The study further found that even the best practices fire standards fail without community-level actions to reduce structural density and connective fuels. And we think the Southern California record wildfires last year really demonstrate the danger of the unmitigated risk that involved adjacent federal, state, local, and private lands.
Solutions that only addressed one of those groups isn't going to be enough to protect against conflagrations in densely built environments. APCI particularly supports FOFA section 102, creates a fire shed center to coordinate what's currently a very fragmented federal agency fire efforts, and encourage cooperative agreements with state, government, and private entities. We strongly support section 106 to improve land management, creating fuel and fire breaks and vegetation management, facility inspections, and section 201, which encourages public private partnerships to reduce hazardous fuel and create a streamlined application process for federal wildfire grants, and providing technical assistance to community. And, as Congressman Huffman said, hopefully, we can get some funding for some of these programs as well. Federal agencies currently have disaster prediction and mitigation services but with limited interoperability and priority setting.
And you really need wildfire efforts aligned across all levers of government. Federal coordination can help disseminate some of the rapidly evolving fire mitigation practices, including some of those talked about by Mister Mills. Insurers are now rapidly evolving our fire mitigation practices. We're doing things like encouraging smart building technology, real-time aerial image monitoring to detect early fire ignitions and deploy fire retardants and extinguishers. We're deploying trucks with fire retardant foam to protect properties in imminent danger, and encouraging property owners to install fire detectors, automated alert systems that trigger fire-defense systems.
Communities would really benefit if we can get each of the wildfire stakeholders to learn from each other and to coordinate what we're doing, adopt the evolving best practices, and coordinate our preparedness, response, recovery. And the Fix Our Forest Act recognizes that each of these layers plays essential roles that need to be connected and coordinated. So we urge the enactment of the legislation and appreciate your leadership. Thank you.
Speaker 3
Thank you, Mr. Gordon. I will now recognize members for five minutes for their questions. We will start with the chairman, Mr. Westerman.
Speaker 1
Thank you, Chairman Tiffany, and thank you again to the witnesses for being here. I think it was 2018 after the Paradise Fire had a meeting with a lot of insurance company executives who were very concerned about being able to write policies in these fire prone areas, and their concern was not only that they wouldn't be able to offer insurance, but, that people wouldn't be able to buy insurance. And it seems like their concerns have become more and more true as time goes on. Mister Gordon, from an insurance perspective, can you please talk about how active force management can lower home insurance costs for consumers and make housing more affordable. You know, there's a lot of talk about affordability and rising prices.
How can force management play a role in decreasing these costs from an insurance perspective?
Speaker 7
Great question. So insurance is priced based on an actuarial analysis of risk. If our forests are properly managed and maintained, wildfire risks are reduced. If forests are not properly managed and have excessive fuel load, that increases the safety risk for the neighboring communities, and it undermines the availability and affordability of insurance. We think that FOFA would have provided enormous benefits, just as you said, if it had been in place before the Southern California fires.
We would have had better coordination, better address the fuel loads, more acres managed and treated, would have reduced ignition likelihood, slowed the fire spread. We think it would have a significant benefit. It's not gonna fix inflation. It's not gonna fix climate shifts or demographic changes, but it can significantly help our wildfire preparedness and mitigate those losses and save lives.
Speaker 1
Thank you. I know there was also a discussion about how we can make structures more fire resistant. The Firewise program, where you can create defensible space around homes. You can do, we can do the same thing, from an engineering standpoint and a structural standpoint when it comes to mitigating against hurricanes. You can build buildings that will withstand stronger winds, but we can't do anything really to stop the hurricanes.
But by doing active management, we can actually prevent these major fires from getting into residential neighborhoods. So it is the one natural disaster that we have some control over based on the human interactions that we have. A lot of these other ones, there's not much we can do.
Speaker 7
We certainly do have a lot more we can do, to improve the infrastructure, mitigate the fuel load, reduce the loss in a way you couldn't with wind. And in addition, as I mentioned, individual homeowners can adopt the best safety standards for wind. But for fire, even if you do it, if your neighbors don't, it's not enough. It has to be a community response. The fix our forest act is so important because it addresses the fuel load to reduce the likelihood of fire, to slow the spread, but it also works to help communities like Paradise Island to get everybody to adopt those fire standards so you don't have to worry about, even though you've done everything right, your neighbor hasn't, and you're still at risk.
Speaker 1
So a few weeks ago, we had a hearing in here, and one of the witnesses, it was actually the minority witness from Denver Water, said that, quote, the number one point she makes to people about lowering prices for consumers is the need for more active forest management. And she was talking about the damage to water utilities. So from an insurance perspective, or mister Crowder, I know you must hear a lot as mayor from your constituents about the affordability issue. How do you think active force management provisions can actually lower cost for consumers, including utility cost?
Speaker 4
Well, I think we're long overdue. And seven years since our fire, I'm still not seeing a lot of neighboring communities get cleared. I just, you know, the insurance companies are looking at it. The communities are looking at, we've got people that wanna come back to a fire-safe community. It's imperative that we do everything that we possibly can.
We've instituted probably the most stringent weed protection in the state. If it's mandatory, no high end is year round. Four inch brush, no taller. And, if it's not done, we cite. If it's still not cleared, we go out and clear.
Then we put a lien on the home. We can actually force a sale of the home. We have not done it yet. But this is what we've done to reach about a 90% compliance. And we've had insurance companies come up to Paradise now physically and look around, and actually, some are starting to write insurance there.
And that's our biggest obstacle right now. We're losing sales of homes and people coming back because they can't afford the insurance price.
Speaker 3
Gentlemen's time has expired, I'll recognize the ranking member, Mr. Huffman, for five minutes.
Speaker 2
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Doctor Culkin, I want to begin with you. We're having a conversation here about all these different aspects of making our communities safer and more resilient in the face of wildfire risk. And very little of it, it seems to me, involves actual forest management, although we're talking about a bill that's called Fix Our Forests. And to some degree, I think that challenges us in this conversation because there is this notion that there's a simple thing.
If we just fix our forests, we'll all be safer from catastrophic wildfires. Those scenes in Los Angeles right there had very little to do with the forests. The things that drove those fires were infrastructure and houses, structures, the kind of vegetation that needed to be managed to make those communities safer was not merchantable timber. It was scrub. And that's the case in many places along the wildland-urban interface that are vulnerable to wildfire.
So, it would be great to have a more nuanced conversation about this issue, one that is less, sort of politicized by this notion that if we go out and do a bunch of backcountry logging because we clear away a bunch of environmental loopholes for backcountry logging, that that's making us safer from wildfire. But that's a little bit of a false narrative. Is it not? You're the expert.
Speaker 6
Yeah. I'd agree. I mean, what I tried to get across in my testimony is community destruction and the condition of our landscapes, our wild lands, are related but separable problems, and they require separate solutions. Protecting community starts at the individual home, as we've talked about. The condition of the landscapes matters.
They are absolutely degraded. The West exists with water, and 70% of all water comes off of national forest lands. There is no substitute for fire in our wildlands. We need fire in those landscapes. Fuels management in the back country that supports more fuel on the landscape is really important because it allows us to safely get more fire while we protect communities.
And water is what drives the West, but we need to separate these problems. The other absolutely important point is that landscape management is inherently local. What happens in Southern California is very different than what happens in the Rocky Mountains, and the Northern Rockies and Southern Rockies are very different. There is a desperate need for more fuel management in Southern California. That's maintaining the fuel breaks, and that's working in those interface areas, working where ignitions occur.
In other places, we really need to worry about the health of our watersheds, and those are different problems. A lot of my work is also focused on how we bring fire management into this problem so that we recognize where firefighters are going to need to make a stand as fire comes from the wildlands into the communities, but also where firefighters can use fire effectively and safely to get more fire on the land. And fuels management, active fuels management has an absolute role to play in both of those things.
Speaker 2
Let's talk about that because, you know, that's the part of this that mister Westerman and I, and I think almost all of us agree on. There are places where we need to do much more proactive fuels management as well as the reintroduction of beneficial fire, and there are things within the Fix Our Forest Act that are good on that. We disagree about, you know, new environmental loopholes to do massive backcountry logging, but we agree that the small diameter stuff, especially in the right places, needs to happen. The challenge with that is economics. It is expensive to do this stuff.
And one of the things that we did with some legislation in the Democratic Congress was put some money on the table, to support, like, Department of Energy grants for things like biomass energy that could be located near these projects to take the wood chips and other things from these projects and find some economic value, rather than just having uneconomical solutions that never actually happen. I've visited some of these facilities that have received, under the Biden administration, DOE grants that were making it economic and possible to scale up these kinds of solutions that would provide both energy and forest resilience. But the goalposts have moved. A lot of that has been pulled back because I guess it was too woke or climate-y or something else that triggered a political filter with the new administration. Is that helpful as we try to actually do some of these things that we all say we support if we're, sort of, pulling funding from anything that might use a word like resiliency?
Speaker 6
Yeah. I mean, I'd like to start out saying I support logging on our national forest lands, where and when appropriate. But most of the material that is problematic from a wildfire standpoint is nonmerchable, and we need to treat that as a waste material, and the only way to get rid of a waste material is to pay for it to be removed from the forest. You know, throughout my career, biomass utilization was supposed to be the silver bullet to solve the problem. It isn't a silver bullet.
It requires investment, and it requires subsidies. And that material will not pay itself out.
Speaker 3
Gentlemen's time has expired, and I'll recognize Mr. McClintock for five minutes.
Speaker 8
Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is not a theoretical exercise. We know what works. Active land management works. We did it for decades, years ago.
The environmental laws that we began imposing 50 years ago simply don't work. Those laws now cost us a quarter of our national forest to catastrophic fire over the past decade because they've made active management of the public lands impossible. All of that excess growth comes out in one of two ways. Either we will carry it out, or nature will burn it out. There is no other way.
We used to auction off excess timber to logging companies, and they paid us to remove the excess. We leased public lands to cattle and sheep ranchers to suppress brush growth through grazing. And to the ranking member, I grew up in that region of the Palisades, and I can tell you that we used to allow widespread grazing throughout the Santa Monica Mountains to keep brush under control. And in Thousand Oaks, we used to have to stop along the roads to allow these vast flocks of sheep to cross as they pass from one field to another. We did controlled burns to remove the undergrowth.
We cut firebreaks to contain fires. We used herbicides to keep brush from the residential areas. We put out fires before they could explode out of control. The environmental laws, adopted in the 1970s, made active land management all but impossible, so nature has now returned to do the gardening her way by burning it out. These fires are not a new normal.
They're the old normal coming back because we abandoned our public lands, and catastrophic fire has returned to remove the excess growth. I mean, a few examples. Firebreaks. When I toured the King Fire years ago, I saw a makeshift firebreak that was cut during the frenzy of the fire. The firefighters said, we've known for years that a fire would come through here.
And for years, we tried to get a permit so that we could cut a fire break properly and do it right here. Instead, they had to do it on the fly in the middle of.
Speaker 8
Fire, and it didn't hold. You look at Altadena. In Trump's first term, he started the process to create firebreaks in the San Gabriel Mountains to protect that town. Biden reversed course, and two years ago actually expanded national monument status for those lands that made fire breaks impossible to produce. Ironically, these foolish policies condemn the very lands we're trying to protect from catastrophic fire.
I've already mentioned grazing. Controlled burns. Controlled burns were once done all the time to remove brush from building up. Granting a permit now under NEPA takes more than five years of study before you can do it. That is a lot of brush, and it shouldn't surprise us that nature steps in through uncontrolled burns.
Price controls on insurance. Insurance prices put a dollar value on risk, and those prices guide consumers in making rational choices. Price controls only distort those signals. They ultimately create a shortage of whatever it is they're trying to control. California insurers are forbidden from charging enough to cover their risk, so they withdraw from the market, leaving Californians without coverage at all.
You know, Mayor Crowder, there are members on this committee who have devoted their entire career to supporting legislation that has made management of our wild lands endlessly time consuming and ultimately cost prohibitive. They continue to be the biggest impediment that we have to reforming and streamlining these laws. What would you like to say to them today?
Speaker 4
Well, we need to change our practice because, obviously, they're not working. Cal Fire tells me, you know, they are doing a great job of trying to get rid of some of this brush. And a lot of stuff they just give up on because they said they failed to burn some properties, some overgrowth, and they get hit with a lawsuit.
Speaker 4
So they give it up. So there's where a good part of the problem that we have is.
Speaker 8
Now lived with these laws like ESA and NEPA for 50 years. They were adopted with the promise that they'd improve the forest environment. I think after 50 years of those policies, we've got the right, the right to ask, how's the forest environment doing? What's your answer?
Speaker 4
Well, I just think we've got to, I'm a huge supporter of defensible space now after going through the campfire. It worked. It is working. We've had some smaller fires since. You're never gonna stop.
Speaker 8
I've got one more question I want to fit in, mister Gordon, just very quickly. I assume insurers don't make money by not selling insurance. So why have so many insurance companies stopped selling insurance in California?
Speaker 7
Because, according to the NAIC, the state insurance regulators, over the last decade, insurers have had a negative return on net worth compared to roughly 15% return on net worth for the broader Fortune 500. So what we're seeing is, the state just layers on mandate after coverage mandate after coverage mandate. The cost escalates. The infrastructure has failed. They're not doing the prescribed burns.
They're not reducing the fuel load. The single most effective fire prevention measure is creating a five-foot defensible perimeter around your house. Just moving dry brush five feet away. They enacted it in 2020. They still haven't implemented it six years later.
Speaker 8
So Reagan got it right. Government's not the solution to our problems. Government is the problem. Thank you.
Speaker 3
Gentlemen, as time has expired now, recognize Mister Stauber for five minutes.
Speaker 9
Thank you very much, Chairman Tiffany. Mister Gordon, thank you for joining us this morning. When we talk about devastating fires, like the ones we saw last year in Southern California, we often talk about the cost of these wildfires in the context of the cost that Americans face when rebuilding their homes. The cost we face when rebuilding lost infrastructure and the cost to local, state, and federal governments when they respond to these fires. I'm gonna follow up on what the chairman Westerman spoke about.
The costs are devastating and, in some cases, insurmountable. That said, I think we should also be focusing our attention on the cost Americans face before a fire even breaks out. How are failed forest management policies impacting the wallets of everyday Americans? And would you agree that Americans are forced to pay for these failed policies when it comes to increased insurance premiums for their homes?
Speaker 7
Yes. It's having a significant cost. We're seeing the wildfire costs, particularly in California, but in a number of states like Minnesota, those risks are escalating. And they're escalating in part because the governments aren't addressing the infrastructure. They aren't addressing the fuel load.
They aren't implementing the fire safety standards. We need to work together. We have the solutions, but we need to actually get it done and execute.
Speaker 9
As wildfire risk spreads to different areas of the country that traditionally have not been susceptible to wildfires, more and more Americans are now facing this economic burden. Would you agree with that?
Speaker 7
Yes. We're seeing much more wildfire risk. Particularly, we're now seeing a significant number, maybe even close to half of new homes being built in areas with fire risk. So it's a growing problem.
Speaker 9
And would you agree that our failed forest management policies ultimately are an affordability issue for Americans?
Speaker 7
We could definitely make homes more affordable if we improve our forest management policies and our fire safety standards, which FOFA would help to do.
Speaker 9
So, McClintock, I want to follow-up on what he says. So let me give you a hypothetical. Say the forest service is looking to conduct prescribed burns or mechanical thinning of an area near a group of homes. In many cases like this, the forest service needs to spend months, if not years, conducting a NEPA analysis. And once that analysis is conducted, it often ends up being litigated for years on end.
So you got years for the analysis, years for the litigation. All the while, the forest service is not able to conduct the important management of the forest, and fire risk increases. So, mister Gordon, in this example, would you agree that this lack of proper management because of years of litigation over a NEPA analysis would increase the risk to the owners, the homeowners in this area?
Speaker 7
So I'm not a NEPA expert, but I will say California in particular has known about their fire risk for years and years. The governor, the fire service has warned about it, and yet they're still failing to take action in addressing the forest and addressing some of the utility cost fires and getting implementation of all the fire safety standards. So it's clear that we can and need.
Speaker 9
to do more in this area and without delays. Is it probable that these homeowners' insurance premiums might increase?
Speaker 7
Well, if we don't do anything, then, we're seeing those disasters spike. Again, the wildfire losses in the last decade were more than five times any previous decade, and that doesn't include the record 40,000,000,000 wildfire last year. So those losses and risk to safety are greatly increasing, and we'll continue to do so if we don't take action.
Speaker 9
Thank you. You know, it's clear that the failure to act and support reforms that lead to proper forest management is hurting everyday Americans and their wallets. This is ultimately an affordability issue. I would encourage my colleagues who are serious in addressing affordability to join us and get serious about reforming and strengthening our forest management policies. Mister Mills, in just the time I have, I simply want to say thank you for the work that you've done in developing the WatchDuty app.
I have it on my phone, and many do. I wasn't aware of it until the fires in Northern Minnesota last year. It's an incredible tool that many of my constituents used during the fire season, and it saved lives and property from destruction during the wildfires across Northern Minnesota last year. So on behalf of my constituents and myself, I want to say thank you, and I yield back.
Speaker 3
Gentleman yields, and I'll recognize the gentleman from Oregon for his questioning.
Speaker 10
Thank you, Mister Chair, and thank all of the witnesses for being here. Doctor. Colkin, I'm not sure which one of you'd ask this question of, but I'll start with you. And the assertion was made earlier by the ranking member that if we just would focus on climate change and its causes, this problem would go away. He might be right, but it's gonna.
Speaker 6
Well, I mean, climate change is certainly a significant component of what is happening and why these fires are so much more severe, but also is a hundred years of suppression. We've made fire go away from our landscapes that were designed with fire. Native Americans burned these landscapes regularly and consistently, and we've excluded fire. And so there's a deficit that's come due. I think, you know, we are going to have a tough next 20 years, 30 years.
When I look at these largest, most complex wildland fires, the only thing that seems to stop them, well, there's two things that stop them. Major changes in weather and past large fires. So, basically, our success in these large wildland fires comes from our past failures. Those are the only things that stop these most problematic fires.
Speaker 10
I think, in listening to forestry experts from Oregon State, I'm from Oregon, the assertion was that our future of hotter, drier is, quote, their words, baked in for the next 30 to 40 years, even if we stopped creating CO2 tomorrow. And so this assertion that we have misdirected our attention in the FOFA bill, I believe is incorrect, because we have to adapt to a situation that we know is going to continue for perhaps another half century and, I would guess, longer. But you are pointing out what should be done, and I think the FOFA bill addresses that. Am I correct?
Speaker 6
There are absolutely positive reforms that are needed. NEPA is problematic. It's time-consuming. But if we want to protect our communities, we start at the community. We start at the home, and we start at the adjacent lands.
We also have that fire deficit in our public lands that we need to address, and those are different strategies. My research is really focused on how we use our fuels management to make firefighting more successful. And firefighting is stopping those problematic fires as they come out of the wild lands into communities, and it's also safely getting more fire into our wild lands. I think one of the most important things is more fire comes from private land onto federal land, then federal land to private land. The devastation comes when it gets into the communities, but for the most part, ignitions happen on problematic land, ignitions do not happen on federal land that often.
Speaker 10
They happen. Let me move to, Mister Gordon just briefly. I wanna shift over to affordability, because that certainly is an issue that people are talking about. And I wanna talk about how unaffordable insurance has become in areas that can't get their act together and start driving it down, as you repeatedly suggest that they should. And I think, of course, the FOFA bill would help us do that.
But I'm just looking at these numbers here. It appears that in California, in fire-prone areas, rates have gone up 300 to 500%, up to $6,000 a year in some cases. Are these numbers correct?
Speaker 7
Well, I think those numbers may be anecdotal. They're certainly not averages. And, in fact, California has some of the lowest overall insurance rates. What we are seeing is the primary driver for insurance costs is simply building inflation. It's the inflation in building labor and materials that skyrocketed after the pandemic.
And then people are building more expensive buildings in the wildland-urban interface. So the primary there is a climate element, but the primary cost driver is the inflation and the rapid development in places like California, places like Oregon. If we're going to build there, you need to address forest management.
Speaker 10
You we do. I'm not disputing that one bit. What I'm trying to say is, in order to get something done when it comes to preventing these fires, we need to get people together. The FOFA bill would help encourage that. That's what I've heard. Do I have that?
Speaker 10
If an individual wants to go in and drive down their own rate, just taking care of themselves will not work. You've already said that. I agree with that completely. Yes. So the FOFA bill is one of the few ways that I've seen around here where we could immediately address affordability if we could get it passed.
If the Senate would get busy and pass it, then we could do something positive to bring these people together. Is that correct?
Speaker 10
And, again, going back to affordability, $500 a month is what a $6,000 policy would cost. And I understand the increase, the cost of housing, but I would blame our lack of adaptation. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I yield back.
Speaker 3
Gentlemen, Yields, we are now going to take a short break. We have votes on the floor, and we hope you will join us after we recess here, and we will be back here as quickly as possible. We're hoping for 11:45 or so that we'll come back, because members will have questions for you. So the subcommittee now stands in recess, subject to the call of the chair. Subcommittee on Federal Lands will come to order.
Thank you to our witnesses for your patience here as we had to cast a couple of votes, and we are going to start with questions. Miss Malloy, would you like me to go first, or do you want to start in? Yeah. Okay. I'm gonna start in here.
I wanna start it by asking a question for the entire panel. We're gonna start with you, Mayor Crowder. As we look to the future to ensure no communities face the same fate as a community like yours that were affected by last year's fires, what do you think is the single most important action Congress should take and why? What is that one thing that really comes to mind for you? And you may start, Mayor Crowder.
Speaker 4
Well, in a short answer, it would be, let's get this fix this force bill passed and initiated and going. I think that's one of the most important things that we can do that will keep everybody safe. We'll never stop a wildfire, but we can mitigate the damage it does.
Speaker 3
Is there anything not to put you on the spot here? Yes. I'm actually putting you on the spot. But, is there a single item in the fix our force act? I don't know how familiar you are with all the details there.
Is there a single thing in there that caught your eye?
Speaker 4
Well, it's just basically, you know, let's get rid of the obvious fuel. Our fire was fuel that had been around for 80 years, and, you couple it with the dry conditions and stuff. It's gone,
Speaker 3
and that's what we need to prevent. So in other words, the fuel reduction part of it is something that's imperative if we're gonna prevent these wildfires in the future. Is that correct? Absolutely. Yeah.
Mister Mills, your turn.
Speaker 5
Well, I'll have to second that. Obviously, passing fixer forests is imperative. And I think, on top of that, empowering Brian Fennessey, the new chief of the US Wildland Fire Service, is imperative.
Speaker 3
is giving him the authority to take the actions that are necessary. Is that what you're saying?
Speaker 6
Yeah. There is no silver bullet. We are faced with these risks for the foreseeable future. I think the most important thing is to invest in community preparation for these kinds of events, and that's technical assistance. It's grant funding to support evacuation planning in support of our most vulnerable people, and it's us incentivizing home hardening and infrastructure hardening.
Speaker 7
So, mister chairman, certainly, we strongly support FOFA. I think it would have significant benefits, but I will say, probably the most important thing that we could change is legal system abuse. So in 2023, Florida had the highest homeowner insurance rates in the nation because of legal system abuse. Only 9% of the homeowners' insurance claims were in Florida, but 70% of the insurance lawsuits occurred there. They enacted very significant legal system abuse reform, including eliminating one-way attorney fees, terminating assignment of benefits, a number of other significant improvements.
By 2024, they have the lowest insurance rate increases in the nation. Their state residual market reduced its exposure by nearly half, and we saw it as just a huge success for Florida consumers. So, it'd be great if Congress could fix inflation. It would be great if we could address climate and, particularly, great if we could address legal system abuse. But FOFA's a great start to helping homeowners' affordability.
Speaker 3
Yeah. Is that legal abuse, legal system abuse? Is that also happening in states like California?
Speaker 7
Absolutely. California is becoming one of the most expensive states. We're seeing nuclear verdicts skyrocket, damages everywhere. We're seeing a smoke chaser industry emerging, ignoring science-based smoke standards. Legal system abuse has become, and California has become one of the top, what they call, tort hellholes.
So it's a great state. I grew up there, but the legal system abuse is an enormous problem in California. A tort hellhole.
Speaker 3
Mister Culkin, you worked for the forest service for more than two decades, and you're very familiar with the layers of analysis that the agency must complete when it does vegetation management. Earlier in the hearing, you stated that NEPA is problematic and time-consuming. Could you just expand on that a little bit as far as how it became problematic and time consuming?
Speaker 6
You know, NEPA, work has not been my specialty. So I do see the time it takes from the initiation of a project to completion of a project. It's too long, and there are ways of reforming that as that's not my expertise. But getting more work done on the ground is critically important. One of the things we need to have when we do that work on the ground is those resources to do the physical work too.
So it's not just NEPA, it's also taking care of the people who conduct the work.
Speaker 3
I think your statement is accurate, and I would just point out one of my favorite charts here. When you take a look at timber harvested versus the number of wildfires that we've had in the United States, I always believe the watershed year is 1988. This chart starts in 1984. But when we stopped harvesting wood in part because of lawsuits, when we started to reduce the amount of wood harvested here on our public lands, wildfire went up. I mean, there is a direct correlation between timber harvested and the amount of timber burned on our federal forest, and we should change that.
And it will no longer be expensive to manage our national forest if we just bring back timber management. It was really interesting when we were out in Yosemite a couple of years ago. One of our members who was along, I think it was representative McClintock, said that there are 200 mills across the Sierra that have closed since the 1990s. Think about that. 200 million.
And we wonder why wood is not being consumed. When you do not have the ability to accept that would, you gotta figure out a way to be able to deal with it. Well, mother nature knows how to deal with it if we don't deal with it, and it is to burn. And we have the ability to manage properly, including burning, but also including grazing and harvesting. And shouldn't we be using some of that wood to be able to build homes right here in America, rather than importing that wood from other countries?
So, with that, I yield and turn to the gentle lady from Utah for her questioning.
Speaker 11
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I will just echo that. I represent Utah's 2nd Congressional District, and we also have mills that have been closed down because of lawsuits and the fear of lawsuits. And now we have fuels that are building up when there's a really obvious economic answer to this, which is let people go make a living harvesting timber instead of letting it burn, and then people can't make a living. Mister Mayor Crowder, your story is really compelling.
Listening to you talk about what happened in your community is really helpful when we are making policy decisions. And I'm just thankful that all of you are here talking about fix our force. It is time to change the way we think about all of these things. But you said that you're trying to build back more resilient, and that now you have 90% compliance with some of these fire resiliency codes. Is there anything you'd like to add about that?
I just thought that was really helpful talking about a local government coming up with solutions that are helping the people who live there.
Speaker 4
So we've expanded, you know, the traditional homes to cement homes, quonset hut homes, more fire resilient home foam blocks. Just anything that would meet the resilience. We were already the first, I believe, place to initiate the IPHS standards into our code, which is the five foot clearance. Weeds in our community were a huge issue because, obviously, we had so many vacant lots and they were overgrown. And a lot of people had left the state, didn't care about maintaining them. Neighbors were concerned, and we're having a hard time with compliance.
So we put in a really strict ordinance year round. You had to maintain that lot whether you lived there or not. And, just doing everything to be as fire-safe as we can. We have had some insurance companies come up and visit us, boots on the ground, look around, say, yeah, we'll write some insurance there. So everything that we're doing is helping to harden our new homes and also to, hopefully, help with insurance down the road.
Speaker 11
Thank you. It just seems logical to me that when your local government is asking you to do things that you can see the benefit of and you buy into it, it's a much better process than if the federal government is coming in and saying this is what you have to do and you don't like it. Mister Gordon, I I've also been interested in what you're saying about insurance and why it's getting so expensive and why it's hard to insure homes when you know that there's going to be a high fire risk. The Fix Our Forest Act includes grazing provisions and talks about how grazing can be used to manage fuels. Is that something insurance companies are willing to buy into and incentivize?
Speaker 7
So I we're not experts in the best way to clear fuel load, whether it's burns or mechanical thinning or grazing, you know, whatever policymakers think is most important. But I will say what we're seeing in a lot of these states, Utah, for example, highest per capita home building in the high wildfire risk zones, about 5 times higher than the next state. We're seeing that in California as well, the majority of new homes being built in the wildfire risk areas. If we're gonna build more expensive buildings in higher fire risk areas, it just becomes that much more essential that we do the forest clearing, whether it's grazing or some other means. We have to do that to protect lives and to keep insurance available and affordable.
Speaker 11
Thank you. I appreciate that. There's sort of been an antigrazing bent for a few years where there's an ethic out there that if animals are on the landscape, they're doing damage. And I think it's time to turn that around and let animals do some of the work to help us be fire wise. You also talked in your testimony about the fireshed center.
And would you just expand a little? I'm almost out of time. Sorry, Mr. Mills. I'll have to ask you the questions in writing later, but about how that would work, how the fireshed centers would work.
Speaker 7
So we've talked, several of us have talked about it, and how insurers have developed a lot of wildfire safety standards. We also were using new wildfire modeling, AI analysis of aerial imagery for fire detection. The federal agencies have developed various tools like real-time monitoring and prediction services. The fireshed center would connect the private sector in various state and federal work streams so that they become more interoperable. They consolidate data.
They help prioritize resources. We shouldn't all be working on the same kinds of, whether it's alerts or detection or other things, without talking to each other and working together. So the fireside center will play a critical role in coordinating all of these different community efforts.
Speaker 11
Yeah. I agree. I think it'll also be helpful with what I talked to Mayor Crowder about, where you have local buy-in, and some of the things I was gonna ask Mister Mills about, where you are getting information to people efficiently. So thank you for that. And I'm out of time, so I will yield back.
Speaker 3
The gentlelady's time has expired, and I'll recognize Miss Dexter for her questioning.
Speaker 12
Thank you, mister chair, and thank you for all of our witnesses coming to be with us today. I'll just say the timing of this hearing is deeply troubling given the demonstrated failures of this administration and the profound mismanagement of the department of homeland security under Christy Nome, whose leadership directly oversees FEMA. Mayor Crowder, you have said in your testimony the 2018 Camp Fire was one of the deadliest and most destructive wildfires in California's history. According to FEMA records, the state of California was provided $2,600,000,000 in funding to support rebuilding and recovery. From your perspective, how critical was that funding?
And what did it mean for Paradise's ability to recover after such a devastating loss?
Speaker 4
It was very critical for us. We were not, we're one of the poorest counties in California. We had a lot of people who were underinsured. Most people were underinsured. We had a lot of non insured.
So in the ability to come back, it we would not be where we are right now without the health that we got. We didn't have the finance. We had a building department that used to build five homes, 10 homes a year.
Speaker 4
And we went from that to trying to build 500. So there was a lot of grant money that went for us to get more people in our building department. Right. So it was critical.
Speaker 12
Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And that funding being critical for Paradise and the campfire recovery underscores the role that FEMA must play in disaster recovery. We are here today to discuss the tragedy of the Los Angeles fires last year, which killed 31 people, destroyed thousands of homes, and has left tens of thousands of families displaced. This was yet another one of the deadliest and most destructive wildfires in recent history, and it demanded a full, urgent, and sustained federal response. Instead, one year later, recovery assistance for the LA Fires amounts to approximately 1% of the total estimated losses.
That shortfall is staggering. Time and again, this administration has taken steps that undermine FEMA's capacity to respond effectively, particularly when the disaster affect states it views as politically misaligned. Last year alone, over the course of just six months, the Government Accountability Office reported that FEMA lost approximately 2,500 staff due to this administration's reckless decisions. Those losses meant slower response times, fewer caseworkers, and less support for disaster survivors. And just days ago, several unions sued to block the loss of an additional 10,000 FEMA jobs.
The consequences are ongoing and severe despite the fact that seven in 10 residents impacted by the LA fires remain displaced. FEMA's latest round of recovery funding was just announced last week. California was nowhere to be found on that list. Notably, the majority of that funding went to red states. The pattern is clear. Under Secretary Nome's leadership, FEMA is weaker, slower, less responsive, and families across this country are paying the price.
It is difficult to take hearings like this seriously or to meaningfully discuss solutions when the administration charged with disaster response continues to hollow out FEMA, and fails the communities that depend on it. I would urge my colleagues to join me in holding this administration accountable for the sake of their recovering communities. And because I was able to finish that quicker than expected, I do want to get, mister Culkin to you, doctor Culkin. I'm sorry. From your perspective, what is needed at the federal level to support community-level risk reduction, both to reduce wildfire impacts and to better protect people from wildfire smoke?
Speaker 6
Thank you very much. So, again, I think there's a two-pronged problem here. What we do to protect communities is distinct from what we do to deal with our landscapes, and the landscapes are largely where the smoke issue comes from. For the landscapes, the federal government lacks the authority and responsibility for the built environment, but that does not mean there is not a role. There's a role to invest in community preparedness, yeah.
Evacuation planning, particularly for the most vulnerable amongst us, and for incentivizing home hardening. In the LA Fires, there's an emerging thing that's really interesting, the community brigades that started in Malibu. You know, can we get the volunteer firefighting workforce to actually show up in the built environment to do the preparation and the, for home hardening, to do vegetation management? And when fire occurs, then they become a mobile strike force that enhances our capability. I talked to one of the leading fire managers of the Palisades, and what he said is what I had was 80 type 1 engines, big municipal engines.
What I needed was 300 type six engines, basically four people in an F350 or something like that. For smoke management, we're gonna have to deal with smoke. And, again, what we have to do is have strategies to protect our most vulnerable, and that's identification, early warning, and then safe spaces for them. Prescribed fire is absolutely gonna be critical to any solution that we come up with, and prescribed fire creates smoke. There is no smoke-free solution.
So preparation and protection of the most vulnerable is gonna be key in that environment.
Speaker 12
Thank you so much, doctor Culkin, and I recognize him over time. He'll be back. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Speaker 3
The gentleman lady's time has expired now. Recognize the ranking member, Mr. Nagus, for his questioning.
Speaker 13
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to the witnesses. Thank you all for being here, and certainly grateful for the opportunity to participate in a hearing on a topic that is very important, close to home. I state that I proudly represent Colorado, in my district, the 2nd Congressional District, which has been in the epicenter of multiple historic wildfires over the course of the last six years. I will say, however, you.
Speaker 13
Had planned remarks, and I had intended to rely on those planned remarks to talk a bit about our experience in Colorado and the terrible Marshall Fire, just by way of example, back in 2021, five years, nearly five years ago now, that devastated my community. Over a thousand homes that were ultimately burned in the span of 18 hours, and the necessity for the work that needs to be done at the federal level to prevent wildfires, like the Marshall Fire, from metastasizing into the future. But I have to just say, I wanna echo the remarks of my colleague from Oregon, because this experience, this hearing is a bit confounding to me, to be candid. Right now, the Trump administration is refusing to approve disaster declarations for multiple wildfires that have happened over the course of the last year and a half. And the only basis for the Trump administration's decision is that these disaster declarations were submitted by Democratic governors.
That's it. That's the new normal we find ourselves in. Now when I was chair of this subcommittee, we held many hearings like this one, where we had honest, good-faith conversations about wildfire mitigation and resiliency and home hardening and all of the challenges we face and the work that needs to be done. But it is very difficult to fathom having those conversations right now when we're facing this existential challenge that the Trump administration is posing by virtue of deciding that they're gonna politically retaliate against states that didn't vote for Donald Trump in the last election. That's what this has become.
And I have great disdain for having to perhaps engage on this topic in this hearing with these witnesses, each of whom I know have spent a great deal of time. I reviewed your testimony. Of course, the experience in Paradise, California, has been very instructive for communities in Colorado. And so to the mayor and to the other folks that have gathered here from a variety of different industries, I appreciate your hard work. But I just have to be candid with you that I find it very difficult to take my colleagues on the other side seriously right now.
If they were serious about wildfire resiliency, wildfire mitigation, assisting communities, they could start by joining us and convincing the Trump administration to grant these disaster declarations. And just so that it's clear to everyone that this isn't hyperbole, let me give you an example. A year ago, Colorado experienced the fourth-largest wildfire in the history of our state, the Lee Fire in Rio Blanco County. This is a county on the Western Slope of Colorado that voted for Donald Trump with 80% of the vote. 80% of the people who live in this county voted for Donald Trump.
The disaster declaration for that fire, 137,000 acres burned, a land size bigger than the city of Chicago. The disaster declaration, $30,000,000 sitting on Donald Trump's desk. He refuses to sign it. Why? Because our governor is a Democrat.
It's outlandish. And so, I look forward. I can I can promise you this? There will be many hearings in the future where we'll have an opportunity to engage in good faith on the various items you all have proposed that I am very passionate about, and I share your passion. But right now, we are facing a very clear crisis, at least as far as the communities that I represent are concerned.
And that crisis is being caused by the Trump administration. You know? I don't how can we have a conversation about investments in wildfire resiliency when the Trump administration is gutting the interior department, gutting the forest service, gutting the national park service? How do we have a conversation about disaster response when they're dismantling FEMA? And we're just supposed to pretend like this isn't happening in real time, that we're just having a normal hearing where we engage in, you know, colloquies about conventional solutions, and all the rest.
Madness. So I thank the witnesses. And I apologize, I guess I would say, on behalf of my colleagues on their side of the aisle because they have not, this is not a hearing that was scheduled in good faith in my view. And with that, I yield back to balance my time.
Speaker 3
Gentlemen, time has expired. Now recognize the gentleman from Utah for his questioning.
Speaker 14
Thank you, mister chair, for convening us, and thanks to the witnesses for your patience in listening to us and working through these important issues. One year after the devastating wildfires in Los Angeles, Congress acted with urgency and bipartisan resolve to pass the Fix Our Forest Act. That legislation represented a significant step forward in modernizing forest management. In the past year, we have already seen meaningful progress in the form of faster project approvals, as well as expanded thinning and prescribed burn programs, and improved cross-jurisdictional collaboration. These accomplishments do matter, they're saving taxpayer dollars, protecting watersheds, and, most importantly, helping to safeguard homes, businesses, and lives.
But even as we remember the family still rebuilding in Los Angeles, wildfires continue to devastate communities across the West. Just this past year, Utah faced a wildfire numbering over 70,000 acres in Monroe Canyon, threatening homes, livelihoods, and critical infrastructure. These events underscore a hard truth. Wildfire is no longer a regional or seasonal problem. Fire seasons are longer.
Fires are more intense, and their behavior is increasingly unpredictable. Drought, overgrown forest, and extreme weather are creating the conditions for catastrophic fires to ignite and spread at unprecedented speed. The Fix Our Forest Act was a critical first step, but it was never intended to be the finish line. If we are serious about protecting lives, property, and our public lands, we must continue to build on this legislation, remove remaining barriers, and adapt our policies to meet the escalating reality on the ground. Mayor Crowder, I wanted to talk to you first.
Thank you for being here. The devastation that your community has faced is something most of us can only imagine. And I'm sorry you and your community have had to go through that. But thanks for being with us. And can you itemize some of the ways that since the Fix Our Forest Act has passed, how things have gotten some better, and the aftermath of what you've had to deal with, and how federal coordination and state and local entities are working better together?
Speaker 4
Well, I think we kinda wrote the book on, aftermath of a fire of this magnitude. I've seen we have gotten a lot of federal and state help since the fire. I think there's a lot more attention being paid, at least in our area, to forest management. Building hardening. We've gotten some federal grants to give to homes that survive, to help harden them as far as new roofs, new windows, new sidings.
So I think there's been progress made. I think we still got a ways to go, but we definitely made that type of progress since the fire.
Speaker 14
Sorry you've had to learn that way, but thanks for itemizing some of those ways that you've responded since then. Doctor. Colcon, I had a question for you. And you've talked about the critical need for more prescribed fires and mitigating the wildfire danger that's out there. Can you tell me how those kinds of techniques can benefit Western states such as California and Utah?
Speaker 6
Yeah. It's very clear. The only solution to wildfire is more fire. We need more fire on the ground. There is no substitute for fire.
Mechanical treatments may be necessary so that we can safely burn, but we must burn. I think the prescribed fire program, we are always going to have challenges getting at the pace and scale necessary. Air quality standards are difficult to maintain. The workforce necessary to do this is not on the ground and not available. One of the things that I continue to emphasize is how we respond to fire matters.
And we can respond to fire in ways that responsibly get more fire on the landscape that make us safer in the future. I've worked with incident management teams and seen it done. 6 Rivers Lightning Complex, 50,000 acres of good fire was put on the landscape during a suppression event. These are full suppression fires, but we can and must get good fire on the ground. Prescribed fire is a critical component to it, but it needs to set the stage for other good fire management.
Do you feel?
Speaker 14
Like our technology is such that we can use those prescribed fires in a way that does not present danger to the communities nearby?
Speaker 6
That's one of the fundamental challenges. There is danger out there. The burns that create the most risk reduction are inherently risky, but we know the consequences of not doing this. You know, interestingly, we did a study of the Los Conchos and Serogrande fires. The Serogrande in 2000 was considered one of the worst prescribed fire disasters, and it burned a large portion of Los Alamos.
Ten years later, the Los Conchas fire would have taken out way more than Los Angeles. So, again, the worst prescribed fire disaster saved Los Alamos. And so there is no risk solution. We have gotten a lot better at understanding that risk and working towards better strategies that are lower risk, but we cannot eliminate risk.
Speaker 14
Thank you. Mister Mills, you talked about what does and doesn't work in regard to wildfires, and you identified bureaucratic delays as a big problem associated with them. How it's streamlining information and coordination between entities offer better protection to our citizens in these high risk areas?
Speaker 5
I think the best way to really look at this is look at examples that work rather than what I've done, because what I've created is modeled after how the weather service treats tornadoes. When a tornado touches down, an alert is sent immediately. No one passes go, no one calls the diplomat, the bureaucrat, the judge. They press a button because it's happening. What happens in fires and all, similarly in floods, is there's a chain of events that cascades and the system collapses.
And people are now finding out about fires when it's on their doorstep or the tankers are overhead. There are ways to do this. We've done this in America before, and I'm just mirroring what the weather service has done in the past.
Speaker 14
Thank you, mister, thank you for that response, mister Sheriff. My time has expired. I yield back.
Speaker 3
Gentlemen's time has expired, and I see no other members here. I'd like to thank the witnesses for your testimony here today, and thank you. Whenever we talk about wildfire, the witnesses travel a long way to get here because you are in the Western States, the epicenter of fire. Members of the subcommittee may have some additional questions for you today, and we will ask the witnesses to respond in writing. Under committee rule three, members of the subcommittee must submit questions to the subcommittee clerk by 5 PM on Friday, 02/06/2026.
The hearing record will be held open for 10 business days for your responses if there is no further business. Without objection, the subcommittee on federal lands stands adjourned.
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