Posted by: Kim_Hamilton on 09/10/2009 10:09 AM
Updated by: Kim_Hamilton on 09/10/2009 01:19 PM
Expires: 01/01/2014 12:00 AM
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Governor Holds Meeting with Fire Officials Regarding the Emergency Response Initiative
DIRECTOR BETTENHAUSEN: Well, Governor, thank you very much for coming to meet with the Fire Coalition who is here in the Capitol today to support your Emergency Response Initiative, which is all about preserving our world-class Mutual Aid System here in California, building on local community capabilities in our fire departments, protecting for all hazards. And so let me go around the room so you get an idea of all of the groups and organizations, that represent 30,000 firefighters throughout the state of California, who unanimously support your Emergency Response Initiative....
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Of course, you know Lou Paulson.
CHIEF PAULSON: Lou Paulson, president of the California Professional Firefighters.
DIRECTOR BETTENHAUSEN: And co-chair of your Blue Ribbon Taskforce.
CHIEF GILBERT: Sheldon Gilbert, president of the California Fire Chiefs Association, the other co-chair of the taskforce.
CHIEF ZAGARIS: Kim Zagaris, fire chief for Cal EMA.
CHIEF STONE: Lew Stone, secretary treasurer of the CPF and the Burbank Fire Department.
CAPTAIN CROW:
Dan Crow, First District vice president of the CPF and captain with the Redlands Fire Department.
CAPTAIN WEIST:
Bobby Weist, Third District vice president with CPF and a Davis fire captain.
CAPTAIN MAHON:
Chris Mahon, CPF Second District vice president and a captain with Ventura County Fire.
CHIEF GARDNER:
Tom Gardner, CPF Firefighters, just recently retired, representing President Wolf. He couldn’t be here today for the CPF Firefighters.
CHIEF VELA:
Jasen Vela, local government, Montague, California.
CHIEF MASSONE:
Mike Massone with CPF, Fifth District vice president.
CHIEF BAKER:
Chris Baker, California State Firefighters Association Board of Directors.
CHIEF SHAFFER:
Demetrius Shaffer, fire chief city of Newark and president (Inaudible) City Fire Chiefs.
DEP. DIRECTOR PIMLOTT:
I’m Ken Pimlott, I’m deputy director of CAL FIRE.
SECRETARY BRADSHAW:
Vickie Bradshaw.
DIRECTOR BETTENHAUSEN:
Of course, Vickie Bradshaw, the Governor’s Cabinet Secretary. And Tom Sawyer, your liaison to our entire first responder community.
TOM SAWYER:
I really want to thank—these guys scrambled. This was put together in the last hour for you, Governor and they certainly appreciate you taking your time. But they were up here and they—it was like we rang the fire bell. They showed up, without the Dalmatian. (Laughter)
GOVERNOR SCHWARZENEGGER:
Well, I appreciate it, obviously, very much. And this was put together because I knew that you were in the building. And so first I want to say thank you to Vickie Bradshaw and also to Tom Sawyer and of course to Matt Bettenhausen. Everyone is doing such a great job.
And I want to thank all of you, on such a short notice to come down here. I want to say thank you again to, of course, our Blue Ribbon Taskforce. Both of you, Lou Paulson and Chief Sheldon Gilbert, are doing such a great job and making always the great recommendations and pushing us to put more resources aside for firefighting activities. So thank you very much.
And also, Lou, a few years ago gave me a good idea when I said, “You know, I feel like I want to do something for the firefighters. They are always serving us and doing such a great job with fighting the fires. Do you have any ideas?”
And he said, “Why don’t you serve breakfast to them, because they will appreciate that?” (Laughter) And it’s a little gesture but that’s what I did the other day, again. But it was your idea, because you told me that years ago and then one time we actually cooked together, remember and did all of those things.
But anyway, I just wanted to get together with everyone,
A. Because you are in the building and
B. I wanted to compliment you, because all of you are in charge of all kinds of emergencies in California, especially now in putting out those fires.
We have a huge amount of fires. California is always known for—you know, we do everything big. And so even our disasters are big and our fires are big and our mudslides are big. When our water pipes break they’re big and, when we have earthquakes, many times they are big. And so all of those things, all of those activities, you all come in and respond always in an extraordinary way. So I want to just say thank you to the great work that you have been doing for the state of California and even sometimes going outside of California to help other states, like with Katrina.
But also at the same time, what is so great is that you were here in the building. And what you’re doing here is not just having a schmoozing session but you are here putting out fires in the building. You’re going from door to door to talk to the legislators to make sure that we pass legislation that is very important for California and for public safety, for us to have an increase in funding available for, if it is fixed-wing aircraft that we need, if it is helicopters, more fire engines, more manpower, all of those kinds of things that we need.
But of course, when you have this economic crisis, there’s a limited amount of money, so now it’s more important than ever to have more funding. And so we have, of course, been talking about the Emergency Response Initiative since last year. It didn’t pass last year, we were not successful during our budget negotiations in February. But now, again, we have a chance to get that passed. And so this is why I think that it’s one thing when we talk to the legislators about these very important issues, about getting more funding but we talk about so many different areas.
But when you go and knock on the door and you talk about your experience, versed in experience, of how now all of a sudden San Francisco didn’t want to release any of the fire trucks through our Mutual Aid System because they are scared that they don’t have enough fire trucks themselves, if they all of a sudden have some big fires in San Francisco. So all of a sudden there are certain cities that are not participating in this Mutual Aid System that we have set up and all of a sudden we then therefore have a lack of fire engines and a lack of resources available to fight those fires.
And even though with what we have available you all have done such an extraordinary job but it will be, of course, much better if we have more available. And I think that we all know that—and this is information I get from you every time I go to visit a fire, it’s always the same story, that the first few hours are the most important ones. How quickly can we respond? How much can we load up and put on that fire the first few hours? Because that’s where you save lives, that’s where you save property and also, in the end, money.
And so we are fighting for that. What we are trying to do is just let the legislators know how important it is to pass this legislation and to get it done, which is the Emergency Response Initiative, also known as ERI and we have talked about it in various different press conferences. And I’m glad that all of you are here. And I think if we all push together we have a good chance of getting this done, because public safety is my number one priority and we always want to have enough money put aside.
There are some people that are still confused—and I think it will be good if maybe, Matt, you talked a little bit about this subject—which is that they think that this is just for rural areas and why should the city, the folks that live in the city, participate and have all of a sudden a fee increase on their homeowner’s insurance of $4 a month. That’s all we’re talking about, is just $4 a month, so this is a little, little amount of money that can really save a lot of lives and get us a lot of equipment and resources for fighting those fires and other emergencies.
But they feel like the fires are out there, why should we be responsible? And I always say, “Well, guess where the fire trucks come from? They come from the cities. And guess, when there is an emergency besides a fire, an earthquake, don’t you think that you have an earthquake also in the city? And guess when there are some mudslides and other things that are going on, don’t you think that that could affect also the city?”
Or we’ve just seen this very famous photograph now with a fire truck being stuck in a hole in Los Angeles. Well, this is, for instance, again a response of the fire department because it’s an emergency. It’s maybe no fire but it’s a blowup of a pipeline and they immediately responded to that. And it was a major disaster, water all over and flooding the homes and so on. And they again were there on time to save the situation, so maybe you can get a little bit into that.
DIRECTOR BETTENHAUSEN:
Let me just give you the quick overview that we’ve talked about, that this is about preserving our world-class Mutual Aid System, which is an efficient use of taxpayer funds because it’s one for all and all for one and that we share it, we leverage our resources so that we can respond.
You know, as we’ve talked about, it’s about all hazards and all risks for California, because unfortunately we have a lot of hazards and risks, whether it’s the earthquakes, the fires, the floods, chemical releases, biological incidents, whether it’s exotic Newcastle or hoof-and-mouth disease and H1N1. It requires these first responders to protect the public.
GOVERNOR SCHWARZENEGGER:
That’s right.
DIRECTOR BETTENHAUSEN:
The issue when we talk about fire—because this is about all hazards but let’s just talk about fire, because some people say, “Hey, why shouldn’t just the people who live in the wildlands areas pay for this fire response?”
Well, this is about responding to fires no matter where they occur throughout the state. And this isn’t just a rural issue; this is an urban issue. You and I saw, as we were evacuating urban Los Angeles because of the Station Fires, because of Palos Verdes, because when we were over in San Bernardino, it gets into urban areas. We saw in Santa Barbara this May, half of downtown Santa Barbara evacuated. The Oakland Hills, the East Bay Fires where we lost 2,800 homes was in an urban environment. San Diego in 2003 and 2007, we had almost a half a million people evacuated from an urban environment. So this is about all hazards, all risks. But the risk of fire is great in our urban areas, just from regular fires that occur here in California.
But as you know with your Golden Guardian exercise, which simulated a 7.8 earthquake in Los Angeles, it’s not a question if that earthquake is going to happen, it’s a question of when. And the U.S. Geological Survey tells us we’re overdue for that size of an earthquake. And our computerized studying and modeling showed that there will be about 1,600 fires in the urban Los Angeles area and you’re going to have broken highways and infrastructure and waterworks.
And that’s why we have to start investing now in new aviation resources for CAL FIRE, for your National Guard, so that we can protect those city dwellers from that kind of risk. Your Blue Ribbon Task Force, when they recommended 150 new fire engines be added to local departments throughout the state, you’ve seen those. We’ve kicked the tires on those on those a number of times.
GOVERNOR SCHWARZENEGGER:
Yes.
DIRECTOR BETTENHAUSEN:
They’re not just fire engines, they have urban search and rescue capability in there. And the more we get those fire trucks out and distributed throughout the state, the more quickly we can respond to any incident or hazard and protect all of our folks—rural, urban, across the state—in an efficient way.
This funding will also—as you know, the federal government keeps adding matches, requiring state and local funding for the federal grant dollars. We’ll be able to maximize all our federal grant opportunities, because we can also use this funding to meet those match requirements, so that we’re maximizing the investments that we’re making and the taxpayer dollars by using federal, state and local funds.
GOVERNOR SCHWARZENEGGER:
And how much additional money will this bring us?
DIRECTOR BETTENHAUSEN:
In the first year this is going to bring us about $200 million but overall it will be in excess of $400 million when it’s fully in place. And as you said, $48 a year on average, $4 a month. You know, a couple of coffees.
GOVERNOR SCHWARZENEGGER:
The Blue Ribbon Taskforce has made recommendations ever since I’ve come into office. Remember that in 2003 when I was elected—I remember I was not even yet in office, it was during the transition period—and I visited some of those big fires that we had with Governor Gray Davis, who took me along to kind of teach me a little bit about what’s going on out there with the fires. He was used to some of those visits already and for me this was all new.
And we started then talking about and putting this task force together, to get recommendations of how do we make sure that this doesn’t happen again, where we complain about we didn’t have enough resources, enough engines, enough this, enough that. How do we go and move forward? And then you guys sat down and made great recommendations and every year we have kind of climbed that ladder to get up there.
But we’re still far away, as far as I’m concerned. There is still a lot of work that needs to be done and that’s all about having enough money. So maybe you both can address a little bit of where this $4 a month increase will go and why this is so important to everyone and how we can reach eventually that goal that you have set on this commission.
CHIEF PAULSON:
And Governor, thank you. I think, to put it in context, when the Blue Ribbon Fire Commission was started we were talking about a once in a hundred year fire. That’s become a once a year fire and the situation has gotten worse and worse. I’ll let Sheldon talk about some of the details but I think some of the dynamics that have changed is the fire problem has grown far more intense, far more dangerous. As Matt has said, we are now—it’s not a wildland/urban interface as we think of the eastern part of California, it’s now residential suburban communities. That’s with, as he said, not a major earthquake coming along at the same time. So I think that has been a dynamic that’s changed since the Blue Ribbon Fire Commission has come out.
And additionally, funding has changed and the economy in the state of California, which we’re all dealing with. So local government has a lot of financial issues to deal with and quite frankly, they don’t have resources to commit in the Mutual Aid System. So the ERI will help by having local governments sign on to the Mutual Aid System in the state of California and the guarantee—we’ll be guaranteeing that we’re going to be getting that response. Sheldon can talk to you about some of the issues on the CFC.
GOVERNOR SCHWARZENEGGER:
Thank you very much. Sheldon?
CHIEF GILBERT:
Well, Governor, you are to be commended, because really from the moment you walked in as governor elect you were faced with this problem. And you immediately tackled it by putting the experts at the table to come up with some recommendations on how to prevent these fires and how to deal with these fires when they do happen.
And certainly the easy, low lying fruit has been accomplished and those are usually the things that don’t cost money. Certainly coordination has increased, communication has increased, the training has increased, certification requirements have increased.
What hasn’t increased are the number of engines and the number of helicopters and the number of National Guard aircraft and the number of personnel on engines year-round that are needed to respond to these fires in a very deliberate and effective fashion to keep them at 10 acres or under.
We certainly are going to be working hand-in-hand on prevention and education and fire safe communities. Those are all part of it and we’re working those. But it comes right down to the brass tacks of when that smoke column goes up you have to get a sizable firefighting force there quickly, so that we can contain it in 10 acres or less.
And that is what the Emergency Response Initiative is all about. I think this piece of paper—I’m going to give you a copy of each of these that we’re handing out to the legislature today—speaks volumes. Because if you look at the emblems on that, you can see that, for the first time in my short history, every fire agency stakeholder group is on board.
And we have identified that yes, there is in fact an issue in the state of California relating to maintaining our Mutual Aid System. I’m in charge, as the Region 2 Coordinator of Mutual Aid, from basically the Oregon border down to Monterey County. I can tell you in 2003, during that infamous fire when you came into office, we sent about 35 strike teams—a strike team is five engines of likeness and a strike team leader. At these recent fires, Region 2 was able to produce 25 strike teams.
That’s 50 strike teams that disappeared off the grid for a variety of reasons, whether it be San Francisco with the inability to staff or have those engine companies available, whether it be individual jurisdictions who are browning out or having funding problems at the local level. But the problem is real. We were able to meet all of the resource requests for the Station Fire. But what happens when we get two or three others going and they’re wind-driven instead of backing down fires, which the Station Fire was?
And how do we deal with these multiple emergencies? How do we deal with a Loma Prieta earthquake, which I lived through and all the hundreds of engines that came up to help us, or the earthquakes down south? So it is essential that we have this funding to make sure that we preserve that response capability to meet the all risk needs of the state of California.
And we’re simply telling the legislators today two things. If not now, when? None of us have any plausible deniability anymore. We all know what’s coming, we all know what’s needed to respond and we all know that we need this to keep it intact. And then, if not this, what? And so far we haven’t received any alternatives that are going to be realistic, or can happen in a timeline that’s going to help us meet our needs for this fire season and the other emergencies we may very well see this winter.
So you are to be commended. We have brought the fire service together, we are locked in step, labor, management, cities, counties, districts, state agencies and we know this needs to happen. And we’re going to go out there today and we’re going to tell them we need this to happen and we need it to happen now.
And if you’re not willing to do it today and you’re willing to do it this way, then you need to tell us what you’re going to do, because we’re telling you as your fire service experts, we’re going to have a problem in the next few months when the columns of smoke go up.
GOVERNOR SCHWARZENEGGER:
Well, thank you. And I hope and pray that our legislators are listening to what you had to say today and said just now, because that’s the bottom line. You have summed it up in the best possible way. And I think that, for a $4 increase in homeowner’s insurance a month, this is so little money. And of course no one wants to increase fees and all of those kind of things but this is so important, because I think that you hit the nail on the head. We are able to do the kind of fires that we have just done. But what if there are twice as many fires at the same time, as we have had just last year where we had 2,000 fires at one given time because of dry lightning? And those things happen very quickly. And the season, there is still long to go and so we want to make sure that we have enough money.
And so I hope that everyone upstairs is listening, Democrats and Republicans alike and they put aside their ideology and think about what is important for the state and what is important for the people of California, to keep them safe, because public safety, like I always say, is our number one priority.
Is there anyone else that wants to contribute or add anything that was not said yet, or to say it in a better way so we can twist some arms upstairs? (Laughter) Please feel free.
CHIEF GARDNER:
Well, I will, Governor. Tom Gardner from CDF—CAL FIRE, sorry. I’ve just worked for so many years at the old (Inaudible). I mean, you tried very hard, like you’ve heard earlier, you worked very hard to fund our department and keep our funding level and we really appreciate what you’ve done because it allows us to go out and do our job.
But it’s getting harder and harder. I mean, like the low-lying fruit is gone. You can’t cut administrative staff because they have to get us hired, they have to issue us our (Inaudible) and take care of that. So you can’t make those easy cuts; it’s into the hard cuts.
Local government is now having to make even stronger cuts, actually close fire stations. We’ve been able to avoid that but how much longer before, at the state level, you’re not going to be able to fully fund us? I mean, we’re getting near that point, that tipping point is coming very soon. The fires are getting worse, they’re not getting any better. In ‘03, ‘07, I was in San Diego for both of them and I could see maybe this year might be another one.
And this is a small fee. It is a fee, it is something new you’re going to pay. But if you look at your phone bill, we currently pay an assessment for the 911 which goes into the state 911 system and funds the telephone system for when you dial 911, so you can call us to come help you.
This is the same ideology; it’s only on your insurance bill instead of your phone bill. So I think they need to understand that and we will be hitting the hallways upstairs to pass that on to them. And again, we appreciate everything.
GOVERNOR SCHWARZENEGGER:
Thank you very much. Thank you. Yes?
CHIEF SHAFFER:
Thank you so much for taking the time and supporting us. I absolutely go with what Lou and Chief Gilbert had to say.
My name is Demetrious Shaffer, I’m the president of the League of California City Fire Chiefs, so I get to represent all the city chiefs up and down the state. Also the president of the Alameda County Fire Chiefs where the Oakland Hills Fire was, so I bring a little bit of perspective outside of the wildland, within that wild and urban interface but really from the city’s perspective of what’s going on today.
We had an opportunity to meet with one of the legislators earlier and my explanation was what’s happening today is different than what we were dealing with in the past and that is, when a call for help comes into the cities and we amass our forces and we get together in strike teams and then we respond, whether that’s in Southern California, the Oakland Hills, anywhere else up and down the state.
What we’re doing now and as a local chief, I’m trying to express to the legislature, what I’m doing now is I’ve got a budget right here to look at cash flow. I’ve got my finance director on the other phone and I’m fielding this phone call for assistance and I’m making determinations right then as to whether I can afford to send this resource or not. It’s not a matter of whether I want to. Firefighters are all alike, up and down this state, across the nation, probably in the world. When the bell goes off we want to go; that’s what we do, that’s why we signed up to do this.
We’re making decisions now as to whether we can afford to do that. And really the answer at the local jurisdiction, no, we cannot. The Station Fire—and again I turn to Chief Zagaris, who tells us that two-thirds of the resources on that incident were local government. So if local government is saying we cannot afford to send our resources—we want to, we absolutely understand reciprocity. We know that we may be calling for that resource as well, so we know the implications of that. It’s a matter of cash flow and our ability to fund that. That’s why this ERI is so important to local agencies and local fire chiefs and fire departments up and down the state.
GOVERNOR SCHWARZENEGGER:
Terrific.
DEP. DIRECTOR PIMLOTT:
Governor, I’d like to thank you because through your leadership already with the executive order this fire season—we’ve put a fourth firefighter on all CAL FIRE engines. And we’d like to think and we feel that that has contributed to our initial attack success. Chief Gilbert talked about our goal of keeping fires at 10 acres or less in California. We actually, our acreage this year, is significantly down in terms of what’s been burned. But our number of fire starts is significantly up. And having that fourth firefighter, one component that will be fully funded under the ERI, was significant in helping contribute to that, to those containment percentages.
GOVERNOR SCHWARZENEGGER:
Right. Well, thank you again. Thank you very much, all of you. And please, when you go home, tell your firefighters that I love them. They are the greatest, the best. They did the greatest job. I think there is no one in the world, no country, no state, that has better firefighters than we have. That I know for sure. So tell them thank you, thank you, thank you, for the great work that they are doing. Thank you very much.
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