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98–908 2016

S. HRG. 114–263 

OPPORTUNITITES TO IMPROVE THE ORGANIZATIONAL RESPONSE OF THE FEDERAL AGENCIES 

IN THE MANAGEMENT OF WILDLAND FIRES 

FIELD HEARING 

BEFORE THE 

COMMITTEE ON 

ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES 

UNITED STATES SENATE 

ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

ON 

OPPORTUNITITES TO IMPROVE THE ORGANIZATIONAL RESPONSE OF THE FEDERAL 

AGENCIES IN THE MANAGEMENT OF 

WILDLAND FIRES 

AUGUST 27, 2015 

( 

Printed for the use of the 

Committee on Energy and Natural Resources 

(II) 

COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES 

LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska, Chairman 

JOHN BARRASSO, Wyoming 

JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho 

MIKE LEE, Utah 

JEFF FLAKE, Arizona 

STEVE DAINES, Montana 

BILL CASSIDY, Louisiana 

CORY GARDNER, Colorado 

ROB PORTMAN, Ohio 

JOHN HOEVEN, North Dakota 

LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee 

SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia 

MARIA CANTWELL, Washington 

RON WYDEN, Oregon 

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont 

DEBBIE STABENOW, Michigan 

AL FRANKEN, Minnesota 

JOE MANCHIN III, West Virginia 

MARTIN HEINRICH, New Mexico 

MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii 

ANGUS S. KING, JR., Maine 

ELIZABETH WARREN, Massachusetts 

KAREN K. BILLUPS, Staff Director 

PATRICK J. MCCORMICK III, Chief Counsel 

LUCY MURFITT, Senior Counsel and Natural Resources Policy Director 

ANGELA BECKER-DIPPMANN, Democratic Staff Director 

SAM E. FOWLER, Democratic Chief Counsel 

BRYAN PETIT, Democratic Senior Professional Staff Member 

(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

OPENING STATEMENTS 

Page 

Barrasso, Hon. John, Chairman, and a U.S. Senator from Wyoming ................. 1 

Cantwell, Hon. Maria, Ranking Member, and a U.S. Senator from Washington .................................................................................................................... 2 

WITNESSES 

Berndt, Gary, County Commissioner, Kittitas County, Washington .................. 7 

Medler, Dr. Michael, Spokesman for the Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology .................................................................................................... 15 

Zimmerman, Dr. Thomas, President, International Association of Wildland 

Fire ........................................................................................................................ 27

Goulette, Nick, Project Director, Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network, and Executive Director, Watershed Research & Training Center ......... 39 

Goldmark, Dr. Peter, Commissioner of Public Lands, Washington State Department of Natural Resources ........................................................................... 46 

ALPHABETICAL LISTING AND APPENDIX MATERIAL SUBMITTED 

Bannon, Kevin 

Letter for the Record ........................................................................................ 66 

Barrasso, Hon. John 

Opening Statement ........................................................................................... 1 

Berndt, Gary 

Opening Statement ........................................................................................... 7 

Written Testimony ............................................................................................ 10 

Cantwell, Hon. Maria 

Opening Statement ........................................................................................... 2 

Goldmark, Dr. Peter 

Opening Statement ........................................................................................... 46 

Written Testimony ............................................................................................ 48 

Goulette, Nick 

Opening Statement ........................................................................................... 39 

Written Testimony ............................................................................................ 41 

Medler, Dr. Michael 

Opening Statement ........................................................................................... 15 

Written Testimony ............................................................................................ 18 

Outdoor Alliance 

Letter for the Record ........................................................................................ 68 

U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Department of the Interior 

Letter Addressed to Chairman Lisa Murkowski ............................................ 70 

U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Department of the Interior 

Letter Addressed to Ranking Member Maria Cantwell ................................ 72 

Zimmerman, Dr. Thomas 

Opening Statement ........................................................................................... 27 

Written Testimony ............................................................................................ 29 

(1) 

OPPORTUNITIES TO IMPROVE THE ORGANIZATIONAL RESPONSE OF THE FEDERAL 

AGENCIES IN THE MANAGEMENT OF 

WILDLAND FIRES 

THURSDAY, AUGUST 27, 2015 

U.S. SENATE

COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES

Seattle, WA 

The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 11:30 a.m. PDT at the 

Pigott Auditorium of Seattle University (Su Campus Walk, Seattle, 

Washington), Hon. John Barrasso, presiding. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN BARRASSO, 

U.S. SENATOR FROM WYOMING 

Senator BARRASSO. We will call this meeting to order. Welcome 

everyone. 

First, thanks to the wonderful hospitality by our friends at Seattle University for allowing us to be here today. This is an incredible Jesuit institution founded in 1891 with a remarkable reputation. 

My daughter is at Loyola Marymount University in L.A., another 

Jesuit institution. If you go into the chapel, they have these wonderful stained-glass windows representing each of the Jesuit institutions from around the country, and they have a magnificent one 

for Seattle University. 

I am John Barrasso, a Republican Senator from Wyoming. I am 

joined by Senator Maria Cantwell from Washington State, who you 

all know and I know appreciate the fine job that she is doing in 

this area. 

I am calling this hearing today on wild land fire to order, and 

I am, as I do so, mindful of the recent tragic loss of life and property right here in Washington State. 

I want to acknowledge the many sacrifices that were made by 

firefighters and their families to protect, to serve and to keep our 

communities safe. Sadly, we all too often have seen the ultimate 

sacrifice made by brave men and women, including the recent 

deaths of Thomas Zbyszewski, Andrew Zajac and Richard Wheeler. 

I have read the stories, looked at each of their pictures and, you 

know, you think about this. 

There is Thomas, 20 years old. His parents, 20 years, have been 

firefighters. Andrew, 26, played college football at Case Western, 

loved the outdoors and had a degree in Biology. Richard is a fourth 

generation firefighter in his family. 

2 

So the people of Wyoming share in the grief and the loss and 

send their prayers and their best wishes. 

Senator Cantwell, just please know that in Wyoming our 

thoughts and prayers are with all the people of Washington State 

and the families of these firefighters at this time. I would like to 

ask you to proceed with your opening statement. 

STATEMENT OF HON. MARIA CANTWELL, U.S. SENATOR FROM 

WASHINGTON 

Senator CANTWELL. Well thank you, Senator Barrasso. 

I want to thank you for flying here from Wyoming and being part 

of this field hearing, an official Committee on the Energy and Natural Resources hearing. I want to note that you are the Chair of 

the Public Lands Subcommittee and are very familiar with these 

issues. I so appreciate you taking the time to be here and for your 

remarks right now, particularly to the families of the lost firefighters. 

We are here today, we thought we would be here many months 

ago, having a discussion about last year’s fire season and specific 

response to the Carlton Complex and the many fires that we have 

seen across America that my colleagues, Senator Murkowski and 

Senator Barrasso, myself and Senator Wyden, had been working on 

as far as legislation. Now this fire season came upon us, and we 

saw 7.7 million acres of U.S. land burnt, which is double last year’s 

fire season. 

Before I get into my remarks, I too want to say something about 

the 3,000 men and women throughout our state who have been 

fighting these fires tirelessly, working around the clock, giving it 

everything that they can. Specifically our prayers go out to the 

families of Andrew Zajac, Richard Wheeler and Tom Zbyszewski. 

They made the ultimate sacrifice, and they lost their lives trying 

to protect the very communities they lived in. Our hearts go out 

to these families and to their friends and to their communities. 

Our hearts and prayers are still with those firefighters who are 

recovering. These men and women are doing everything that they 

can to help make us safe. We wish them speedy recovery. 

Unfortunately, it is becoming all too real for the people of Washington that this year’s fire season is breaking records. This is Day 

77 of continuous fire operations, a record by more than 15 days, 

and we have many more days yet to come. 

As of yesterday the perimeters of our wildfires in the Pacific 

Northwest totaled 1,658 miles, essentially a distance stretching 

from Seattle to Milwaukee, all in need of fire lines. In total, more 

than 1,100 square miles of Washington State have burned this 

year, an area larger than the entire State of Rhode Island. The 

Okanogan Complex has now surpassed last year’s Carlton Complex 

as the single largest wildfire in state history. Clearly this is the 

worst fire season in our state’s history. 

Despite all that people can be assured that our firefighters, local 

officials, some of who are with us today, at the State and Federal 

and even international level, are answering this call. Their diligent 

work has managed to save thousands of houses threatened across 

the state. The President did grant Federal emergency aid and operations are now being operated in mobilization centers, even out of 

3 

Fairchild Air Force Base. At the same time we know it is only August, and we could see fires burning for the next month or two. 

We know that this seems like it has become the new normal. In 

fact as I was traveling the state I ran into a friend in a diner in 

Wilbur who told me about how she and her husband were planning 

their evacuation, only to realize when they were going through 

their various steps that they had not unpacked a lot of things from 

last year’s evacuation. So is this the new normal? 

We are definitely going to hear from our witnesses today in their 

testimony about what we face, what these new challenges are and 

how we deploy new strategies to best help our communities. 

I have been to Central and Eastern Washington, to many parts 

of our state, talking to individuals, seeing our response. As I said, 

our legislation, which is really in response to last year’s fire season, 

is about upgrading our national fire management strategy and 

leveraging the hard learned lessons and issues that we have 

learned about in the last year. 

We have heard the struggles of communities and first responders 

trying to maintain challenging communications infrastructure last 

year in the Carlton Complex fire when much of the broadband communication throughout Twisp had burned up. How do these individuals communicate to the many towns and individuals through 

that process? 

We have heard from our firefighters and experts on the front 

lines about the challenges of new fire behavior, and I am sure our 

witnesses are going to talk about that today. 

We have also had a number of roundtables, and we heard from 

people about the advanced fire season and what we can do in preparation. Several communities like Yakima County and Kittitas 

County are implementing community wildfire plans, and I know 

the Commissioner is here today to talk about some of that. 

These plans work because people come together ahead of time. 

They determine the risks the community faces from wild land fires, 

and they reduce those risks. 

I also heard repeatedly that when the time is right and the fire 

season is behind us, our communities are looking for Federal leadership on hazardous fuel reduction treatments and other preventative measures that would help us better manage this landscape in 

the future. 

So our focus right now in Washington State should be first and 

foremost to make sure that we are helping to protect our communities, get the current situation under control, and to continue to 

provide safety. When the time is right my colleagues and I want 

to work with the others on a bipartisan basis to take the ideas that 

we learned, that we have put into legislation and get that legislation passed before next fire season so that we are better prepared 

next year. 

Our key steps are bolstering community preparedness, prevention and resilience, updating our emergency response capabilities 

so communities can better communicate and taking action to reduce hazardous fuels so that we are managing our risks. 

One issue I just want to highlight, because there are many of the 

eight recommendations that we have in a White Paper, is the need 

to solve what is called the fire borrowing problem. We provide adeVerDate Nov 24 2008 11:01 May 20, 2016 Jkt 098908 PO 00000 Frm 00009 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\TARSHA\98908.TXT 98908
4 

quate funding for fighting fires at the beginning of the year, but 

we need to make sure that money is not taken from those accounts 

and spent, literally, on the fires themselves. 

According to the Forest Service every dollar spent on prevention saves a $1.70 on fighting fires. Since 2002 we took a total of $13.2 

billion and that money was borrowed from other Forest Service 

programs to cover emergency firefighting costs. For the same 

amount of money we could have a 50 percent increase in the number of air tankers. We could have 2,000 more firefighters. We could 

have treated hazardous fuels on more than a million acres of the 

Wildland Urban Interface where many of the homes are at risk. 

And according to the Forest Service these actions could save 

$420,000,000 in firefighting costs each year. In other words, they 

could save taxpayers a total of $5.4 billion. 

So we need a more strategic approach to investing in prevention. 

It will help pay for itself in the long run. 

Along those lines our legislation does encourage Federal and 

State agencies to do landscape treatment when fire risks are low 

and enhance mapping so we can reduce risk and upgrade our communications and technology so our firefighters have the best and 

most effective tools when fighting the fires. Our legislation would 

also ask FEMA to work to make sure that we are addressing the 

needs of our rural communities and that density requirements do 

not preclude them from getting emergency assistance. 

I guarantee you that both my colleague and I, who come from 

very beautiful states, understand that our rural, recreational 

economies are key values to our state. We want to see them protected. 

So we have been working on this bipartisan effort. I am sure that 

this fire season and today’s hearing will add additional thought to 

our efforts. But let me repeat again, it is our hope that we will take 

these lessons, because the need is urgent, to make these changes 

and get better prepared for next fire season. 

Again I thank the witnesses for being here today, and I look forward to their testimony. 

Senator BARRASSO. Well, thank you very much, Senator Cantwell. I know people all around the country are reaching out to assist in any way that they can. Wyoming has deployed two UH60 

helicopters, their crews, and a maintenance crew to assist with aerial firefighting here in Washington. 

We are seeing firsthand how extremely detrimental wild land 

fires are to families and communities, as you say, all across the 

West. 

In addition to the loss of life and property, we have seen a loss 

of wildlife and a loss of wildlife habitat. We have seen increased 

soil erosion. We have seen large carbon and smoke release. We 

have seen the loss of jobs, the loss of businesses, and degradation 

of watersheds. 

We must recognize there are many contributing factors for why 

wildfire size and intensity and the costs of fighting these fires are 

increasing. Increasing fire cost and severity are the result of a 

number of things including excessive fuel loads, overcrowding and 

drought, decades of fire suppression, declining forest health due to 

insects and disease, the spread of invasive species such as cheat 

5 

grass and an ever expanding Wildland Urban Interface. These conditions underscore the importance of preparing for and mitigating 

their impacts. 

Congress must act. Act for the safety of our firefighters and communities and also for the health of our forests. Congressional action must include a combination of actions. Congress needs to end 

the practice, as you say, of fire borrowing and we must do it in a 

financially responsible way. There is bipartisan support for that. 

The Senate Interior Appropriations Committee bill provides one 

fiscally responsible approach that ends fire borrowing. We can end 

fire borrowing by budgeting for 100 percent of the ten-year average 

for fire suppression as well as providing a limited emergency reserve or contingency fund for firefighting in those areas where the 

fires are above average. This will guarantee firefighters have the 

tools and resources they need to safely and effectively fight fires. 

I want to commend Lisa Murkowski, the Senator from Alaska 

and Chairman of the Committee, for advancing a reasonable solution on these difficult issues. I know, Senator Cantwell, you and 

Senator Murkowski and I are going to continue to work closely together on this very topic. 

Congress can not simply stop with budgetary measures, however, 

and providing emergency funding. That is not going to solve all the 

problems. They can not do that and say the problem is solved. 

Congress needs to take additional steps to encourage greater 

community preparedness, especially in Wildland Urban Interface. 

They need to take steps to allow for adoption of proven technologies, to prioritize funding for vital active management treatment activities to protect lives and property, to provide policy reforms to combat excessive fuel loads and extensive time lags for 

projects and also to ensure that the Forest Service is spending the 

funds in the best and most efficient manner. Wildfires are not simply a fire budgeting or money problem. They are a landscape management problem as well. 

Long term I see no higher priority for the U.S. Forest Service 

than treating our forests to make them healthy again. Healthy, resilient forests are fire resistant forests. We know in many forest 

areas what agencies and communities can do to reduce the risk and 

prepare for the fires we know are coming, so today we are going 

to hear testimony on what communities need in order to reduce the 

threat of wildfire. 

As a doctor I will tell you I appreciate the adage that says, ‘‘An 

ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.’’ To reduce the risk 

to life and property posed by wildfires and to decrease the cost and 

severity of fires, we need to get more work done in our National 

Forests. 

According to the U.S. Forest Service between 62 and 82 million 

acres, these are their numbers, between 62 and 82 million acres, 

right now, today, are in need of treatment and at risk of catastrophic wildfire. That is over 40 percent of the entire National 

Forest system, and the number is growing. 

Congress needs to help the Forest Service manage the land to address the unhealthy state of our nation’s forests. We simply cannot 

allow the status quo to continue. 

6 

It is now a necessity to conduct more prescribed fires, perform 

more fuel reduction treatments, and undertake more vegetation 

management projects to thin our unnaturally, overcrowded forests. 

We must get treatments implemented at the same pace and scale 

the fire and other disturbances are occurring. We need to expedite 

the coordination and approval of these management activities 

which reduce our fire threat. 

Treating our forests and preparing our communities is the best 

medicine that we have to reduce fire risk bringing down the costs 

of fighting fires over time and continue to provide recreation, clean 

water and quality habitat for wildlife. It is also a sustainable way 

to provide the jobs and the economic activity our rural and forested 

communities desperately need. We see that certainly in Wyoming 

and certainly here in Washington State. 

We continue to see how fires impact jobs and economic activity 

in the same communities. I have introduced legislation, the National Forest Ecosystem Improvement Act, to make treating our 

forests the priority it needs to be. The bill includes innovative ideas 

like arbitration to get the Forest Service out of the courtroom and 

back into the woods treating our forests. 

Senator Cantwell, you are working on your White Paper, and you 

have a fire bill that you are planning to introduce soon. I know it 

is going to address some of these things, not others. But these 

items are still going to be addressed under your leadership and the 

leadership of Senator Murkowski. I know that you appreciate how 

we must be actively managing our forests. It is an obvious part of 

the equation. 

As with fire policy, I know the Committee is going to work together in a bipartisan way to advance legislation with ideas for getting the Forest Service back to treating our forests so we can restore more acres and prevent additional loss of life and property. 

In addition to budgeting and treatment activities, cost containment and operational factors are areas we need to closely consider. 

The cost of fires continues to go in only one direction, and that is 

up. While the number of fires, it is interesting, and the number of 

acres burned varies from year to year, the costs continue to go up. 

I think Dr. Medler’s organization, you have done a report on that 

very fact, and last year highlighted the problem with that trend. 

I am sure you are going to talk about it. 

The Forest Service spent $200 million more on suppression than 

it had spent on an average over the last 10 years, yet, that is despite the fact that there are less than half the number of fires and 

less than half the number of acres burned last year. But the costs 

continued to go up. 

So I think Congress needs to provide greater clarity and direction 

for the Forest Service. Operational factors associated with wildfire 

management such as objective strategies and tactics, they all have 

significant efficiency and cost implications. We need to consider a 

paradigm shift from one that is focused primarily on fire suppression to one that also focuses on fire preparedness and landscape 

management’s best practices. 

So it is my goal to work with you, Senator Cantwell, as well as 

Chairman Murkowski and other members of the Committee to incorporate what we learn here today to develop a Federal wildfire 

7 

policy that responsibly funds wildfire suppression needs, that ends 

the unsustainable practice of fire borrowing, that improves operational efficiencies and firefighting safety, that helps get our communities to be fire wise and makes the necessary investments in 

a full array of fuel treatments. 

Now it is time to hear from these wonderful witnesses who have 

been gathered today. 

We are going to start with Mr. Gary Berndt, who is the County 

Commissioner from Kittitas County in Washington State. Then we 

have Dr. Michael Medler, the spokesman for the Firefighters 

United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology. We have Mr. Tom Zimmerman, President of the Board of Directors of the International Association of Wildland Fire. We have Mr. Nick Goulette, the Executive 

Director of the Fire-Adapted Communities Learning Network, and 

Dr. Peter Goldmark, Commissioner, Washington State Department 

of Public Lands. 

Senator CANTWELL. If I could just before... 

Senator BARRASSO. Yes, please. 

Senator CANTWELL. I meant to thank Senator Murkowski, first 

of all, for allowing us to have a field hearing here in Seattle. I 

know she wanted to be here, but obviously Alaska has had their 

own firefighting challenges this season. We are working with her 

on this legislation, and so much appreciate her attention to this. 

We wish she could have been here today, but we certainly understand. 

And as I said to Senator Barrasso, who is the Chair of the Public 

Lands Committee, certainly we are all working together on this. 

So, thank you. 

Senator BARRASSO. No problem, thank you, Senator Cantwell. 

As always, your full testimony will be made part of the official 

hearing record. We have received it from all of you and we have 

reviewed it, so please try to keep your statements to 5 minutes so 

that we may have time for questions. I look forward to hearing the 

testimony beginning with Commissioner Berndt. 

Mr. Berndt, please begin. 

STATEMENT OF GARY BERNDT, COUNTY COMMISSIONER, 

KITTITAS COUNTY, WASHINGTON 

Mr. BERNDT. Good morning, Chairman Barrasso and Ranking 

Member Cantwell, distinguished guests. I thank you for the opportunity to address this Committee today, and I am very appreciative 

of your concerns for local communities that are impacted more and 

more by huge fires and to develop the vision for implementing a 

long term solution. 

I’m currently a County Commissioner in Kittitas County which 

lies on the dry side of the Cascades from the Cascades to the Columbia, but I also worked for the Department of Natural Resources, a state agency, for my career and as a Fire Manager for 

much of Eastern Washington State and private lands. I was also 

an Interagency Incident Commander on a team that traveled 

across the West for over 15 years. I’ve also been involved in training locally and nationally on incident management. 

Our county is basically 75 percent publicly owned, half of that 

would be in U.S. Forest Service lands. In Kittitas County the priVerDate Nov 24 2008 11:01 May 20, 2016 Jkt 098908 PO 00000 Frm 00013 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\TARSHA\98908.TXT 98908
8 

vate investor lands have been sold off. Significantly those lands are 

now in the hands of developers. They are intermingled lands with 

Federal and State lands and develop and destined for a residential 

development; therefore, the single largest threat to our county is 

catastrophic fire which would be followed by catastrophic flood. 

I would like to share some of the local efforts that our county has 

undertaken motivated by threat in the beginning, but recent fires 

have really solidified what we do. 

We adopted the Community Wildfire Protection Planning Process 

and have accomplished seven fire-wise communities; however, 

there are preexisting developments from many years ago that are 

intermingled. They have substandard roads, substandard water 

systems and covenants often that will preclude removing vegetation unless the Homeowners Association approves. Our county has 

adopted a 200 foot setback from the forest lands for new development. 

We also adopted the Wildland Urban Interface code in 2006 and 

recently updated it. Our WUI, as we call it, has a hazard map that 

broadly categorizes lands into low, medium and high risk and each 

one of those zones has separate requirements for construction and 

defensible space. 

Defensible space, our fire marshal told me last week, is the single, biggest accomplishment that happens when a home is built in 

the woods today. And some of the WUI requirements in the high 

zone require basically 250 feet of clearing and maintained. The 

problem is enforcement. We have one fire marshal and we have one 

deputy. It’s a one point in time at this point because we don’t have 

the ability in a growing county to go back and ensure that those 

spaces are maintained. It would be very helpful if we could do that. 

We’ve also adopted road standards that require dual ingress and 

egress for developments of more than 40 lots, and new roads are 

required to meet standards that allow for emergency response to 

safely enter and exit. 

We utilized our County Conservation District in the fire wise 

program to maintain and do fire wise. They’re providing protection 

for nearly 270 properties a year since 2013. One of the main 

projects that they do is sponsor a roving chipper from a local fire 

department that will go on call, and landowners have removed 

their vegetation and they will chip that for you. Federal funding is 

key to this through the FEMA Hazard Mitigation. We really appreciate that. 

The next key for us is response, and emergency response rapidly, 

that’s done through local fire districts in cooperation and coordination with Federal and State agencies. Our county is basically 100 

percent volunteer. We have almost no paid firefighters. 

They donate their time for training. They donate their time. 

They’re involved in the community, and I would hope that there is 

some way that Federal and State agencies can support them with 

equipment and the things they need to be those rapid responders 

in their district. 

Information and communication, key. I’m currently the Chair of 

the 911 Committee, and we work to do communication. We’ve actually talked about things like reverse 911, but we haven’t gotten 

there. 

9 

I think I’m going to run out of time. 

Kittitas County is a strong supporter of the Yakima Basin Integrated Plan which is a watershed plan to provide irrigation to the 

economies of the local communities. We need to deal with that. We 

can’t have the Upper Yakima Basin devastated by fire and still 

maintain our economies. 

If I’m out of time—— 

Senator BARRASSO. Well please, if you could summarize, go right 

ahead. 

Mr. BERNDT. OK. 

What I would like to finish with is I believe that the status quo 

cannot be acceptable. We need solutions. There are the immediate 

solutions to support prevention, preparedness, response and suppression, but a long term and durable solution to make the inevitability of fire on the east slopes are more manageable. The fuel 

buildups and forest ownerships continue to accumulate until 

there’s a major fire event that alters the landscape. I’ve told people 

for years, if we don’t manage the forest three things can happen: 

it will get bugs, it will burn or it will get bugs and then burn. 

That’s, kind of, how this goes. 

Local economies then tend to suffer the loss and then bear the 

costs. We need to deal with the debts and the weakened forests in 

the National Forests somehow. The best thing I can think of, early 

on, is to ask the collaboratives of Tapash and North Central Washington to work toward solutions that can buffer communities in 

those lower elevations and increase the ability for the WUI and defensible space to be more successful on those Federal lands. 

I think that single thing would allow the land owners to go on 

the Federal land and makes some difference because 200 feet as a 

former Incident Commander is often not enough. 

The Nature Conservancy recently purchased 50,000 acres on 

Snoqualmie Pass, and they have said forest management will be 

their key to making a healthy, residual forest. And they should 

have a plan out shortly. 

I appreciate what you’ve done. I’m asking you, who have chose 

to make a difference, let’s see what we can do. 

I thank you for this opportunity, and I offer my appreciation for 

my county and other National Forest Counties as you move forward. 

Thank you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Berndt follows:] 

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Senator CANTWELL. Thank you. 

Senator BARRASSO. Thank you so much, Commissioner Berndt. I 

think your point about a durable solution is the key one to take 

away from here today. 

Thank you. Thank you so much. 

Dr. Medler, thank you. 

STATEMENT OF DR. MICHAEL MEDLER, SPOKESMAN, 

FIREFIGHTERS UNITED FOR SAFETY, ETHICS AND ECOLOGY 

Dr. MEDLER. Well, Senator Barrasso, Senator Cantwell, thank 

you for your work on this. It’s an honor to be here. 

I teach at Western Washington University. I’m also a member of 

Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology (FUSEE), and I 

also have worked as a firefighter. Now I work with students who 

are studying wildfire and then heading back to the fire lines each 

summer. 

This week as we mourn three more firefighters, my heart pours 

out to their families and friends. But let me put a different personal face on this. I have a 19-year old daughter named Bodie. 

She’s a tall, collegiate rower. She can lift heavy things all day. She 

likes to sleep in the dirt. In short, she’d be a great firefighter. Since 

she was a kid I suggested she worked on fire crews during college. 

But after the last few seasons, as a father, I’m finding it more difficult to recommend that to her or to my students. 

To echo others who testified and to put it very bluntly, climate 

change and the last century of fire policies have combined to leave 

our forests explosive while our wildland firefighters are trained for 

back country but increasingly expected to protect the communities. 

Meanwhile, as you said, our costs are going up, even in moderate 

years. We simply can’t afford to keep using fire policies and practices from the last century. 

I’m a geographer. I think spatially. For example, in the U.S. beyond just Forest Service lands we have about a billion acres of 

burnable land. The Forest Service estimates that we need to reduce 

the fuel loads on almost half of that, on 400 million acres, and 

that’s one of those incomprehensible numbers, but that’s larger 

than Alaska. 

Right now the Forest Service is treating with fire and other mechanical means, about two million acres a year, very roughly. Unfortunately that doesn’t even approach the rate that we’re adding 

new lands to the backlog. Therefore, I would say we really need to 

be treating more like 20 million acres a year, so, of that 400 million. 

These sorts of numbers are simply beyond mechanical thinning. 

We can’t cut our way out of this. Additionally, much of those 400 

million acres are in steep, rugged terrain. Mechanical thinning in 

these areas is expensive, has harsh ecological consequences and 

can make fire hazards worse. 

Instead, we need to reestablish fire’s ecological role on millions 

of acres a year. Not only would this enhance forest health, but also 

by reducing the use of aircraft and limiting direct attack by hand 

crews, we would both reduce the cost and provide for a safer work 

environment by working with fire in many areas, not all, we can 

also create a mosaic of reduced fire hazards that will be safer and 

16 

cheaper to manage. We’re already seeing that. In fires this summer 

Washington firefighters are able to use scars from last summer to 

create wide safe areas and to hook in with their lines. 

But as we all know, the problem with actively managing these 

sorts of large fires is that we now have 70,000 communities at risk 

for wildland fire and about 200 million acres have been defined as 

part of the WUI that we’re discussing. But here’s what’s interesting. That last quarter mile, not 200 feet but about the last quarter mile around our communities, is where we can really stop fire 

from burning buildings. That’s our thing. That’s where prescribed 

fire, building codes, the local capability we’re talking about here 

can make a real difference. 

But what’s surprising is that a quarter mile buffer around every 

named place in the Western United States, I’ll include Alaska 

again, adds up to a little less than nine million acres. That’s a very 

small area. And I’m including lots of things that we wouldn’t need 

to work on there. So that’s an area more like the size of Maryland 

than Alaska. 

In this community protection zone this is where we do have the 

resources to make a difference. This is the best place to work with 

local industry to use biomass to offset costs. This is also the area 

to help organize and empower all the local communities we’re discussing here. 

We need a marshal plan, a response, providing guidance and 

funding for the work that needs to be done both around our communities and in the back country. With congressional guidance and 

the stuff you’re discussing now we could create good local jobs. 

For example, front country mitigation work in the WUI could be 

year round work for professionals. They could also be trained in the 

complicated intersection of urban and wildland firefighting which 

is a very difficult and unique situation. Alternatively, other members of the community could specialize in back country fire use and 

fire monitoring. These are the sorts of activities that would allow 

a few dozen professionals to manage back country fires that now 

require, literally, thousands of firefighters and millions of dollars. 

Stephen Pyne testified before you several months ago, and he argued that some communities need to be hardened and made more 

resilient to better resist and recover from wildland fire so that we 

have the options of doing restoration work at the vast scales necessary in the back country. By prioritizing our fire mitigation efforts into dense parts of the WUI we can facilitate the use of fire 

on millions of other acres in the back country. We would be using 

back country fire to reduce the long term damage to forest health 

while actually providing a more resilient landscape to manage future fires while also reducing further expenditures. 

My written testimony includes a bunch of specific recommendations from FUSEE, but key among them is that ultimately the ethical use of public resources and the ecological restoration of fire 

adapted ecosystems will and can improve firefighter safety and 

serve the citizens while also bringing down costs. 

I know better than most that we can’t eliminate all the danger 

in this business. We can’t stop all the fires, we can’t protect every 

home, and we can’t make firefighting totally safe; however, we owe 

it to all the people that we put on the fire lines to do what we can 

17 

and to keep them safe while managing our landscapes in ways that 

will allow fire to be the natural process it is. 

I really want to be able to keep recommending a career in 

wildland fire to my students and especially my daughters. 

Thank you for your time. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Medler follows:] 

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Senator BARRASSO. Thank you very much, Dr. Medler. You are 

right, it is the volume itself that is massive. 

Thank you. 

Dr. Zimmerman, thanks for being with us. 

STATEMENT OF DR. THOMAS ZIMMERMAN, PRESIDENT, 

INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF WILDLAND FIRE 

Dr. ZIMMERMAN. Thank you. 

Good morning. I’d like to thank both Senators Cantwell and Barrasso for the work you’re doing and for the opportunity to be here 

today to testify at this hearing. I’m here in the capacity of President and Chairman of the Board of the International Association 

of Wildland Fire. During my career, my career has spanned over 

40 years, I’ve served in a variety of wildland fire management positions for three Federal agencies, worked as a natural resource consultant and also earned a Ph.D. in forest fire science. 

To talk to you at today’s hearing it is perfectly aligned with the 

vision and purpose of the International Association of Wildland 

Fire and very important and relevant to the Association. But unfortunately events are unfolding this fire season are truly lamentable 

and tragic and it is with great sadness that we proceed through 

this fire season knowing that all the firefighters that started this 

season will not be with us to finish the season. And the heartbreaking loss of life, we recently witnessed it, just stirs emotions 

that are beyond description and our thoughts and prayers go out 

to all the families and the friends of our fallen colleagues. 

With that said, we need to realize that the wildland fire is probably the single most important factor shaping and influencing our 

vegetation communities today. Managing this is something that’s 

going to encounter some of the highest risk, highest complexity and 

potential for the most serious consequences of any natural resource 

program. Things are changing, conditions are changing, the environment is changing and we are entering into a transformative 

time which is clearly evidenced by the severity and extent of the 

2015 fire season. 

There are three areas I’d like to touch on today briefly in 

wildland fire management that are supporting programmatic 

growth and that can be expanded to facilitate organizational performance. 

The first would be what I’d call the guided framework for 

wildland fire management. This would consist of that information 

associated with policy, strategic plans and program reviews, and 

that the foundation for this is the Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy. 

And this is something that’s evolved considerably over the last 

several decades. It’s at the point now where the current fire policy 

is adequate. It does not need to change. It provides us the most 

flexible, comprehensive, supportive, applicable fire management 

policy we’ve ever had. What we need to be doing is realizing the 

full potential within this policy, working within all the options it 

provides for us. 

In terms of national strategic planning, the National Cohesive 

Wildland Fire Management Strategy recently completed represents 

the single best strategic assessment for wildland fire. This provides 

28 

us with a national vision which states the vision is to, ‘‘safely and 

effectively extinguish fire when needed, to use fire where allowable 

and to manage our natural resources and as a nation live with 

fire.’’ This is an incredibly progressive, comprehensive statement 

and provides us significant opportunities and a wide range of opportunities that we can realize if we pursue that. This provides us 

with a great deal of information. 

The second area I wanted to touch on was just risk management. 

This is becoming a very prominent factor in wildland fire management programs today. It’s mentioned both in the Federal fire policy 

and in cohesive strategy as our program should be based on sound 

risk management. 

This is an area where growth is occurring, but more growth and 

more expansion should occur and risk management should be embedded as a core component to fire management. If we utilize riskbased decisionmaking and risk-based actions we will reduce firefighter exposure, equipment exposure, strengthen our response activities and serve the greater good over the long term. 

The third area I wanted to talk about was the budget processes, 

and your work has really supported this. We’ve heard that the current budget process that results in fire borrowing is undesirable 

and is having long term, negative impacts to under land management program. 

The IAWF would really enthusiastically support your work on 

this and support working across party lines to come up with a new 

process in how this nation budgets for wildfire management. They 

would really support that. 

Every year we continue to see complexity increasing. The cost of 

businesses are increasing for a variety of reasons, and we need to 

be able to support that rather than restrict that. 

We have long term needs to reduce fuels, to reintroduce fire into 

ecosystems, to harden communities, to strengthen our response capabilities and in order to do this we need to realize the full spectrum of opportunities that are afforded by this guiding framework 

of policy and strategic plans and using these lines in a risk management approach and having a complementary rather than restrictive budget process. 

We must be proactive with this as we move into the future and 

not reactive. One of the unfortunate things is in our nature a short 

term fix is really unlikely for this and long term patience and long 

term commitment is going to be necessary from society to affect the 

changes. 

So with that, thank you again for the opportunity today, and 

thank you for your work on this. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Zimmerman follows:] 

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Senator BARRASSO. Thank you so much, Dr. Zimmerman. You 

are absolutely right, proactive not reactive is what we are trying 

to get to today. 

Next we are hearing testimony from Mr. Nick Goulette. Thank 

you very much for being with us today. 

STATEMENT OF NICK GOULETTE, PROJECT DIRECTOR, FIRE 

ADAPTED COMMUNITIES LEARNING NETWORK, AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, WATERSHED RESEARCH & TRAINING CENTER 

Mr. GOULETTE. Thanks for the opportunity to be here, and I appreciate both of your remarks and the remarks from my fellow panelists here. 

I’m the Director of a non-profit organization in Northern California called the Watershed Research and Training Center, and we 

work directly on building a fire adapted community in Trinity 

County where I live and work. I also am presenting here today in 

my capacity as the leader of the Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network which is a network of community leaders from around 

the country. I work with 17 communities from around the country 

who are innovators and are really demonstrating the best practices 

of the fire adaptation, taking ownership of their wildfire risk and 

taking the full suite of actions necessary to minimize losses. 

Commissioner Berndt and Senator Cantwell both highlighted, 

sort of, the full range of options for reducing risk in communities 

fire wise and defensible space, codes and ordinances, chipper programs, sort of community-wide fuel reduction. Together that requires a community effort. It is not just the responsibility of firefighters and the fire adapted communities’ concept is really built 

around that premise that it takes a community and it requires insurance companies. It requires local government, fire departments, 

local non-profit organizations, conservation districts, all working together. The community wildfire protection planning process provides this organizing place for people to work together. But from 

there it requires collective action. 

I’d like to provide some examples. I think what we’re talking 

about here is building community capacity and resilience and getting away from this old reliance on fire management and suppression. Community capacity, I think, there’s a great example of what 

that looks like actually. 

I’m going to provide an example from my home in Trinity County 

in Northern California. We’ve had over 200,000 acres of fire this 

year, and the steps we’ve taken to become fire adapted have made 

a real difference. They’ve involved cooperative partnerships, and 

they’ve involved a wide range of Federal, State and local investments. I think that any legislation really needs to deal with those 

two pieces. 

We built a great Community Wildfire Protection Plan. We developed a wide range of data that feeds into fire management and 

supports good decisionmaking, safe decisionmaking. And we implemented community-wide fuel reduction projects that helped to actually manage the fire, reduce firefighter risk, reduce private losses 

and so all those investments paid off. 

40 

What did it take? It took partnerships, unique partnerships, the 

kind that build a work force, that build jobs in communities. We 

leveraged a wide range of grant programs including state fire assistance, rural fire assistance, Secure Rural Schools money. Bringing all of that funding together and NRCS EQIP funding, working 

across public and private boundaries is what allowed us to actually 

implement the types of treatments that make a difference to protect the community. 

We’re seeing exactly that same kind of confluence of partnership 

and funding around the country. What we know is that there’s not 

near enough money pouring into that kind of work. What I described is really exceptional effort in bringing together a lot of resources in very complicated ways. 

Communities are learning how to do it. There’s a role for the 

Federal Government, the Forest Service, the Department of Interior, NRCS in sort of pulling all that together and making it easier 

for communities to build their capacity to be a real asset and be 

responsive. 

Again, you’re seeing communities really take ownership of their 

fire problem where there is that confluence of community capacity. 

The city of Flagstaff, city of Ashland, Santa Fe, New Mexico, you 

have those communities agreeing to actually tax themselves to protect their watersheds. That is a huge leap and it is Federal investment, basically, over a long period of time starting to trigger local 

investment in community protection. 

I think I want to leave off with a concept that feeds into the Federal fire management policy in managing fire on the landscape over 

time because it is going to be an inevitability that we need to essentially use fire as a tool. 

As we invest in building fire-adapted communities, as we put 

people to work around our communities, as we build the strength 

of our local fire departments to both invest in mitigation and response to wildland fire, we start to build that culture of living with 

fire. I think that culture of living with fire is going to be the key 

to reducing costs and risks in wildland fire response. 

It’s only when communities are not calling you two to say get 

that fire put out when it’s a fire that’s not directly threatening 

their community that we’re going to start to invest less resources 

in those back country fires and take less risks on those back country fires and focus our energy where it’s going to make that biggest 

difference. 

So I want to encourage us to, sort of, keep in mind that that fireadapted community investment is the key to both getting to resilient landscapes and safe, effective and efficient wildland fire response. 

Thanks. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Goulette follows:] 

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Senator BARRASSO. Thank you so much and for your highlight of 

the areas of community of capacity as well as the resilience of each 

of the communities. 

Finally we will hear from Dr. Peter Goldmark, thanks for being 

with us. 

STATEMENT OF DR. PETER GOLDMARK, COMMISSIONER OF 

PUBLIC LANDS, WASHINGTON STATE DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES 

Dr. GOLDMARK. Thank you, Senator Barrasso, for joining us to 

see the extreme fire season here in person and for listening to 

these witnesses that have, I think, reasonable input for you and 

Senator Cantwell to consider going forward. I also want to thank 

you for the aerial resources that have come from your state. Those 

were desperately needed and very much appreciated. 

My thanks also to Senator Cantwell for your leadership and dedication to improving response and resources for wildfires. There is 

no more crucial time than now to have this discussion, right here 

in the State of Washington in the worst fire season to date. 

I’m Peter Goldmark, Commissioner of Public Lands for the State 

of Washington serving my second term as Commissioner. I’m 

trained both as a scientist and a wildland firefighter. Today I lead 

the state’s largest on-call fire department of about 1,100 personnel, 

who are all heavily engaged in the wildfire effort here in the State 

of Washington as we speak. 

We convene this discussion today against a backdrop of a hellish 

fire storm that has become, as I said, the worst fire season in the 

state’s history. As we speak people in communities are being evacuated in front of the advancing flames. More than 200 structures 

have been lost and over 755,000 acres have currently burned, and 

these fires are largely uncontained. 

The human impact of these fires is beyond description. Homes 

have been lost, businesses destroyed, people made homeless. The 

emotional and fiscal impact on not only the people but the communities themselves is devastating. 

I just returned from Okanogan County a couple of days ago and 

the pervasive nature of smoke in those communities is preventing 

aerial resources from flying, and overarching, sort of, depressing 

scene of this smoke which indeed is also a huge health hazard for 

humans and other animals as well. It’s a pretty grim picture over 

there today. 

Currently we have 12 large wildfires on the landscape with more 

fire weather on the horizon, and our brave firefighting professionals are doing heroic work now as we speak. Approximately 

6,300 firefighters are currently in Washington State, and we are 

very grateful for the support we have received from other states, 

indeed other nations. 

The situation confronts us as leaders with a stark reality. The 

wildland fire environment is unlike anything we have ever faced, 

and we must adapt. Wildfire seasons are longer, climatic and 

weather conditions are more extreme and wildfire behavior is explosive and unpredictable. Mega fires are no longer the exception, 

but unfortunately, they are becoming the rule. 

47 

A Federal wildfire funding structure that acknowledges the need 

to treat mega fires as what they are and that is disasters, not routine agency business, is an imperative. We must fix the structural 

funding problems that stand in the way of our success. 

Our first priority must be to add capacity for fire response, hazard reduction and community protection. Disaster type funding for 

the largest, most difficult fires is essential. Moreover, we must 

seize upon this opportunity to turn the existing perverse set of 

budget incentives on its head and harness it in the service of life, 

property and money saving prevention and hazard mitigation investments. 

We must turn this around so we make these investments up 

front before the fires come so that we can keep down the cost and 

the horrific damage to our communities. We must end the destructive practice of fire borrowing. Forest Service initiated a $250 million borrowing order just yesterday. These rob from prevention programs and make the problem even worse. We must redesign and 

reinvest in the components of a comprehensive wildfire prevention 

and suppression strategy. We must start with forest health treatments and fuel reductions for resilient forests for all manner of 

issues that our forests have to deal with. We must provide community protection plans, provide for rapid detection and response of 

wildfire using best available technology. We must respond with sufficient force in a very short period of time to get this accomplishment done. We must preposition all available resources and reduce 

response time. We must improve weather forecasting and the availability of real time information on the fire lines with best available 

communications. We need to complete the long stalled modernization of the air tanker fleet at capacity for keeping fires small. The 

tanker fleet is instrumental in that regard. We must increase our 

investments in forest health, thinning and fuel reduction. Washington State has made a $10 million investment in this work over 

the next 2 years, and we hope the Federal Government can match 

that dedication. This fire season is a call for action from leaders in 

providing protection for our citizens and restoring resilient forest 

landscapes for all the many benefits they provide. 

I would end with a message around safety. These efforts are all 

around public safety and around safety for our firefighters. We 

must have the resources available to protect the communities, and 

we must have the technology and sufficient numbers to protect our 

wildland firefighters at the same time. 

Thank you both for your attention to these important issues and 

for being here today. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Goldmark follows:] 

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Senator BARRASSO. Thank you very much, Dr. Goldmark, and 

thank you for your focus on the end on safety. It is not just for firefighters, but for communities as well, safety across the board. 

Thank you. 

We do have a number of questions. I would like to start with you, 

Senator Cantwell. 

Senator CANTWELL. Thank you, and I thank all the witnesses for 

your detailed input. Many of you have put a lot of work into these 

efforts before today’s hearing. In some cases it is your lifelong 

work, so thank you for that. 

Clearly you have put on the table some new ideas and points of 

direction that we should go in. I would like to start with you, Dr. 

Goldmark, about this issue of fire borrowing because you particularly, well Mr. Goulette as well, basically talked about reducing 

risk and reducing costs. What do you see as the fundamental challenge in fire borrowing that prevents us from reducing risks and 

reducing costs and how would you implement some of those response efforts? I heard in one county,I think it was Kittitas County, talk about hasty mobilization. How would you increase response 

and community protection that you mentioned? 

Dr. GOLDMARK. So around the fire borrowing this is a crucial 

issue because if we hear from our Forest Service partners when 

they have to expand their maintenance budgets that they would 

otherwise use on forest health treatments around fire suppression, 

that means that it just prolongs the problem for that agency. 

We at DNR look across the fence, so to speak, and we understand that the Federal Government and the Forest Service are 

largely hamstrung in their ability to carry out the appropriate 

management activities on those lands in a thoughtful, ecological 

manner to reduce the fuel loading. So that inevitably when fires arrive those forests are at resilient posture and can keep the fire on 

the ground where it can be actually beneficial and keep it out of 

the crown of the trees. 

It’s particularly important in Eastern Washington where the fuel 

loading is high and where the tree spacing is too dense, and so fire 

gets into the crown of the trees. The tree spacing needs to be increased and the fuels reduced there. That will help the Forest Service meet their obligation, and it will help all of the landowners in 

the vicinity of the forest keep the fire danger and the damage done 

by fires to a minimum. 

Also I agree with Commissioner Berndt that the response times 

that we need across the landscape both at the county, State and 

Federal level need to be brought down considerably. As you may 

know I’ve made consistent appeals to the State legislature for additional capacity in terms of crews and equipment so that we can be 

more present on the landscape, so when fires do erupt we can enter 

into suppression efforts within a matter of moments. That’s my 

goal so we can keep our fires small. 

Senator CANTWELL. So you are saying both stop the fire borrowing so that we have more money in advance to actually do fuel 

reduction preparedness, but then, in addition, be ready for more 

rapid response with a different kind of network. Is that what you 

are saying because—— 

Dr. GOLDMARK. Absolutely, you’ve summarized it perfectly. 

54 

Senator CANTWELL. And on that network which we are seeing in 

some counties, we heard some really great testimony here for fire 

wise programs, for chipper distribution, for a variety of things. 

But what is this faster response? What is that? What do you 

think? Is that tankers? Is that a network of people with a communication system that can just react faster? 

It is very helpful to understand what you are saying about keeping the fire on the ground as opposed to in the crown of the trees, 

but what does the network look like for a rapid, quicker response? 

Dr. GOLDMARK. So the network begins with early and rapid detection. Whether that’s through satellite, over flights, drones, whatever, we need to be able to know when a fire starts immediately. 

And then that information needs to flow to the network, as you’ve 

described it, of local, State, tribal, Federal responders, who are 

closest to the incident and can respond, as I said, in a matter of 

moments so that we can really realize the goal that we’ve all talked 

about, and that is to keep these fires small. By keeping them small, 

we can protect our communities, protect our firefighter’s safety and 

protect the habitat and watershed qualities that we all want to 

achieve. 

Senator CANTWELL. Is that what you mean by surge capacity or 

is surge capacity the network to get resources more quickly? Obviously with these resources across the country we have had to bring 

a lot of resources here to Washington State, and sometimes that 

has taken days. So is that what you are saying? 

Dr. GOLDMARK. Actually, it’s two things. 

The emergency response itself with the goal of getting the fire 

out as rapidly as possible. If that’s not achievable, shortening the 

time of the search response would also be helpful to keep the fire 

from growing over large, the way they are in the Okanogan Complex or in the Northstar Fire today. We need to be able to get additional resources rapidly, if needed. 

Senator CANTWELL. All of the witnesses mentioned these community preparedness plans. In some cases, I think, we are talking 

about everything from building codes to boundaries to communications about best practices. I have heard this is hard to implement 

without some help or at least without some focus. 

Mr. Goulette, what you have done in California, and Commissioner Berndt, what you have done in Kittitas County, to get more 

communities prepared for next season? 

Mr. GOULETTE. Yes, I think increasing the funding availability 

for community wildfire protection planning, providing increased assistance through the State forestry agencies and Department of 

Natural Resources to provide technical advice and guidance on preparing and developing CWPPs. 

Then not just developing the documents themselves, but knowing 

that you have to sustain the partnerships that actually implement 

them. In California we have Fire Safe Councils around the country. 

They are standing, sort of, wildfire coordinating groups in communities that then, sort of, hold that plan and implement it over time. 

And they need a coordinator. They need a little bit of money every 

year to just sustain and stay working in the same direction. 

I think those investments will pay dividends. I know there’s recognition that it’s going to take more money than we’re spending 

55 

right now both money going to local level and money, I think, going 

to the states to be those technical assistance providers to help communities build their capacity. 

Senator CANTWELL. But this is the ounce of prevention, is it not, 

that Senator Barrasso was mentioning? 

Mr. GOULETTE. Yes. 

Senator CANTWELL. Commissioner Berndt, do we actually have 

Kittitas County results from some of these fire wise programs of 

where areas have been treated verses areas that have not been 

treated? 

Mr. BERNDT. Fortunately ours have not really been tested but it 

could happen at any moment. 

I do have a history of one that we prepared that was impacted 

by fire down in the Blue Mountains a week or two ago. It was a 

shaded fuel break that we put on when I was doing my old job that 

we put to protect the city of Walla Walla’s watershed because it is 

an untreated, unfiltered water. We built a shaded fuel break that 

was not totally successful, I was told, by my agency. I called and 

asked. And they said, no, it really needed to be wider. It needed 

to be thinned out more, but it was easy to refresh, and we prepared 

that to utilize as a portion of the fire line. 

So they do work, but unfortunately we do very narrow bands of 

200 or 250 feet when we need to and I agree with, I think somebody said, a quarter mile. As an Incident Commander what a difference that would make to have that on the landscape to know 

that you could buffer and alter the fire behavior as it comes in. 

Senator BARRASSO. We will go back and forth with questions. 

Dr. Medler, you started with a comparison of how do we, kind 

of, wrap our heads around how big of an area this is involved? The 

U.S. Forest Service had a report a couple years ago. They are talking about over 65 million acres of National Forest system lands 

that are high or very high risk of catastrophic wildfires. That is an 

area larger than the State of Washington. It is an area larger than 

the State of Wyoming. 

The Forest Service also states specifically there are over 12 million acres in need of mechanical treatment, such as thinning. So at 

our current pace of mechanically treating roughly about 200,000 

acres a year, they say up to 12 and a half million acres, it is going 

to take over 60 years just to treat the acres needing treatment now. 

So with these numbers in mind, do each of you agree that we 

must increase the pace of treatment using both prescribed fire, mechanical methods and other things to reduce the severity and the 

size of wildfires? 

Dr. MEDLER. Well, you’re absolutely right. The scale of the problem and the scales of some of the solutions that are proposed are 

misaligned. I don’t, in any way, question the validity of many of the 

solutions, mechanical thinning, prescribed fire, enhanced regions 

around our communities are all the kinds of things that can make 

the biggest difference. 

I think the key point I was trying to make is a lot of these Forest 

Service lands and other Federal and private lands that have fuel 

issues make up such a huge area that, as I said, we’re not going 

to cut our way out of it. It’s just too darn big. So what we really 

need to address those huge areas is a little more freedom to use 

56 

fire in those larger areas, and these folks who are talking about the 

community protection zone, I think, are key to how we’re going to 

have that freedom. 

That doesn’t mean we don’t need regional and local decisionmaking processes. I think one of the key things to always recognize 

here is our fire landscape is very complicated. A solution for Flagstaff, Arizona is not the same solution for Wenatchee. So we need 

local input on the kinds of things that are the main goals both in 

the back country and the front country. 

I could followup here with another quick comment about a recent 

example about the city of Boulder verses Colorado Springs. Several 

summers ago they experienced nearly simultaneous wildland fire. 

The fires were burning down essentially at the same topography, 

down into major metropolitan areas. 

The city of Boulder for decades has had an open space park system more than a quarter mile wide, basically providing a buffer between the city and these foothills, and they experienced very little 

damage to resources, to homes, to the community, and for years 

they’ve been able to put prescribed fire in those buffer zones. It 

gave them the kind of resource that Gary here thinks is so critical. 

They had prescribed fire. They actually have a Christmas tree harvest in that zone. And they use that, what is essentially a park 

space, as a wildland fire buffer. 

At least while Colorado Springs had dozens and dozens, literally 

hundreds, of very expensive homes built up into that area, and 

they’ve sustained huge losses in those communities. 

If the communities like Boulder, Flagstaff, Colorado Springs, are 

a little bit more or perhaps quite a bit more resistant to fire, then 

we have opportunities on those vast scales that you’re talking 

about. 

Senator BARRASSO. Would anyone else like to weigh in on that? 

Dr. GOLDMARK. Well I would just make a comment about fire 

wise. In the aftermath of the Carlton Complex fire from last year 

we did an analysis about homes that had a fire wise protection 

plan and had been treated. 80 percent of those homes survived the 

wildfire, so we think it’s a very helpful treatment to utilize. 

We’ve also looked at other areas of the landscape that were impacted during the Carlton Complex fire or the Tripod fire which 

was nearby, and we see that management activities in terms of 

thinning or harvest cut down the severity of the fire and in some 

cases fire proof those given areas. 

Senator BARRASSO. Thanks. 

Mr. Goulette as well as Mr. Berndt, I think, it is the USDA Inspector General who has reported over half of all of the money the 

Forest Service spends on fire suppression costs are incurred protecting houses, as he talked about on private property. Most of that 

private property is within the WUI, the Wildland Urban Interface. 

Mr. Berndt, you talked about some of the ways and actions your 

county has taken to prepare for wildfire. I think you also mentioned you have standards but without enforcement. I am just looking to see if there are some additional things that we ought to be 

looking at legislatively that may be helpful. 

57 

Mr. GOULETTE. I think that codes and standards can prove very 

effective. California has a statewide code that then local counties 

can modify and improve on. And some have and do. 

In the State of Washington we have several places that have 

adopted codes and standards. It seems to me, a difficult thing to 

legislate. At the same time a lot of the voluntary actions that we 

can take around home inspection and encouraging defensible space 

are things we can do now very effectively and we know they make 

a difference. 

I tend to lean in that direction from the standpoint of prioritizing 

funding today. At the same time, I think, sort of trying to tackle 

and figure out how to enforce and implement codes and standards 

has great potential to, sort of, cut down that WUI development 

that’s happening and potentially improve all these renovations that 

are going to happen over time to all these homes that are already 

built in the Wildland Urban Interface. Commissioner Berndt probably knows better than I. 

Senator BARRASSO. Commissioner, do you want to add anything? 

Mr. BERNDT. Defensible space maintained is the key. We sell the 

concept on the incentive basis that when the wildfire strikes you 

probably may not get a fire engine parked in your driveway. It’s 

your responsibility to create that space that will make your home 

survivable in the passage of a wildfire without other protection. It’s 

a very difficult sell and it doesn’t go well at homeowner associations, but we try to put a pretty strong spin on what the responsibilities are for building in that Wildland Urban Interface. The 

people come for a sense of place, and I can take them to so many 

places where that sense of place has been permanently reduced for 

the next 50 years. And so we try to work hard. 

One, during the construction and we even put a fire wise around 

three sides of an entire community and convinced them that you 

are very much at peril of your entire community being erased on 

an afternoon. That was kind of our approach. 

Senator BARRASSO. Thank you. 

Dr. Zimmerman, I wanted to ask you about these large scale 

wildfires. Dr. Goldmark mentioned, I think, it is no longer the exception but the rule. Is what you are seeing over a century of aggressive fire suppression and where we are now in terms of the 

load? Do you have thoughts about how we could prevent these really large wildfires at this point? 

Dr. ZIMMERMAN. Yes, I’ve had many, many thoughts about that. 

And you know, it’s the Federal agencies and the State agencies 

that go through an aggressive initial attack program with a goal 

suppressing 98 percent of all wildland fire during initial attack. So 

these large fires we deal with are 2 percent of all the fires, roughly. 

There are more one year than another year because the total number of fires is greater and we have more large fires this year. That’s 

still a very small percentage of all the fires. And we need to do 

things that, you know, once those get to be large fires we can’t suppress them through initial attack techniques. They can only corral 

them. We have to wait for moderating weather. 

We have to try to find many, many resource bids that we put at 

risk of exposure to firefighter’s equipment depending on the conditions. And the risk can vary. Now we have to look at the investVerDate Nov 24 2008 11:01 May 20, 2016 Jkt 098908 PO 00000 Frm 00063 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\TARSHA\98908.TXT 98908
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ments that we’re making there in terms of firefighter risk, equipment risk verses return. 

But there’s preparation that can be done ahead of time. I know 

a lot of people have talked so far today about fire watch treatments, community wildfire protection plans, field treatments, mitigation rangers, fuel reductions or even the Wildland Urban Interface codes. We have code enforcements and inflammable material, 

construction of new houses and things like that. All those things 

together are very important to us and will help us to prevent the 

occurrence of large numbers of large fires in the future. 

Treating the fuels and changing this environment, we have a history of 100 years of living with fire in this nation where living with 

fire has been to exclude fire. We haven’t been able to do that. I 

mean, we still have fire very present but we’ve allowed fuels to 

buildup. 

We’ve altered the fuel complexes, the vegetation complexes, and 

we’re seeing the results of that during this century. We ought to 

go back and mollify those fuels and get things back to a more manageable situation. 

So it’s a combination of factors that are needed because there’s 

a variety of preplanning tools needed. There’s a lot of mitigation 

tactics needed, and then even some of the ways we fight fires are 

needed, all simultaneously. 

Senator BARRASSO. Thank you. 

Senator Cantwell? 

Senator CANTWELL. I want to followup on this notion of preparedness in general for communities. 

One thing that we have not talked a lot about is this issue of 

communication, but obviously we have a pretty good network with 

the firefighters. I visited the communication command center in 

Colville and saw how that operates, but obviously we are seeing 

communities all across the state have to deal with this challenge 

of communication as the broadband networks have burnt up. 

Is this just because we have seen so much more development in 

the Wildland Urban Interface or has this always been our problem 

and now we know more about it ? And what do we need to do to 

develop the communication response system? Is it about redundancy up front or is it about just making sure that we have the 

ability to get mobile units into communities who are planning responses? 

Mr. BERNDT. So I chair the local 911 board and our constant 

communication amongst ourselves is trying to figure out the interoperability amongst fire agencies and responders. When we talk 

about a surge there will be people arriving from all over the entire 

United States that need to be able to communicate. We really 

struggle with how do we get an interoperability that is understandable, implementable and widespread when we need it quickly. It’s 

a very expensive thing. 

The same is true with communicating with our citizens when the 

power goes down. We’re a little bit fortunate in that we have I–90, 

Interstate 90, that has quite an expansive cellular network that’s 

mostly run by propane as are the repeaters. But the interoperability is huge and I don’t pretend to know it. I listen to it, and 

I haven’t heard where somebody said we know how to solve it. 

59 

Senator CANTWELL. I do not know if anybody else or Commissioner Goldmark has a comment on that, but one thing we did hear 

as we were going around the state is we should have a number, 

just like on I–90, that you can call. 

Mr. BERNDT. Yes. 

Senator CANTWELL. That gives you the latest information. 

Mr. BERNDT. Yes. 

Senator CANTWELL. When other capacity is down. 

Mr. BERNDT. Yes, I agree. 

Dr. GOLDMARK. So, I would just comment I agree that, particularly at the community level, I mean when evacuation notices are 

going out and there is no way for the citizens to actually interface 

with that information. There are a lot of anxious people out there, 

so having a really robust and durable communications system within the community so it can understand the fire condition and their 

own safety aspects, I think, is a really good point. 

Mr. GOULETTE. Yes, I want to add I think there’s more we can 

do on evacuation planning ahead of time that could really help 

even in the absence of communication infrastructure people make 

better decisions when a fire does get out of hand, and they’re either 

faced with the decision to evacuate or stay in some instances where 

it helps them to make the safest decisions possible because they’ve 

talked with their neighbors. They’ve talked with their family. They 

understand the intent of the local emergency responders and the 

fire department. I think that can become a bigger component of 

Community Wildfire Protection Planning and was maybe lacking in 

the very first round of CWPPs. 

So I think we have an opportunity as we’re updating and increasing the number of plans to really do a better job of evacuation planning. 

Senator CANTWELL. We just see it in some of these communities 

because they have very narrow in and outs. [Cell phone ringing.] 

Senator CANTWELL. I think this is to say how important communication is. [Laughter.] 

Senator CANTWELL. It’s a reminder. It’s a moment. 

The Republic or Twisp, Winthrop Valley or even now as we look 

at what has happened in Pateros, we have very few routes in and 

out of these communities. Here we are trying to plan for some of 

the evacuations from Omak. You know, how are we going to get 

people even out of there given what the whole surrounding area 

was undertaking? 

So it seems to me like in that moment it is really critical to have 

these communication networks that say this is where we can go, 

this is how we can get there. 

I saw a woman, who just happened to be in Pullman on Saturday. She said, ‘‘Yes, I just went and got my mother from Omak.’’ 

And I said, ‘Well how did you get there?’’ And you know, she told 

me a very elaborate route she had to use just so that she could go 

and get her mother. 

We have other Washingtonians who do want to help their families and help their neighbors and want to know what the best way 

to do that is. It just seems to me that this is probably not unique 

necessarily to firefighting in the context of natural disasters. I 

loved what you said, Commissioner Goldmark, about this is not 

60 

just another agency managing a problem. It becomes a disaster, 

and our response has to be a robust response to that natural disaster. 

To me, a more robust communication system that helps both in 

the communication about the fire, and in the response is something 

that we need to look at. Obviously part of the question is what is 

that delivery system that is less vulnerable to the fire itself so that 

you can count on it, so that you know that it will be there? I don’t know what the number is. Somebody told me $2 million 

worth of wire owned by the Douglas County PUD burned up. So 

it makes it very, very challenging but we are going to have to figure out how to have this communication system if we want to have 

a good response for our citizens. I do not know if anybody has any 

responses? I guess we will look at this from a technology perspective. I don’t know, Dr. Medler and Dr. Zimmerman, if your organizations have looked at that? 

Dr. ZIMMERMAN. No, we haven’t. We’re aware of it, but we 

haven’t looked at it. 

Senator CANTWELL. OK. 

Dr. MEDLER. One thing I will say is that community protection 

and community resilience have a few other subtleties and the kinds 

of questions you’re asking about communication and infrastructure 

and information flow are probably best viewed not just or probably 

best viewed not just in an emergency response context but in a resilience context. 

One way to think about resilience is how long will it take and 

how much will it cost to get us back to something like normal? I 

think that’s one of the things that some of these communities are 

facing when we prepare for these fires. And we decide which sort 

of investments to make to get them to the point where we’ll all be 

able to breathe a sigh of relief and say, whew, that the fire is over. 

OK everybody, go back to what you were doing. 

That’s when a lot of these communities realize their infrastructure, their water systems, particularly, but many of these communication infrastructures are damaged. To think about resilience 

rather than resistance in those communication structures, I think, 

is not only critical and wise, but also it’s worth considering the 

model of Washington. 

These things don’t come one at a time, once and then stop. We 

have a fire again the very next year nearby and so infrastructure 

that we could have put money into for communication around these 

fires needs to be resilient to be able to be used again, probably the 

very next season and in Twisp again, 2 years in a row. 

Senator CANTWELL. Well, that is why I definitely do not want to 

see what we saw last year which was hesitancy because we had to 

wait for the FEMA declaration. No community should have to wait 

for that declaration to get the emergency communication system 

deployed. We need to get something that is there and useable so 

that the local governments and law enforcement and others can 

communicate to the citizens about these evacuation levels. Obviously they ramped up very quickly this time, but all the more reason why we need to have the communication. 

Thank you, Senator Barrasso. 

Senator BARRASSO. I have a couple more questions. 

61 

Mr. Berndt, in your testimony you spoke about burned lands 

washing away and the fire impacts on watersheds. I was wondering 

in your view what additional steps need to be taken to protect watersheds to create group resilient forests? 

Mr. BERNDT. So speaking somewhat from history, the Federal 

lands that are burning now will undergo a process known as the 

Burned Area Emergency Rehab Process. But a lot of the private 

lands are often left to their own devices to work with either local 

conservation districts or the NRCS because the State of Washington doesn’t allow for any repair. I hope I’m still right, can assure that is not suppression related. 

So the damage to the land is the landowner’s responsibility. It’s 

a rare event for the landowner and they need the resources to be 

able to do the things they need to do very quickly, like in the next 

90 days, before winter sets in to make their lands stable so we 

don’t ruin our watersheds and water supplies for lack of action. 

Senator BARRASSO. Dr. Medler, there have been a number of reports that the Forest Service spends an incredible amount of taxpayer dollars, risks the lives of employees by conducting fire operations that it knows are actually not going to have much impact. 

I think you eluded to that a bit. The LA Times won a Pulitzer 

Prize, because they had a whole series of articles a number of years 

back about, kind of, the blank check approach to suppression 

spending. 

I want to ask you about what kind of spending controls Congress 

ought to consider putting in place to get a handle on fire suppression costs or to ensure that we are not exposing our firefighters to 

unnecessary risks? 

Dr. MEDLER. Well, that’s a great question and a very big one, 

and I think there are a couple other folks here that have some expertise on that. 

I have great respect for how the Forest Service is going about 

trying to provide for the safety of the folks working on the fire 

lines. I would be remiss if I were to stand here and say we’re not 

doing enough to protect the lives there. And some of us not sitting 

still. 

However, I do think I will reiterate that there is this bifurcation 

problem that we have large, catastrophic fires burning big areas in 

back country, some wilderness and lots and private and state and 

county lands as well. Perhaps to go back to the fire borrowing problem, one way I think about it is perhaps more of a separation not 

in suppression verses preparation but as more of a front country, 

back country process in the planning and to make sure that we 

have the resources necessary to do what we need to do in the front 

country which is where it’s expensive. 

I would argue that one of the big problems we’re having with expenditures is we’re using essentially a WUI model even in the back 

country. A fire is 22 miles from a community. We’ll hit it hard. 

We’ll hit it with tankers. We’ll hit it with hand crews as if it’s a 

mile away from a community, and we have to because essentially 

it is. It can make that run in two more days and get to that community. I know of prescribed fires around Los Alamos that made 

exactly that kind of run in a day. They were trying to burn about 

62 

1,000 acres, and it made it many, many miles in a short time right 

into the city. 

So as long as all of our communities, as long as there is some 

very vulnerable, we’re going to be spending huge amounts of money 

in the back country on fires that before those communities were 

built we would have simply allowed those fires to run their course 

in a much, much less expensive and, I will argue, much safer way. 

Senator BARRASSO. I have one other question I wanted to ask Dr. 

Goldmark. The Forest Service put out a report a couple of years 

ago recognizing the need for a strong forest industry to help accomplish forest restoration work. I want to ask you why do you think 

a vibrant forest products industry makes restoration projects more 

cost efficient? I know mill owners say a primary, they have some 

barriers in trying to get to do some work in forests in terms of regulations. But is there a need, in your opinion, to have a healthy 

industry to help with some of this work? 

Dr. GOLDMARK. There is, and it’s a critical issue in Eastern 

Washington today, particularly in Central Washington. The infrastructure is basically gone. Remaining is the Yakima Nation which 

has a mill there and then there are mills located in Colville. 

But in the intervening space in Kittitas County, as Commissioner Berndt knows very well, there’s no infrastructure there. If 

you want to do your forest health treatments and you want to pay 

for those through the removal of small diameter material that 

needs to come out and reduce the fuel loading, there’s no economic 

manner of doing that. That’s why many of these forest health treatments cost money, and it’s also why some of us have been working 

around renewable fuels that can be generated from biomass. 

So there are a number of different approaches we’re using, but 

mill infrastructure is a vital part of forest restoration and resilience. 

Senator BARRASSO. Commissioner Berndt, is there anything you 

want to add? 

Mr. BERNDT. Absolutely. When the private timber companies decided at some point many years ago that the forests of Eastern 

Washington were not providing the return that they would expect, 

they began to dispose of their lands and that made operating mills 

basically no longer viable. 

I’ve talked many times to the Forest Service folks, is there any 

way we can work something for our economy to rebuild and re-get, 

reestablish, some infrastructures in our community. But there’s no 

ability for the Forest Service to make long term commitments that 

those who would be interested in developing the infrastructure, 

particularly a mill, would say we can’t invest our money on short 

term, very expensive in these days, to open a mill or to do the biomass. 

We’ve made several failing attempts, and it’s critical that the 

working circle for these operations needs to be probably less than 

50, 75 miles. But if you harvest timber in Kittitas County now it 

either goes to the coast or it goes into Central Oregon or it goes 

to the Yakima mill. It’s just not profitable for that to happen on 

any kind of scale. 

Senator BARRASSO. Thank you very much. 

Senator Cantwell, additional questions? 

63 

Senator CANTWELL. I just want to ask the witnesses. Obviously 

this is a big priority for the State of Washington, getting a new approach here, making sure we do preparation and preparedness, improving our system. 

It is a priority for my colleague from Wyoming. I don’t think he 

would be here today if it wasn’t. We have panelists from other 

parts of the country. Why is getting a new fire response plan a national priority? 

Dr. GOLDMARK. If I might, I would offer that from a 50,000 foot 

level, if you will, if we are experiencing drought conditions here in 

the State of Washington. Higher temperatures, I think we’ve set 

record high temperatures for the past two or three months. We’ve 

had very low precipitation, and the result of this, in part, are these 

mega fires that are occurring today. It’s drawing resources in terms 

of staff and equipment from all across the nation. It’s drawing financial resources of a major dimension here into the state to fight 

these fires. 

I would point out that the Okanogan Complex fire in 2015 as 

well as the Carlton Complex fire in 2014 were not only the state’s 

worst wildfires for those years, but indeed the top priority at the 

national level. 

So perhaps Washington State is most impacted by a warming 

and drier climate. In doing so we’re bearing the brunt of a very vicious wildfire season. It is a national issue. 

Mr. GOULETTE. I would add, the American taxpayer has clear interest in public lands across the country. The vast majority of them 

are in the West. The vast majority of those are at risk. 

Climate change is pushing those forest’s ecosystems and woodlands and grasslands to new conditions given the current fire context. If we don’t take action it will only cost the American taxpayer 

more, and we will only have worse climate outcomes in terms of 

carbon and we will lose those species that we’re trying to protect. 

It’s clearly a national problem and a national priority. 

Dr. ZIMMERMAN. Yes, I would also say that I believe this is a national issue. While the magnitude of it may be greater and more 

recognized in the Western United States, we now have a year 

round fire season within the United States. 

We have fires in the Southeastern part of the country throughout 

most of the year, starting early in the year. Texas, Oklahoma and 

some other South Central areas are having fires on Christmas Day 

and New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. It’s a year round problem. It’s only continuing to grow. The North Central part of the 

country also is having larger fires. And you might look at the Western United States, that’s where we hear about during the summertime through the media. You’ll see that since the year 2000 that 

many of the Western States have experienced their largest fire or 

second or third largest fire ever on record in the last 15 years. 

So look, fires are getting larger. The seasons are getting longer. 

The extent of the area burning is extending across the country. 

Dr. MEDLER. I’d like to chime in also that these fires are burning 

on all types of landscapes and jurisdictions. But fires in our Federal lands, going back to Yellowstone and even decades before that, 

are of tremendous interest to the public. A critical media opportunity occurs at a lot of these fires to try to educate the people as 

64 

to the needs to do what I would concur with Senator Barrasso, get 

that ounce of prevention out there. 

I don’t mean to be glum about this, but frankly I don’t think 

we’ve seen a bad fire season yet. My reading of the cards is we’ve 

dodged a couple bullets over the last eight, ten years, and it could 

get quite a bit worse. And so, prevention is key at this point before 

we do have a large fire with tens of thousands of homes in San 

Diego or someplace like that. I quite honestly think this should a 

key priority at the Federal level. 

And Tom’s absolutely right, it’s not just the Western United 

States. We have problems in Florida and the Southeast and in 

many parts of the country where we could have fires behaving in 

new and unexpected ways which is what we are seeing now. 

If that happens at a broader scale near some of our larger communities we have some serious problems, and I think we’re at a 

point where as you have both alluded to, we need a new paradigm. 

We need a new way to think about fires, and we need a way to effectively do that for, not just our small communities in the back 

country, but for our Los Angeles and our San Diegos just as much. 

Mr. BERNDT. The national forests in this country are a treasure. 

They’re being eroded at a fairly rapid rate through catastrophic 

fire. 

To me, that’s a national priority, to protect those forests because 

I have to tell you I grew up with my father working at the United 

States Forest Service. I treasure the national forests of our country. 

And to say we see a trend, that Dr. Medler talks about, we may 

not have seen a bad season. 

We have a chance to interrupt that cycle and do some things that 

continue to keep the national forests, the treasure that I’ve always 

seen them to be and the economic engine that drives, certainly, my 

county, certainly Washington State. I can’t speak for the entire 

West. It would go totally against me to say this is not a national 

priority. 

Thank you. 

Senator BARRASSO. Anything else, Senator Cantwell? 

I just want to thank all of you for being here today, for your very, 

very helpful testimony. 

Other members of the Committee may actually submit questions 

to you. Those who were not able to be with us today, and we would 

ask that you answer in writing. 

The hearing record will remain open for 2 weeks. I want to thank 

all of you for your time and your testimony. I especially want to 

thank our hosts here at this incredible institute of higher education. I also want to thank Senator Cantwell for her dedication, 

her work and her willingness to address these difficult issues in 

challenging times. 

Thank you. 

This hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 1:32 p.m. the hearing was adjourned.] 

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