[Senate Hearing 110-139]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 110-139
PREPAREDNESS FOR THE 2007 WILDFIRE SEASON
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON
ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
TO
CONSIDER THE PREPAREDNESS OF FEDERAL LAND MANAGEMENT AGENCIES FOR THE
2007 WILDFIRE SEASON AND TO CONSIDER RECENT REPORTS ON THE AGENCIES'
EFFORTS TO CONTAIN THE COSTS OF WILDFIRE MANAGEMENT ACTIVITIES
__________
JUNE 26, 2007
Printed for the use of the
Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
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COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES
JEFF BINGAMAN, New Mexico, Chairman
DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico
BYRON L. DORGAN, North Dakota LARRY E. CRAIG, Idaho
RON WYDEN, Oregon CRAIG THOMAS, Wyoming *
TIM JOHNSON, South Dakota LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska
MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana RICHARD BURR, North Carolina
MARIA CANTWELL, Washington JIM DeMINT, South Carolina
KEN SALAZAR, Colorado BOB CORKER, Tennessee
ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey JEFF SESSIONS, Alabama
BLANCHE L. LINCOLN, Arkansas GORDON H. SMITH, Oregon
BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont JIM BUNNING, Kentucky
JON TESTER, Montana MEL MARTINEZ, Florida
Robert M. Simon, Staff Director
Sam E. Fowler, Chief Counsel
Frank Macchiarola, Republican Staff Director
Judith K. Pensabene, Republican Chief Counsel
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* Senator Thomas passed away on June 4, 2007.
C O N T E N T S
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STATEMENTS
Page
Allred, C. Stephen, Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals
Management, Department of the Interior......................... 5
Bingaman, Hon. Jeff, U.S. Senator from New Mexico................ 1
Domenici, Hon. Pete V., U.S. Senator from New Mexico............. 3
Nazzaro, Robin, National Resources and the Environment,
Government Accountability Office............................... 17
Rey, Mark, Under Secretary for Natural Resources and the
Environment, Department of Agriculture......................... 15
Salazar, Hon. Ken, U.S. Senator from Colorado.................... 3
APPENDIXES
Appendix I
Responses to additional questions................................ 41
Appendix II
Additional material submitted for the record..................... 53
PREPAREDNESS FOR THE 2007
WILDFIRE SEASON
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TUESDAY, JUNE 26, 2007
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Energy and Natural Resources,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:04 a.m. in
room SD-366, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Jeff
Bingaman, chairman, presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JEFF BINGAMAN, U.S. SENATOR FROM NEW
MEXICO
The Chairman. All right, why don't we go ahead with the
hearing.
This is the second hearing of the year on the subject of
wildfire management. In January, we had a hearing, I believe it
was the committee's first hearing ever, dedicated to the issue
of wildfire cost containment. Today's hearing is focused on the
preparedness of Federal agencies for the current wildfire
season, but also, again, we want to focus on the issue of cost
containment, specifically in the context of two new reports,
and a recently released administrative document on the subject.
Wildfire potential is forecast to be higher than normal in
a number of regions. Of course, we see on the news, and the
front page of the newspapers, the devastation that's being
caused in some parts of the country, as we speak.
To date, we've had 116 percent of the average number of
fires. They've burned 136 percent of the average number of
acres. That's the average over the last 10 years, as I
understand it. The Forest Service's expenditures have already
approached $400 million. The administration's budgets indicate
that it believes that containing wildfire costs must come at
the expense of preparedness. That's been an issue of contention
for a very long time.
In fact, we heard repeatedly from an array of experts that
spending more money on preparedness and local first response
capacity would reduce the overall cost of fighting fires in the
long term. They've also pointed to the gross inefficiencies and
disruptions that result in borrowing funds from other agency
accounts to cover under-funded emergency wildfire suppression
operations.
It appears to me the Forest Service and Interior have done
more in the last year to begin to address the escalating costs
of wildfire management than has been done in a long time, and
they deserve credit for undertaking some significant cost
containment initiatives.
However, as both of the reports that we are considering
today will confirm, there's much more that agencies could be
doing, and should be doing, the two reports reiterate large
deficiencies in the agency efforts, the failure to
institutionalize cost containment is a major issue that's
cited.
I also want to briefly mention the issue of our fire
fighters. Obviously we're extremely appreciative of the
dedicated service that many individuals commit to fighting
fires. Senator Cantwell, Senator Domenici and I have introduced
a bill, S. 1635 to help cover their liability insurance costs.
This is a project we worked closely with the administration
on, and through Senator Craig and Senator Feinstein's
leadership, we have inserted that into the Interior bill.
Through this authority, agencies will be better positioned to
manage their wild land fire programs for safety, effectiveness
and efficiency, and firefighters will be better positioned to
protect their personal interests while serving the public
interests.
Let me turn to Senator Domenici for any opening comments he
has.
[The prepared statements of Senators Bingaman and Salazar
follow:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Jeff Bingaman, U.S. Senator From New Mexico
This is the committee's second hearing of the year on the subject
of wildfire management. At the end of January, this committee held what
I believe was the first-ever hearing dedicated to wildfire cost-
containment.
This hearing is focused on the preparedness of the Federal agencies
for the current wildfire season, but we also will again focus on the
issue of cost-containment, specifically in the context of two new
reports and a recently released administrative document on the subject.
The Federal agencies have forecasted wildfire potential to be
higher than normal across much of the country. The forecasts have thus
far proven pretty accurate: to date, we have had 112 percent of the
average number of fires and they have burned about 142 percent of the
average number of acres.
The administration seems to believe that containing wildfire costs
must come at the expense of preparedness. But I don't believe that
starving the preparedness, wildfire suppression, and other Forest
Service programs is an effective or efficient strategy to contain those
costs.
In fact, we have heard repeatedly from an array of experts that
spending more money on preparedness and local first-response capacity
would reduce overall costs in the long term. They also have pointed to
the gross inefficiencies and disruptions that often result from
borrowing funds from other agency accounts to cover under-funded
emergency wildfire suppression operations.
We have had to dig a long-way-out of the deep financial hole in
which the agencies' wildfire accounts were left by the last Congress.
The continuing resolution for this fiscal year provided an extra
$70 million in wildland fire management funding for the Forest Service.
The Iraq Supplemental provided another $465 million for emergency
suppression, despite the administration's opposition; and the recently-
passed budget provides for an additional $500 million in funding for
next year, if necessary.
As a result, I think we are much better prepared than we would have
been without that change in course, and better preparation should make
for a more efficient and effective wildfire management program.
So while starving the agencies' budgets is not the answer, there
are many things the agencies can and should be doing to contain costs.
It appears to me that the Forest Service and Interior Department
have done more in the last year to begin to address the escalating
costs of wildfire management than they have done in a long time.
They deserve credit for undertaking a number of significant cost-
containment initiatives.
However, as both of the reports we will consider today confirm,
there still remains much that agencies ought to be doing. That includes
many specific initiatives that have been recommended by these and many
other reports.
The two reports also reiterate larger deficiencies in the agencies'
efforts. As the Independent Panel that Dr. Hyde will testify about
reports, ``despite the numerous studies and reviews conducted of large
wildfire costs since the National Fire Plan, cost-containment has not
been institutionalized in the Forest Service.''
And the failure to institutionalize cost-containment is in large
part the result of enormous shortcomings in planning, providing
effective incentives, and--as the titles of both reports indicate--
strategizing.
I am afraid that I will have to step away from the hearing, and
Senator Wyden, who chairs our Public Lands and Forests Subcommittee,
will chair in my absence. First I'd like to turn to Senator Domenici
for any opening remarks he'd like to make. Other members' statements
will be made a part of the record.
______
Prepared Statement of Hon. Ken Salazar, U.S. Senator From Colorado
Mr. Chairman, thank you for holding this hearing. As Colorado can
attest, fire season is upon us and I look forward to hearing from the
administration on the steps they have taken to prepare for it.
While fire danger ratings vary across the country from below
average to above average it is important that we not let our guard down
anywhere. This is especially true for a state like Colorado where fire
danger is rated ``normal'' this season. Colorado's bark beetle
infestation is increasing hazardous fuel loads in the forests. At the
same time the increasing number of recreational users in our forests
and Colorado's extensive wildland-urban interface demand that we remain
vigilant in our preparation to appropriately respond to, contain, and
suppress wildfires.
In light of this, I am concerned about reports that fire positions
in Colorado are being cut and will have some questions regarding
resource levels as well as reports that certain assets are slated to be
permanently re-located.
I am concerned about increased fire fighting costs adversely
affecting the Forest Service's ability to address other important
funding needs such as preparedness, hazardous fuels mitigation,
recreation management, and of course bark beetles.
These are important issues and I believe it is a wise use of this
Committee's time to continue to conduct vigorous oversight of the
Federal land agencies and their actions to address them and to assure
this committee that life, property, and other important resources are
protected from wildfire to the maximum extent possible.
Thank you again, Mr. Chairman. I look forward to hearing from the
administration witnesses on these items.
STATEMENT OF HON. PETE V. DOMENICI, U.S. SENATOR FROM NEW
MEXICO
Senator Domenici. Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman. First, I
want to thank you for holding the hearing. This last fire
season we burned 9 million acres, and expended slightly more
than $2 billion in that effort. Much of the expense was
consumed in a couple of dozen fires.
It seems like every year we ask the same questions--do we
have enough firefighters? Do we have enough equipment? Will
there be an aerial support when we need it? How can we reduce
the cost of this activity?
I think the committee and the Congress should be asking
more important questions. First should be, ``how are we going
to help change the on-the-ground dynamics in order to avoid
these intense catastrophic fires?'' Second, we should be
asking, ``what can be done to reduce the millions of tons of
carbon dioxide and pollutants that get released into our air
from these fires?''
When the Haymon Fire burned in Colorado in 2002, the NASA
scientists estimated that the fire was emitting more carbon
dioxide in 1 day than all of the vehicles in the United States
emitted in a week.
Researchers in Canada recently found mercury levels in
trout to be 5 times higher than the previous year in an area
that they were studying after it was burned.
Here is a picture of the Derby Fire near Big Timber,
Montana that burned last summer. I was in Montana when the fire
was going on, and it was one of the many that occurred in the
State that summer. This lightning-caused fire consumed 207,000
acres between August 22 and October 3 in 2006. Much of that
area was heavily forested lands that burned with great
intensity--millions of tons of timber, grass and brush were
consumed in the fire.
Science tells us that half of the carbon in these trees
captured from the air is sequestered in the wood, and half is
sequestered in the soil. When we get very intense fires, like
the one that occurred in the Derby Fire, much of the carbon,
both in the trees and in the soil, is released into the
atmosphere. That's another real big source of carbon dioxide
that we're not preventing by letting that much heat hit that
much stored carbon that has been saved up.
The smoke column in that picture was estimated to be 20,000
to 30,000 feet tall. Other than a major volcanic eruption or
the detonation of a thermo-nuclear bomb, there is no other
event that pushes carbon dioxide as high into the upper
atmosphere, as quickly as this does. Take a look at the
picture. It's from Colorado and was taken at Frazier
Experimental Forest last year. It is another Derby Fire waiting
to happen. What happened here? Why did some of these trees
survive the onslaught of insects? Those green areas were clear-
cut in an experiment designed to model water yields done 40
years ago, and they are now young, vigorous forests that have
the potential to fight off insects.
Mr. Chairman, this Congress should be very concerned about
the carbon dioxide released by our dead and dying trees,
especially when they burn. Like many others here today, I'm
worried about the Forest Service becoming an agency with no
funds to manage anything other than fires. That would be a
shame. We're moving in that direction.
I really believe that an ounce of prevention would be worth
more than a pound of cure when it comes to the forest. In
closing, I would be remiss if I did not mention an insect
problem that is ongoing near Cloudcroft, New Mexico, Senator
Bingaman. I want to avoid, if possible, seeing the smoke plume
like the one I showed today over our home State.
Mr. Rey, my first question will be about this situation, so
if you don't have it ready, you might as well ask somebody now.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. All right, thank you very much. We have three
distinguished witnesses. The Honorable Mark Rey, who is the
Under Secretary for Natural Resources and the Environment in
the Department of Agriculture. The Honorable Steven Allred, who
is the Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management at
the Department of Interior, and Robin Nazzaro, who is Director
of Natural Resources and the Environment at the Government
Accountability Office.
I'm informed that Secretary Allred is prepared to be the
first witness, and why don't we hear from you, and then from
Mark Rey, and then from Ms. Nazzaro.
STATEMENT OF C. STEPHEN ALLRED, ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR LAND
AND MINERALS MANAGEMENT, DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
Mr. Allred. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Senator Domenici, and
members of the committee, it's a pleasure to be here to visit
with you, as always.
It's my pleasure to appear here with Mark Rey as we discuss
fire preparedness, fuels reduction, the upcoming fire season we
need to be prepared for, and other important information about
the close relationship the Department of the Interior and
Department of Agriculture have with regard to fire operations.
As you know, multiple factors contribute to wildland fire,
including weather and fuel-type terrain, location proximity to
the Wildlands Urban Interface, or WUI, as we refer to it, and
obviously the management decisions that are made before and
during fire incidents.
Changing temperature, the prolonged drought, accumulation
of fuels and substantial increase in highly flammable invasive
species--what I'm particularly concerned about--are converging
to increase the risk that we have for catastrophic fire.
In combination, these trends can present continuing
challenges in our effort to control wildland fires, and to
manage the cost of fighting those fires.
One challenge we face in addressing wildland fire is in the
Wildland Urban Interface where suppression efforts are
inherently more expensive. The rate of growth of new homes in
the WUI is triple that outside of that area, with approximately
8.4 million new homes constructed in the 1990s.
The Departments have worked aggressively to reduce the
amount of hazardous fuels on Federal lands, and to restore the
heath by public ranges and forests.
In carrying out this work, we have used both administrative
tools and statutory authorities, such as the President's
Healthy Forest Initiative, and the Healthy Forest Restoration
Act, to expedite those actions.
In 2006, more than half of the total acres treated were
inside the WUI area. We'll maintain this emphasis, and our goal
is to treat approximately 2 million acres in 2007. As you've
said, 2006 was an above-normal year by almost any standard. In
2006, we had 14 fires that topped 100,000 acres in size.
Across all jurisdictions in 2006, wildland fires totaled
more than 96,000 incidents, and burned almost 10 million acres
of land. Despite the severity of the fire index, we were able
to achieve a 97 percent initial attack success on all of the
fires, which is comparable to less severe years that we've
faced.
Also significantly, fewer dwellings and other structures
were destroyed in 2006, 750 homes lost, and compare that in
2002 at 835, and in 2003, 4,500 homes.
Looking at the 2007 season, we expect to be at higher than
normal incidents across the Southwest, in California, across
the Great Basin, and the Northern Rockies, and small portions
of Northwest Alaska and the Southeast.
Critical conditions continue because of drought, low snow
pack, warmer temperatures and earlier melt of that snow pack.
These conditions have already resulted in more than 1.3 million
acres in the Southern area being burned, and about 160,000 in
the Southeastern area. As of this morning, as you've read and
seen in the news media--there are two large fires that are
attracting a lot of attention, the fire in Caribou Hills,
Alaska on the Kenai Peninsula, has consumed about 55,000 acres,
and destroyed 88 cabins and about 109 outbuildings.
In addition to that, the Angola Fire at South Lake Tahoe
has consumed almost 2,500 acres as of last night, destroyed 200
primary residences, and 75 outbuildings.
Our resources are comparable to those in 2006. We have
permanent and seasonal firefighters, hot shot fighting crews,
some 18,000 total firefighters, smoke jumpers, incident
management teams, ready to respond.
Our aviation assets also include type 1 and type 2
helicopters, single-engine air tankers, both on exclusive-use
contracts, and on an as-needed basis, and two water scoopers
for fires.
As we have already demonstrated as we fought the fires
early this season, we leverage our firefighting ability by
shifting our firefighters' equipment as the fire season
progresses.
Assignments are made based upon anticipated fire starts,
actual fire currents, the rate of fire spread and severity that
we face with the help of our predicting services. Initial
attack of the fires is handled by the closest available assets.
In the event of multiple, simultaneous fires, we prioritize
those efforts by using the National Multi-agency Coordinate
Group that's part of NIFC.
Prioritization of our efforts ensures firefighting
resources are positioned where they are needed most, and are
most efficient from a cost standpoint.
Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, thank you for the
opportunity to testify, and I'll be most willing to answer any
questions at the appropriate time.
[The joint prepared statement of Mr. Allred and Mr. Rey
follows:]
Joint Prepared Statement of C. Stephen Allred, Assistant Secretary for
Land and Minerals Management, Department of the Interior, and Mark Rey,
Under Secretary for Natural Resources and the Environment, Department
of Agriculture
introduction
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, thank you for the
opportunity to testify on wildland fire preparedness for the 2007 fire
season. Since the Department of the Interior and the Department of
Agriculture work closely together in fire management, the two
Departments are providing a joint statement.
weather, wildland urban interface, and wood
Multiple factors contribute to wildland fire. These factors include
weather, fuel type, terrain, location with respect to the wildland
urban interface (WUI), and other highly valued landscapes, and
managerial decisions made before and during fire incidents. In
addition, changing temperatures and prolonged drought across many
portions of the West and Southeast, an expansion of the WUI and an
increase in the number of people living in the WUI, continued
accumulation of wood fiber, and substantial increases in highly
flammable invasive species, such as cheatgrass, are converging to
increase the risk of catastrophic loss from wildland fires. In
combination, these trends present continuing challenges in our efforts
to decrease the number and cost of fire incidents.
Over the last few years, we have reported regularly to Congress on
these challenges. The 2005 Quadrennial Fire and Fuels Review by DOI and
USDA examined the growth of the WUI, the area where structures and
other human developments meet or intermingle with undeveloped wildland.
The review found that 8.4 million new homes were added to the WUI in
the 1990s, representing 60 percent of the new homes constructed in the
United States. The rate of growth is triple the rate of construction
outside of the WUI. Also, the recent Audit Report by the Office of
Inspector General ``Forest Service Large Fire Suppression Costs'' found
that the majority of Forest Service large fire suppression costs are
directly linked to protecting property in the WUI. These reviews
illustrate the challenge of addressing wildland fire in land areas such
as locations in the WUI where fire suppression is inherently more
expensive.
Another challenge is addressing the accumulation of flammable
biomass on our public lands, a major cause of fire risk. The
Departments have worked aggressively to reduce the amount of hazardous
fuels on Federal lands and restore the health of our public forests and
rangelands, utilizing the authorities provided under the President's
Healthy Forests Initiative and the Healthy Forests Restoration Act to
expedite action. In 2006, more than half of the total acres treated
were inside the WUI. We will maintain this emphasis with a goal to
treat approximately 2 million acres in high-risk wildland urban
interface areas through the hazardous fuels reduction program in 2007.
2006 fire season
Fire activity in 2006 was above normal by nearly every standard.
The transition from the end of the 2005 fire season to the beginning of
the 2006 fire season was uncharacteristic in that it lacked the typical
slowdown during the winter months. Extremely low humidity, persistent
drought conditions and winds contributed to fire ignitions and rapid
spreads from November 2005 through April 2006 in Texas and Oklahoma as
well as Colorado, Missouri and New Mexico.
2006 included the second warmest summer on record nationally and
the hottest on record from January through August. The summer saw an
unprecedented quantity of acreage burned, with 14 fires topping 100,000
acres in size, in Washington, Nevada, California, Montana, Oregon,
Texas, Idaho and Alaska with five located on National Forests, seven in
Bureau of Land Management Districts, and two in State jurisdictions.
Across all jurisdictions, wildland fires totaled more than 96,000
incidents burning nearly 10 million acres.
Last year, the U.S. Forest Service spent over $1.5 billion on all
fire suppression and over $400 million on 20 of the largest fires while
DOI spent approximately $424 million on all fire suppression. We are
pleased, that even in the face of such a long and severe fire year; we
achieved nearly 97 percent initial attack success on all fires, a rate
comparable to less severe years. We will strive to maintain that level.
Although the 2006 fire season had an unprecedented number of fire
starts in a single day (548), an extraordinary number of lightning
caused fires (over 14,000), and the most number of large fires at one
time (59 fires over 500 acres being managed in 9 geographic areas), it
also resulted in significantly fewer dwellings and other structures
destroyed--750 homes lost in 2006 (240 homes during the March fires in
Texas and Oklahoma) compared with 835 homes lost in 2002 and over 4500
homes lost in 2003.
2007 wildland fire season outlook
Most of the eastern, central and northwestern U.S. has a normal
outlook for significant wildland fire in potential 2007. A portion of
the Southwest is predicted to have a below-normal wildland fire season.
This area includes northeastern New Mexico, and small parts of
southeastern Colorado, western Oklahoma, and northern Texas, where it
borders New Mexico. Wildland fire potential is expected to be higher
than normal across much of the Southwest, California, portions of the
Great Basin, the Northern Rockies, a small portion of the Northwest,
Alaska, and the Southeast. The amount of precipitation many areas
receive in the early summer periods is an important factor in the
severity of the fire season.
The critical conditions influencing the 2007 wildland fire outlook
are:
Drought conditions are expanding and intensifying across
large portions of the West and Southeast, and drought relief is
not expected in these areas through the season.
Low snow pack, warmer-than-normal forecast temperatures, and
early snow melt over most of the West will likely dry out
timber fuels and could cause an early onset of fire season in
some areas.
Abundant new and carry over fine fuels are expected to
green-up and cure early, leading to an active and prolonged
grassland fire season.
Another hotter than normal summer is projected for the West.
Depending on heat levels and timing of higher temperatures,
higher elevation fuels could dry quickly and be susceptible to
ignitions.
The fire season is already producing incidents that are evidence of
our concern about the 2007 fire season. Drought and high temperatures
have resulted in the burning of over 1.1 million acres in the Southern
Area, including the Big Turnaround, Sweat Farm Road, Bugaboo Scrub and
Florida Bugaboo fire complex in Northern Florida and Southeastern
Georgia. More than 161,000 acres have burned in the Eastern Area,
including the Ham Lake fire in Northern Minnesota and in Canada which
burned for over eighteen days, due to drought conditions and high
winds.
wildland fire preparedness
To prepare for these natural conditions anticipated in the 2007
Fire Season, USDA and DOI are working to improve the efficiency and
effectiveness of our firefighting resources. New management efforts are
allowing for increased mobility of firefighting forces and aviation
assets.
Firefighting Forces
For the 2007 fire season, we have secured firefighting forces--
firefighters, equipment, and aircraft--comparable to those available in
2006. As has already been demonstrated during the fires in the
Southeast, we leverage our firefighting ability by shifting our
firefighters and equipment as the fire season progresses. Fire managers
assign local, regional, and national firefighting personnel and
equipment based on anticipated fire starts, actual fire occurrence,
fire spread, and severity with the help of information from Predictive
Services.
More than 18,000 firefighters will be available, including
permanent and seasonal Federal and State employees, crews from Tribal
and local governments, contract crews, and emergency/temporary hires.
This figure includes 92 highly-trained Hotshot firefighting crews and
about 400 smokejumpers nationwide. There are 17 Type 1 national
interagency incident management teams (the most experienced and skilled
teams) available for complex fires or incidents. Thirty-eight Type 2
incident management teams are available for geographical or national
incidents.
Initial attack of a fire is handled by the closest available local
resource regardless of agency jurisdiction. Generally this means that
the agency with management jurisdiction and protection responsibility
for the location of the fire, such as a national forest, Tribal lands,
Bureau of Land Management unit, wildlife refuge, or national park, will
handle initial attack. Often, our partners at the local community or
county level are the first to respond.
Two interagency National Incident Management Organization (NIMO)
teams were staffed in 2006, and are operational with two seven-member
full-time Type I Incident Management Teams that are ready to respond to
wildland fire incidents. The teams are headquartered in Atlanta,
Georgia and Boise, Idaho and will help wildland fire agencies improve
future fire management programs. Currently, the Atlanta NIMO team is
assisting the Florida State incident management team on the Florida
Bugaboo fire. The Boise NIMO team recently concluded nearly 40 days of
assisting FEMA in its tornado disaster response operation in
Greensburg, Kansas. Both teams will be called to assist in wildland
fire incidents this season, and when they are not on assignments, they
will implement the NIMO Implementation Plan, which calls for
improvements in wildland fire program management in the areas of
training, fuels management, cost containment, and leadership
development, among others.
The National Interagency Coordination Center, located at the
National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, coordinates critical
firefighting needs throughout the nation. In the event of multiple,
simultaneous fires, firefighting resources are prioritized and
allocated by the National Multi-Agency Coordinating group, composed of
national fire directors headquartered at NIFC. Prioritization ensures
firefighting forces are positioned where they are needed most. Fire
managers dispatch and track personnel, equipment, aircraft, vehicles,
and supplies through an integrated national system. If conditions
become extreme, assistance from the Department of Defense is available
under our standing agreements, as well as firefighting forces from
Canada, Mexico, Australia, and New Zealand using established agreements
and protocols.
Aviation
The wildland firefighting agencies continue to employ a mix of
fixed and rotor wing aircraft. Key components of our 2007 aviation
assets include 16 civilian large air tankers on federal contracts,
along with 41 Type 1 and Type 2, or heavy and medium, helicopters on
national use exclusive-use contracts; and 84 Type 2 and 3 helicopters
on local or regional contracts. Additionally, there are nearly 300
call-when-needed Type 1, 2 and 3 helicopters available for fire
management support as conditions and activity dictate.
Although both the large and single-engine air tanker programs have
evolved in recent years, we are confident that we have appropriate and
cost-effective assets in place or available to respond to the air
support needs in the field. Twenty three Single Engine Air Tankers
(SEATs) will be on exclusive-use contracts for the 2007 fire season and
about 80 available on a call-when-needed basis. Some states and local
areas also contract their own SEATs. In addition, there will be two
water-scooper airtankers on exclusive-use contracts and an additional
one available on a call-when-needed basis for the 2007 fire season.
Additional water-scooper aircraft will be available through agreements
with state and county firefighting agencies. As in the past, military
C-130 aircraft equipped with Modular Airborne Fire Fighting Systems
(MAFFS) will be available to supplement our large air tanker fleet as
needed. Six MAFFS are available this year.
wildland fire safety
The complexity of the wildland fire management environment places
many expectations upon our wildland firefighters. Above all else, human
safety is our first priority. The Forest Service has adopted a
foundational doctrine--principles guiding operations of fire
suppression activities and actions. Currently, the Forest Service and
the DOI are reviewing guidance for dealing with the parts of fire
suppression that rely on interpretation, judgment, and agility.
DOI agencies and the Forest Service continue to require annual fire
line safety refresher courses for all firefighting personnel.
Additionally, the ``6 Minutes for Safety,'' an interagency safety
initiative, is issued daily during fire season and alerts firefighters
to high-risk situations. It is distributed throughout the fire
community.
Within the Incident Command System, the agency is reevaluating
training and soliciting support from other wildland fire agencies to
streamline training through a competency based system. This will
provide the knowledge and skills necessary to continue to build
capacity quickly while upholding a strong standard of accountability.
Over the past few years the wildland fire agencies have redirected the
focus of training to provide a series of fire leadership courses which
has been incorporated in the standard training curriculum, as well as
long-range development and planning for fire personnel within the
agency.
mitigating wildland fire risk to communities and the impacts of fire
on the environment
We have dangerous fire and fuels conditions in areas in the United
States and the situation is becoming increasingly complex. However, we
now treat more fuels than ever, and we collaborate with our local,
state and tribal partners more than ever before. Our focused effort to
remove accumulation of hazardous fuels in our forests and grasslands is
having a positive effect on the land and is helping to reduce wildland
fire risk to communities.
Some of our specific accomplishments in reducing hazardous fuels
include:
Despite an unprecedented wildfire suppression workload, the
Forest Service and DOI improved fuel conditions and ecosystem
health on more than 4 million acres of land in 2006, of which
2.6 million acres were treated through hazardous fuels
reduction programs and 1.4 million acres of land restoration
accomplished through other land management activities.
The Federal land management agencies project that they will
have treated nearly 25 million acres from FY 2000 through 2007,
including approximately 20 million acres treated through the
hazardous fuels reduction programs and about 5 million acres of
landscape restoration accomplished through other land
management activities.
In 2006, the Administration treated many overstocked Federal
forests. Hazardous fuels treatments resulted in qualitative
improvements of at least 994,000 acres in fire regimes classes
1, 2, or 3 that moved to a better condition class. In addition,
the Administration has begun measuring the percentage of total
National Forest System land for which fire risk is reduced
through movement to a better condition. The Administration is
continuing to work on metrics for forest health changes that
will help demonstrate the outcomes of projects that remove
fuels.
USDA and DOI, in collaboration with our non-federal
partners, continue to increase the community protection
emphasis of the hazardous fuels program. Community Wildfire
Protection Plans are essential for localities to reduce risk
and set priorities. Over 1,100 CWPPs covering 3,000 communities
have been completed nationally and an additional 450 plans are
progressing toward completion.
The LANDFIRE project has now been completed for the western
third of the mainland United States. The data are being used in
setting hazardous fuel treatment priorities by local field
units and regionally, and are used in managing large, long
duration wildfires burning across landscapes. USDA and DOI are
also testing methods of modeling fire risk with LANDFIRE data
to help better inform hazardous fuel treatment prioritization.
USDA and DOI are developing methods for effectively
allocating fuels reduction funds and measuring the
effectiveness of those treatments in terms of community risk
reduction. The agencies will identify national priorities
within the fuels program and focus funding on those priorities,
develop more effective measures of risk reduction through the
introduction of systematic risk analysis tools for fire hazard
analysis and fuels treatment implementation, and strengthen the
project criteria for WUI fuels treatments.
The ``Implementation Plan'' of the ``10 Year Comprehensive
Strategy'' was updated and released in December of 2006. The
goals and guiding principles from the 2001 document are
constant, but performance measures and implementation tasks
have been updated to reflect the progress made toward National
Fire Plan goals in the past five years and build upon our
success.
Collaboration among communities and local Forest Service and DOI
agencies' offices has resulted in highly effective and successful
hazardous fuels reduction projects. One example is the New Harmony
(Utah) Community Fire Plan that called for coordinated treatments on
forested lands managed by the State of Utah, the Bureau of Land
Management, Dixie National Forest and individual property owners.
Between 2002 and 2004 the agencies and landowners completed fuel
treatments that reduced fire intensity in the treated areas helping
fire fighters to more safely protect the community during the 2005 Blue
Spring Fire. In another example, the use of Healthy Forests Restoration
Act (HFRA) authorities enabled federal agencies and local communities
to quickly begin clean-up and fuels reduction in the wake of hurricanes
that devastated Gulf Coast communities and surrounding forests in 2005.
The Forest Service and DOI worked closely, using HFRA authorities, to
facilitate the National Forests of Mississippi to successfully remove
over 1.3 million tons of hazardous fuel from over 100,000 acres,
salvaging over 240 million board feet of timber. Nearly 1000 miles of
fuel breaks were constructed and another 500 miles will be completed
this year to protect homes in the WUI.
In this challenging fire season, citizens who live or vacation in
fire-prone areas must take personal responsibility to protect their
individual homes. Valuable information about how to increase their
safety and protect their homes and property is available through the
FIREWISE program. Homeowners can learn how to protect their homes with
a survivable, cleared space and how to build their houses and landscape
their yard with fire resistant materials. Information about the
FIREWISE program can be found at www.firewise.org, sponsored by a
consortium of wildland fire agencies that includes the Forest Service,
the Department of the Interior, the National Fire Protection
Association, and the National Association of State Foresters.
The agencies are working to improve procedures for allocating
hazardous fuels reduction funds by assessing the risks from wildland
fires and determining the benefits of fuels treatment and restoration
projects by priority. By using tools such as the Landfire Rapid
Assessment, the Forest Service will address recommendations contained
in relevant Government Accountability Office and Office of Inspector
General to ensure that the most important and highest priority projects
are funded first. The Forest Service will also undertake other such
actions as necessary to implement the desired outcomes of this plan.
managing the cost of fighting wildland fire
Suppression costs have escalated in recent years, as wildfire
seasons have generally lasted longer and the acreage figures have
grown. The external factors noted earlier in this testimony influence
the number and severity of incidents. While safety is our primary
concern, our Departments do share concerns about the cost of fires and
are committed to doing all we can to contain these costs.
Over the last several years, various studies and assessments
dedicated to fire suppression costs have been conducted by the National
Academy of Public Administration, the Wildland Fire Leadership Council,
the Brookings Institution, and the Government Accountability Office
(GAO), including the report they are releasing today. As a result of
the reviews, more than 300 recommendations have been documented to
suggest approaches to trim the costs of wildland fire suppression. The
agencies have taken these reviews seriously, and the overall awareness
and personal responsibility for cost-containment among the federal fire
agencies has never been more acute.
In 2006, TriData, a Division of System Planning Corporation, under
contract with the Forest Service, completed a review and analysis of 22
past cost containment reports and made recommendations regarding those
which would yield the greatest savings. The Tridata report determined
there were 203 unique recommendations directed at improving wildfire
suppression cost containment. Of those, the report identified 71
recommendations that represented potentially high to extremely high
cost savings if implemented. As of August 2006, we have taken or are in
the process of taking action on 57 of these recommendations. We have
not implemented corrective actions on the remaining recommendations for
various reasons, including that the recommendation involves actions
beyond agency authority, the action must be deferred due to pending
court decisions, or that recommendations were directed at isolated
events. Both the Forest Service and DOI are working on a comprehensive
report on recommendations for large fire cost reviews. We expect that
report to be available later this year.
Management Efficiencies
On January 30, 2007 we testified before this Committee on a set of
``management efficiencies.''* These cost control measures focus on
leadership, operations, aviation and general management practices. Both
agencies are moving forward to implement management efficiencies. As we
stated then, some of these measures will be implemented in 2007, while
others will be implemented over the long-term. An update on the key
items reported in January includes:
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* Document has been retained in committee files.
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1. Policy Transition to Risk-Informed Management
Appropriate Management Response (AMR) is an important approach for
agencies to use to manage wildland fire. This approach provides a risk
informed, performance-based system for fire protection by managing
wildland fire in relationship to the risk that the incident poses. If a
wildland fire has potential benefits to natural resources and poses a
relatively low risk to impact other valued assets, the fire would
receive a lower intensity suppression effort. Conversely, if a fire
incident is determined to pose high risk to property or community, high
suppression efforts would be applied. The use of this approach has
grown over the last several years and we expect to continue expansion
of this approach in the 2007 fire season. The Forest Service developed
a draft guidebook that presents a coherent strategy to implement this
approach. DOI has reviewed this guidebook, and will work with the
Forest Service to ensure that the final product recognizes there are
multiple strategies for wildland fire fighting, ranging from monitoring
to full suppression, that can be used on a single fire depending on
factors such as fire management and land-use plans in place, values at
risk, cost-containment efforts, and resources available.
2. Forest Service Chief's Principal Representative (CPR)
The Chief's Principal Representative will provide risk sharing and
decision support for Regional Foresters on large fires expected to
exceed $10 million in cost. The Chief's Principal Representative will
bring a national perspective when conferring with regional line
officers. Regional Foresters will notify the chair of an inter-deputy
group, a decision-making group that includes the Deputy Chief for State
& Private Forestry (chair), Deputy Chief for National Forest System,
the Chief Financial Officer, the Director of Budget, and the Director
of Fire and Aviation Management, when the cost for an individual large
fire is expected to exceed $10 million. The inter-deputy fire group
will coordinate the appointment and preparation of the Chief's
Principal Representative and support group. The Chief's Principal
Representative will report to the chair of the inter-deputy group.
3. Line Officer Certification
All line officers will meet enhanced qualifications prior to being
designated as the responsible official for an incident. The
certification process has been developed and is designed to improve
decision-making and risk management on large fires. Certification will
be at three levels--Working; Journeyman; and Expert. In addition, a
mentoring network has been established of experienced line officers to
provide training and share experience to enhance performance and
skills.
4. National Shared Resources
National resources such as smoke jumpers, hot shot crews,
helicopters and heavy airtankers are now all being treated as national
agency assets, are managed in a centralized fashion and are moved to
areas and incidents based on Predictive Services and Planning Levels.
The goals are to enhance responsiveness of the assignment of resources
and to eliminate concentration of resources in a geographic area.
5. Aviation Resource Cost Management
A full-time National helicopter coordinator is in place to provide,
in an interagency capacity during fire season, national oversight for
the assignment and positioning of helicopters. Helicopter management is
now centralized as a national resource. The Forest Service has shifted
to more ``exclusive use'' versus ``call when needed'' contracts for
helicopters. This will increase preparedness costs initially, but is
expected to greatly reduce large fire suppression costs with potential
savings of tens of millions of dollars per year. The agencies are
pursuing longer term aviation contracts for all aviation resources with
increased performance-based contracting. DOI also is pursuing
strategies to reduce its aviation costs.
6. Severity Authorization Limitations
Efforts will be made to maintain our initial attack success while
reducing the dependence on severity funding. The Forest Service has
placed a cap ($35 million) and an individual limit on each Region for
severity, and Interior has capped severity funding at $32 million.
However, funding fire fighters is the first priority. The Forest
Service and DOI agencies will continue to submit a coordinated severity
request so as to not duplicate effort or expense.
7. Fire Suppression Decision Support
We are committed to continue the investment and expansion of system
technologies such as Wildland Fire Decision Support System (WFDSS) and
use of the Stratified Cost Index (SCI) to improve strategy selection in
wildfire suppression. The SCI determines average suppression costs
based on fire characteristics, such as fuel types, fire intensity,
topography, region, and values at risk. In a given year, actual
expenditures on each large fire (more than 300 acres) are compared to
their anticipated costs as calculated by the SCI based on factors such
as size, fuel type, or proximity to towns. Fires with high or low
expenditures compared to the average suppression cost for fires with
similar characteristics are then identified for review. Historical data
were analyzed to determine the average cost/acre and cost/fire for
categories of similar fires and an acceptable range of costs around the
average. The actual expenditures are compared to their ``expected''
costs as calculated by the SCI. This metric is being applied this
season and will be used in fire reviews, evaluations, planning and
reporting.
The Departments are taking the issue of large fire cost containment
very seriously and are actively moving forward to implement these
important changes. The comprehensive list of management efficiencies
has been developed to guide action over the short, intermediate and
long-term and to produce results. The Forest Service and DOI are
working together in collaboration and our staff is committed to action.
Collaborative Efforts to Meet Community Expectations
Both the Forest Service and the Department of the Interior realize
the importance of collaboration with State and local fire managers. One
recent example of such a successful collaboration is the approach used
at the wildfire on the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, which has
burned over much of this 400,000-acre swamp. These fires are being
driven by an unprecedented regional drought.
Fire is a natural component of the Okefenokee ecosystem which for
thousands of years has shaped the vegetation communities here. Over 300
fires have been recorded since 1937, burning thousands of acres.
The Refuge and the Greater Okefenokee Landowners Association (GOAL)
have worked closely in recent years to improve coordination of wildfire
response. These ongoing efforts include sharing of firefighting
resources and prescribed burning to reduce hazardous fuels.
Fire managers are coordinating suppression efforts with the Georgia
Forestry Commission, Florida Division of Forestry, U.S. Forest Service
and Greater Okefenokee Association of Landowners (GOAL) representing
industry and private landowners. These partners support the chosen
containment strategy of confining the fire to the swamp as the
appropriate management response.
recent studies
Government Accountability Office Draft Report: Wildland Fire
Management: Lack of Clear Goals and Strategy Hinders Federal
Agencies' Efforts to Contain the Costs of Fighting Fires
In May 2007, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a
draft report entitled, ``Wildland Fire Management: Lack of Clear Goals
and Strategy Hinders Federal Agencies' Efforts to Contain the Costs of
Fighting Fires.'' The findings indicated the agencies had not clearly
defined objectives and policies as a means for reducing the costs of
fighting wildland fires. In general, the agencies disagree with the
characterization of many of the findings in the report and believe that
GAO has not accurately portrayed some of the significant actions the
agencies have taken to address large fire suppression costs and
management efficiencies.
In that response, we articulate our views to the opinions expressed
by GAO and provide facts to clarify some areas where the report could
be improved (our response is attached). As we continue to strive
aggressively to contain the costs of wildland fire suppression, our
primary goal will continue to be the protection of life, property and
resources.
We share the GAO's interest in increasing accountability for cost
containment and have taken many steps forward. We are hopeful that GAO
and this Committee are able to ascertain from the actions that have
been taken and planned, that the agencies indeed have established
strategies, goals and objectives for reducing costs of large wildfire
suppression and improving hazardous fuels reduction. We believe that
the 10-Year Strategy Implementation Plan, Office of Management and
Budget PART Improvement Plan, Forest Service Strategic Plan, and new
DOI Strategic Plan, along with the Management Efficiencies initiatives
underway, demonstrate a commitment to constantly improve performance,
efficiency and accountability.
Secretary of Agriculture's Independent Panel--Brookings Institution
On May 22, 2007 the Brookings Institution released a report
``Towards a Collaborative Cost Management Strategy--2006 U.S. Forest
Service Large Wildfire Cost Review Recommendations.'' This report is by
an independent panel that assessed agency performance on 20 large fires
that burned 1.1 million acres across 17 national forests, five regions
and six states that exceeded $10 million in cost. The Brookings
Institution's Project Director acted as facilitator of the process and
author of the report. The purpose was to determine if the agency
exercised fiscal due diligence in managing specific incident
suppression activities. The panel found that the Forest Service
exercised appropriate and adequate fiscal diligence in suppressing
wildfires in the record breaking 2006 season. The panel report also
makes a series of recommendations for improvement that the agency will
begin to act on immediately. The report is available at the USDA
website http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal.*
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* Document has also been retained in committee files.
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conclusion
In conclusion, Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, we are
prepared for the 2007 fire season. Where local areas experience severe
fire risk, firefighters, equipment and teams will be assigned. We have
a long-term and complex fuels and fire situation that will continue to
need to be addressed by communities, tribes, states, and federal
agencies. We appreciate your continued support and work as we move
forward on these challenges. We are happy to answer any questions you
might have.
Attachment
Department of Agriculture,
Department of the Interior,
Washington, DC, May 24, 2007.
Robin M. Nazzaro,
Director, Natural Resources and Environment, Government Accountability
Office, 441 G Street, N.W., Washington, DC.
Dear Ms. Nazzaro: We appreciate the opportunity to review and
comment on the draft Government Accountability Office (GAO) report,
GAO-07-655, ``Wildland Fire Management: Lack of Clear Goals and
Strategy Hinders Federal Agencies' Efforts to Contain the Costs of
Fighting Fires.'' As we discussed with you recently, the fire community
has found GAO reports and recommendations to be constructive in
addressing issues related to the fire program. However, the agencies
generally disagree with the characterization of many of the findings in
this report and believe that GAO has not accurately portrayed some of
the significant actions the agencies have taken to address large fire
suppression costs and management efficiencies.
Our goal continues to be the protection of life; property and
resources. While accomplishing our goal of protection, we continue to
strive aggressively to contain the costs of fire suppression.
GAO concludes the steps the Forest Service and Interior agencies
have taken to contain costs are unknown because these steps are not
complete, and recommends we establish clearly defined goals and
objectives, a strategy to achieve them, and corresponding performance
measures. We do have objectives and clearly defined goals that make up
our strategy for better managing large fire suppression costs. The
Federal Wildland Fire Policy, the Healthy Forests Initiative, Healthy
Forests Restoration Act, and the 10-Year Strategy Implementation Plan
provide overarching interagency goals and objectives.
When we discussed our concerns with GAO regarding this report, we
provided numerous, important clarifying comments on the draft. We did
not see significant acknowledgment of these clarifications in the
subsequent draft, and are concerned that important miscommunications
remain. GAO presents an incomplete view on four key areas we discuss
below that we believe will help us better manage and contain costs:
Appropriate Management Response (AMR), Fire Program Analysis (WA),
LANDFIRE and the stratified cost index (SCI).
GAO failed to recognize, and include in their report, a major
component of our cost containment management strategy which we believe
to be a significant improvement over past suppression strategies. AMR
moves the agencies from aggressively attacking wildfires of all sizes
to a more risk-informed, performance-based strategy that will reduce
costs by increasing flexibility in wildland firefighting decisions. The
transition to AMR has been underway for some time, and improvements
have been made in using Wildland Fire Use as a tool for achieving
desirable environmental outcomes with reasonable cost expenditures.
Further use of AMR is expected in 2007 and 2008 as the agencies
aggressively apply AMR more widely.
GAO takes exception to recent FPA design modifications that they
say may compromise the agencies' ability to fully achieve key goals.
GAO goes on to say it is unclear whether this method will identify the
most cost-effective allocation of resources, and that it is also
unclear how budgets for local units will be meaningfully aggregated on
a national basis. We strongly disagree. Additional information was
supplied by the FPA project manager, although-it was not incorporated
or acknowledged. To restate:
In December 2006, the Wildland Fire Leadership Council called
for development of a revised analytical system for FPA. The
revised system will be used to systematically evaluate
alternative investment strategies and identify options that
best reduce wildland fire losses, improve ecological
conditions, and minimize cost. The system is designed to
explicitly address uncertainty and risk in predicting future
wildland fires. A combination of simulation models, GIS
analyses, and sophisticated decision analysis tools array
alternatives using quantitative performance measures that
readily display inherent risks and trade-offs at both FPU and
national levels. This approach provides a more robust basis for
modeling real-world complexities than the linear optimization
approach used in Phase 1, while maintaining the ability to
compare the performance and effectiveness of alternative
funding decisions.
GAO views LANDFIRE as an unproven work in progress and they
question our ability to complete and maintain LANDFIRE but offer no
explanation. We strongly disagree with this characterization. LANDFIRE
is an important tool, to prioritize our fuels work through geospatial
data and modeling that will help identify fuel accumulations and fire
hazards across the nation, set nationwide priorities for fuel reduction
projects, and assist in identifying the appropriate response when
wildland fires do occur. Two of the four milestones are complete, the
third milestone is 1/3 complete and work has begun on the fourth
milestone. In addition, it was utilized during FY 2006 on more than 60
wildland fire incidents to assist in maximizing firefighting safety,
pre-position resources and evaluate wildland fire behavior under a
variety of fire weather conditions. GAO also questions our ability to
maintain the system but then acknowledges that the agencies are
submitting a maintenance plan to the Wildland Fire Leadership Council
in June 2007. Development of this plan has been underway for some time
now and clearly indicates that we have planned for the necessity of
routinely updating the data to reflect changing landscape conditions.
Regarding the stratified cost index performance measure, GAO
expresses concerns about cost data for fire complexes, the ability to
precisely estimate suppression costs and that, to date, the data are
based solely on Forest Service managed fires. The report also says that
the agencies have not identified the goals we are trying to achieve
with this measure. The agencies have openly, freely and frequently
acknowledged that the SCI will continue to be refined and improved in
the coming years as data is added to the model. However, in its current
form; the SCI still provides very useful information that was not
previously available and assists field managers in better managing
their large fire suppression costs. Furthermore, the SCI is not meant,
nor was it ever intended to, ``precisely'' estimate suppression
expenditures. Instead, it was developed to provide managers with an
acceptable expenditure range based on historic data. With the multitude
of unknowns that occur daily on every large fire suppression incident,
it is naive to believe that anything has the ability to ``precisely''
estimate expenditures.
We disagree with GAO's conclusion that the agencies have not
identified goals for this measure. SCI was adopted under Goal 1 of the
10-Year Strategy Implementation Plan which is to improve fire
prevention and suppression. In addition, specific targets have already
been set for the Forest Service. We first stated our goals for future
years for this measure in the OMB PART reassessment in July 2006. We
established the baseline in 2005 and subsequently established future
year targets. These targets are also in the revised Forest Service
Strategic Plan. GAO also says Interior has not adopted any performance
measures related to containing wildland fire costs in its strategic
plan and that it will be several years at the earliest before enough
data have been collected for DOI for the SCI model to be useful. This
is inaccurate. DOI adopted the stratified cost index measure in its new
Strategic Plan (2008-2012) and expects to have the research results
this summer. We expect 2006 data to be reported as baseline data and
plan to report on the SCI in FY 2007.
Finally, GAO says that the agencies need to establish a framework
to ensure that officials are held accountable for achieving cost
containment goals and objectives. We have established a framework to
hold officials accountable for achieving cost containment goals. The
Forest Service has already adopted significant elements this year, and
Interior is also addressing these on an interagency basis as
appropriate. These include a line officer certification process, a
competency in their annual performance appraisals, and oversight on
significant incidents by a ``Chiefs Principle Representative''. Both
agencies continue interagency large fire cost reviews that require
regions to respond to and implement recommendations made by the review
teams.
If you have any additional questions or concerns, please contact
Sandy T. Coleman, Forest Service Assistant Director for GAO/DIG Audit
Liaison staff or Deborah Williams, DOI/GAO Liaison.
Abigail R. Kimbel,
Chief, Forest Service, Department of Agriculture.
James E. Cason,
Associate Deputy Secretary, Department of the Interior.
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
Under Secretary Rey, go right ahead.
STATEMENT OF MARK REY, UNDER SECRETARY FOR NATURAL RESOURCES
AND THE ENVIRONMENT, DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
Mr. Rey. Thank you.
While Mr. Allred has talked about the 2006 season, the
outlook for the 2007 season and our preparedness assets, I'm
going to talk a little bit about our efforts in the fuels
treatment area, and in cost containment of fire expenses.
Today, we treat more fuels than ever, and we collaborate
with our local, State and tribal partners now more than ever.
Our focused efforts to remove accumulation of hazardous fuels
in our forests and grasslands is having a positive effect on
the land, and is helping to reduce wildland fire risk to
communities.
The Federal Land Management Agencies project that they will
have treated nearly 25 million acres of land, from the period
of fiscal year 2001 through the end of this fiscal year,
including approximately 20 million acres treated through the
hazardous fuels reductions programs, and about 5 million acres
of landscape restoration, accomplished through other land
management activities.
The Federal land managing agencies, in cooperation with our
non-Federal partners, continue to increase the community
protection emphasis of the hazardous fuels program. Community
wildfire protection plans are essential for localities to
reduce risk and set priorities. Over 1,100 plans, covering
3,000 communities have been completed nationally. An additional
450 plans are progressing toward completion today.
Also, the implementation plan of the 10-year comprehensive
strategy, developed with the Western Governor's Association was
updated and released in December 2006. The goals and guiding
principles from the 2001 document are constant, but performance
measures and implementation tasks have been updated to reflect
the progress made toward National Fire Plan goals over the past
5 years, and to build on those successes.
Now, with regard to cost containment, suppression costs
have escalated in recent years, as wildfire seasons have
generally lasted longer, and the acreage figures have grown.
Mr. Allred's spoken to some of the causes of that.
Over the last several years, various studies and
assessments dedicated to fire suppression costs have been
conducted by a variety of institutions, including the National
Academy of Public Administration, the Wildland Fire Leadership
Council, the Brookings Institution, and the Government
Accountability Office, including the report that they are
releasing today.
As a result of these reviews, more than 300 recommendations
have been documented to suggest approaches to trim costs of
wildland fire suppression. The agencies have taken these
reviews seriously, and the overall awareness and personal
responsibility for cost containment among Federal firefighting
agencies has never been more acute.
On January 30 of this year, in the aforementioned hearing,
we testified before this committee on a set of management
efficiencies. These cost control measures focus on leadership,
operations, aviation, and general management practices. An
update of our progress on the key items reported in January is
included in my statement for the record.
In May 2007, the Government Accountability Office issued a
draft report entitled, Wildland Fire Management, a Lack of
Clear Goals and Strategy Hinders Federal Agencies' Efforts to
Contain the Costs of Fighting Fires. This will be the report
we'll be discussing at length today.
The findings in this report indicated that agencies had not
clearly defined objectives and policies as a means for reducing
costs of wildland firefighting. In general, the agencies
disagree with the characterization of many of the findings in
the report, and believe that further discussion with GAO is
necessary to more accurately portray some of the significant
actions the agencies have taken to address large fire
suppression costs, and management efficiencies.
I want to assure the committee that we share GAO's interest
in increasing accountability for cost containment, and have
taken many step forwards. Indeed, since January 2003, GAO has
issued 10 separate reports on fuels treatment, firefighting, or
cost containment. Those 10 reports have spawned 18 groups of
recommendations. Of those 18 groups of recommendations, the
Federal Land Managing Agencies have completed actions in
response to them on 16 of the groups. One of the groups still
has actions underway, and one remains unaddressed because of a
fundamental disagreement about the recommendation.
I'll submit a summary of those recommendations for the
record of this hearing.
Additionally, on May 22, 2007, the Brookings Institution
released a report entitled, Toward a Collaborative Cost
Management Strategy, 2006 U.S. Forest Service Large Wildfire
Cost Review Recommendations. This report was developed by an
independent panel that assessed agency performance on 20 large
fires during 2006 that burned 1.1 million acres across 17
National Forests.
That report was required by Appropriations Committee
language enacted 3 years ago, which established a
responsibility on the part of the Forest Service to have an
independent review of every large fire that exceeded $10
million in costs, to assess whether appropriate cost
containment measures were undertaken. This would be the third
such report.
The Brookings Panel of independent experts--including one
GAO analyst--concluded that the Forest Service exercised
appropriate and adequate fiscal diligence in suppressing
wildfires during the record-breaking 2006 wildfire season on
each of the 20 large fires studied in the report.
With that, Mr. Chairman, we would be happy to respond to
your questions, and when it's Senator Domenici's round, I'd be
happy to talk about Cloudcroft.
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
Ms. Nazzaro, go right ahead.
STATEMENT OF ROBIN NAZZARO, NATIONAL RESOURCES AND THE
ENVIRONMENT, GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE
Ms. Nazzaro. Thank you Mr. Chairman and members of the
committee.
I'm pleased to be here today to discuss Federal agencies'
efforts to contain the rising costs of preparing for, and
responding to, wildland fires. Over the past two decades, the
number of acres burned by wildland fires has surged, often
threatening human lives, property, and ecosystems. The cost of
responding to the wildland fires has also grown. Mr. Allred
mentioned a number of reasons for these increased costs and
increased fires.
In light of the Federal deficit, and the long-term fiscal
challenges facing the Nation, attention has increasingly
focused on ways to contain the growing expenditures, and to
ensure that the Agency's wildland fire actions are appropriate
and carried out in a cost-effective and efficient manner.
My testimony today is based on our report, released today,
that discusses key steps the Forest Service and Interior
agencies have taken to address key operational areas that could
help to contain the costs of preparing for and responding to
wildland fires and improve the management of their cost
containment efforts.
In summary, the agencies have initiated a number of steps
to address key operational areas that past studies identified
as needing improvement to help them contain wildland fire
costs, but the effects on containing costs are unknown, in part
because many of these steps are not yet complete.
For example, Federal firefighting agencies are developing a
system to help them better identify and set priorities for
lands needing treatment to reduce fuels, but they have yet to
decide how they will keep the data in the system current.
Second, Federal agencies have taken some steps to improve
how they acquire and use personnel, equipment and other
firefighting assets, such as implementing a computerized system
to more efficiently dispatch and track available firefighting
assets, but they have not yet completed the more fundamental
step of determining the appropriate type and quantity of
firefighting assets needed for the fire season.
Third, the agencies have clarified certain policies and are
improving analytical tools that assist officials in identifying
and implementing an appropriate response to a given fire, but
several other policies limit their use of less aggressive
firefighting strategies which typically cost less.
Fourth, the agencies are working with non-Federal entities
and have recently taken steps to clarify their guidance to
better ensure that firefighting costs are shared consistently
for fires that threaten both Federal and non-Federal lands and
resources, but it is unclear how the agencies will ensure that
this guidance is followed in the field.
The agencies have also taken steps to address previously
identified weaknesses in their management of cost containment
efforts, but they have not clearly defined their cost-
containment goals and objectives, nor developed a strategy for
achieving them, performance measures to track their progress,
or a framework for holding the appropriate agency officials
accountable--all steps that we believe are fundamental to sound
program management.
Although the agencies have established a broad goal of
suppressing wildland fires at minimum cost, considering
firefighter and public safety and resources and structures to
be protected, they have no defined criteria by which to weigh
the relative importance of these often-competing priorities. As
a result, officials in the field lack a clear understanding of
the relative importance the agency's leadership places on
containing costs, and are likely to select firefighting
strategies without due consideration of the costs of
suppression.
The agencies have also yet to develop a vision of how the
various cost containment steps they are taking relative to one
another or to determine the extent to which these steps will be
effective. They are working to develop a better cost-
containment performance measure, but it may take a number of
years to fully refine.
Finally, the agencies have taken, or are beginning to take,
steps to improve their oversight, and increase accountability,
such as requiring agency officials to evaluate firefighting
teams on how well they contained costs, although the extent to
which these steps will assist the agencies in containing costs
is unknown.
We recommend in our report that the Secretaries of
Agriculture and the Interior take several steps to improve the
management of their cost containment efforts. Because of the
importance of these actions and the continuing concern about
the agencies' response to the increasing cost to wildland
fires, and so that the agencies can use the results of these
actions to prepare for the 2008 fire season, the agencies
should provide the Congress with this information, no later
than November 2007.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my prepared statement. I would
be pleased to answer any questions that you or other members of
the Committee may have at this time.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Nazzaro follows:]
Statement of Robin M. Nazzaro, Director, Natural Resources and
Environment
wildland fire: management improvements could enhance federal agencies'
efforts to contain the costs of fighting fires
why gao did this study
Annual appropriations to prepare for and respond to wildland fires
have increased substantially over the past decade, in recent years
totaling about $3 billion. The Forest Service within the Department of
Agriculture and four agencies within the Department of the Interior
(Interior) are responsible for responding to wildland fires on federal
lands. GAO determined what steps federal agencies have taken to (1)
address key operational areas that could help contain the costs of
preparing for and responding to wildland fires and (2) improve their
management of their cost-containment efforts. This testimony is based
on GAO's June 2007 report, Wildland Fire Management: Lack of Clear
Goals or a Strategy Hinders Federal Agencies' Efforts to Contain the
Costs of Fighting Fires (GAO-07-655).
what gao recommends
In its report, GAO recommended that the Secretaries of Agriculture
and the Interior take several steps to improve their management of
cost-containment efforts in preparation for the 2008 fire season. The
Forest Service and Interior generally disagreed with the report's
findings, stating that GAO did not accurately portray some of the
agencies' actions to contain wildland fire costs; they neither agreed
nor disagreed with the report's recommendations.
what gao found
The Forest Service and Interior agencies have initiated a number of
steps to address key operational areas previously identified as needing
improvement to help federal agencies contain wildland fire costs, but
the effects on containing costs are unknown, in part because many of
these steps are not yet complete. First, federal firefighting agencies
are developing a system to help them better identify and set priorities
for lands needing treatment to reduce fuels, but they have yet to
decide how they will keep data in the system current. Second, federal
agencies have taken some steps to improve how they acquire and use
personnel, equipment, and other firefighting assets--such as
implementing a computerized system to more efficiently dispatch and
track available firefighting assets--but have not yet completed the
more fundamental step of determining the appropriate type and quantity
of firefighting assets needed for the fire season. Third, the agencies
have clarified certain policies and are improving analytical tools that
assist officials in identifying and implementing an appropriate
response to a given fire, but several other policies limit the
agencies' use of less aggressive firefighting strategies, which
typically cost less. Fourth, federal agencies, working with nonfederal
entities, have recently taken steps to clarify guidance to better
ensure that firefighting costs are shared consistently for fires that
threaten both federal and nonfederal lands and resources, but it is
unclear how the agencies will ensure that this guidance is followed.
The agencies have also taken steps to address previously identified
weaknesses in their management of cost-containment efforts, but they
have neither clearly defined their cost-containment goals and
objectives nor developed a strategy for achieving them--steps that are
fundamental to sound program management. Although the agencies have
established a broad goal of suppressing wildland fires at minimum
cost--considering firefighter and public safety and resources and
structures to be protected--they have no defined criteria by which to
weigh the relative importance of these often-competing priorities. As a
result, according to agency officials and reports, officials in the
field lack a clear understanding of the relative importance the
agencies' leadership places on containing costs and, therefore, are
likely to select firefighting strategies without due consideration of
the costs of suppression. The agencies have also yet to develop a
vision of how the various cost-containment steps they are taking relate
to one another or to determine the extent to which these steps will be
effective. The agencies are working to develop a better cost-
containment performance measure, but the measure may take a number of
years to fully refine. Finally, the agencies have taken, or are
beginning to take, steps to improve their oversight and increase
accountability--such as requiring agency officials to evaluate
firefighting teams according to how well they contained costs--although
the extent to which these steps will assist the agencies in containing
costs is unknown.
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee:
I am pleased to be here today to discuss federal firefighting
agencies' efforts to contain the costs of preparing for and responding
to wildland fires--costs that have increased substantially over the
past decade. Wildland fire appropriations to prepare for and respond to
wildland fires, including appropriations for reducing fuels, have
increased from an average of $1.1 billion annually from fiscal years
1996 through 2000 to an average of more than $2.9 billion annually from
fiscal years 2001 through 2005; adjusted for inflation, these
appropriations increased from $1.3 billion to $3.1 billion.\1\
Accumulations of fuels, due in part to past suppression policies;
severe drought and weather in some areas of the country; and continued
development in or near wildlands--an area commonly known as the
wildland-urban interface--have contributed to increased costs. Five
federal land management agencies--the Forest Service within the
Department of Agriculture (Agriculture) and the Bureau of Land
Management, Bureau of Indian Affairs, National Park Service, and Fish
and Wildlife Service within the Department of the Interior (Interior)--
are responsible for managing wildland fires on federal lands. Congress,
the Office of Management and Budget, federal agency officials, and
others have expressed concerns about the mounting federal wildland fire
expenditures. These concerns have led federal agencies (including the
Forest Service, Interior, the Agriculture Office of Inspector General,
and GAO) and others to conduct numerous reviews of the federal wildland
fire program.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Federal expenditures are a more direct measure of the federal
government's investment in wildland fire activities, but the Forest
Service and Interior agencies were unable to provide us with consistent
data on these expenditures for the years we reviewed. As a result, we
are instead reporting appropriations data. We adjusted the
appropriations dollars for inflation, using the chain-weighted gross
domestic product price index with fiscal year 2005 as the base year.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
My testimony is based on our report, released today*, that
discusses steps the Forest Service and Interior agencies have taken to
(1) address key operational areas that could help contain the costs of
preparing for and responding to wildland fires and (2) improve their
management of their cost-containment efforts.\2\ I presented the
preliminary results of our work before this Committee in January
2007.\3\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Documents have been retained in committee files.
\2\ GAO, Wildland Fire Management: Lack of Clear Goals and a
Strategy Hinders Federal Agencies' Efforts to Contain the Costs of
Fighting Fires, GAO-07-655 (Washington, D.C.: June 1, 2007).
\3\ GAO, Wildland Fire Management: Lack of a Cohesive Strategy
Hinders Agencies' Cost-Containment Efforts, GAO-07-427T (Washington,
D.C.: Jan. 30, 2007).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
summary
In summary, the Forest Service and Interior agencies have initiated
a number of steps to address key operational areas that past studies
identified as needing improvement to help federal agencies contain
wildland fire costs, but the effects on containing costs are unknown,
in part because many of these steps are not yet complete. For example,
Federal firefighting agencies are developing a system to
help them better identify and set priorities for lands needing
treatment to reduce fuels. The agencies are developing, but
have not yet finalized, a plan for keeping data in the system
current.
Federal agencies have also taken some steps to improve how
they acquire and use personnel, equipment, and other
firefighting assets, such as implementing a computerized system
to more efficiently dispatch and track available firefighting
assets. The agencies, however, have not completed the more
fundamental step of determining the appropriate type and
quantity of firefighting assets needed for the fire season.
Over the past several years, the agencies have been developing
a system for doing so, although we have concerns that recent
modifications to the system may not allow the agencies to fully
meet certain key goals.
The agencies have clarified certain policies and are
improving analytical tools that assist officials in identifying
and implementing an appropriate response to a given fire. Other
policies, however, limit the agencies' use of less aggressive
firefighting strategies, which typically cost less.
Federal agencies, working with nonfederal entities, have
recently taken steps to clarify guidance to better ensure that
firefighting costs are shared consistently for fires that
threaten both federal and nonfederal lands and resources,
although it is unclear how the agencies will provide oversight
to ensure that this guidance is followed in the field.
Despite steps taken to strengthen the management of their cost-
containment efforts, the agencies have neither clearly defined their
cost-containment goals and objectives nor developed a strategy for
achieving them--steps that are fundamental to sound program management.
Although the agencies have established a broad goal of suppressing
wildland fires at minimum cost--considering firefighter and public
safety, and resources and structures to be protected--they have no
defined criteria by which to weigh the relative importance of these
often-competing priorities. As a result, according to agency officials
and reports, officials in the field lack a clear understanding of the
relative importance the agencies' leadership places on containing costs
and, therefore, are likely to select firefighting strategies without
due consideration of the costs of suppression. The agencies have also
yet to develop a vision of how the various cost-containment steps they
are taking relate to one another or to determine the extent to which
these steps will be effective. The agencies are working to develop a
better cost-containment performance measure, but the measure may take a
number of years to fully refine. Finally, the agencies have taken, or
are beginning to take, steps to improve their oversight and increase
accountability--such as requiring agency officials to evaluate
firefighting teams on how well they contain costs--although the extent
to which these steps will assist the agencies in containing costs is
unknown.
We recommended in our report that the Secretaries of Agriculture
and the Interior take several steps to improve their management of
their cost-containment efforts. The Forest Service and Interior
generally disagreed with our findings, stating that we had not
accurately portrayed some of the agencies' actions to contain costs;
they neither agreed nor disagreed with our recommendations. We continue
to believe that our recommendations, if effectively implemented, would
help the agencies better manage their cost-containment efforts and
improve their ability to contain wildland fire costs.
background
Over the past decade, the number of acres burned annually by
wildland fires in the United States has substantially increased.
Federal appropriations to prepare for and respond to wildland fires,
including appropriations for fuel treatments, have almost tripled.
Increases in the size and severity of wildland fires, and in the cost
of preparing for and responding to them, have led federal agencies to
fundamentally reexamine their approach to wildland fire management. For
decades, federal agencies aggressively suppressed wildland fires and
were generally successful in decreasing the number of acres burned. In
some parts of the country, however, rather than eliminating severe
wildland fires, decades of suppression contributed to the disruption of
ecological cycles and began to change the structure and composition of
forests and rangelands, thereby making lands more susceptible to fire.
Increasingly, the agencies have recognized the role that fire plays
in many ecosystems and the role that it could play in the agencies'
management of forests and watersheds. The agencies worked together to
develop a federal wildland fire management policy in 1995, which for
the first time formally recognized the essential role of fire in
sustaining natural systems; this policy was subsequently reaffirmed and
updated in 2001. The agencies, in conjunction with Congress, also began
developing the National Fire Plan in 2000.\4\ To align their policies
and to ensure a consistent and coordinated effort to implement the
federal wildland fire policy and National Fire Plan, Agriculture and
Interior established the Wildland Fire Leadership Council in 2002.\5\
In addition to noting the negative effects of past successes in
suppressing wildland fires, the policy and plan also recognized that
continued development in the wildland-urban interface has placed more
structures at risk from wildland fire at the same time that it has
increased the complexity and cost of wildland fire suppression. Forest
Service and university researchers estimated in 2005 that about 44
million homes in the lower 48 states are located in the wildland-urban
interface.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ The National Fire Plan is a joint interagency effort to respond
to wildland fires. Its core comprises several strategic documents,
including (1) a September 2000 report from the Secretaries of
Agriculture and the Interior to the President in response to the
wildland fires of 2000, (2) congressional direction accompanying
substantial new appropriations in fiscal year 2001, and (3) several
approved and draft strategies to implement all or parts of the plan.
\5\ The Wildland Fire Leadership Council is composed of senior
Agriculture and Interior officials, including the Agriculture
Undersecretary for Natural Resources and Environment; the Interior
Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management, and Budget; the Interior
Deputy Assistant Secretary for Business Management and Wildland Fire;
and the heads of the five federal firefighting agencies. Other members
include representatives of the Intertribal Timber Council, the National
Association of State Foresters, and the Western Governors' Association.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
To help address these trends, current federal policy directs
agencies to consider land management objectives--identified in land and
fire management plans developed by each local unit, such as a national
forest or a Bureau of Land Management district--and the structures and
resources at risk when determining whether or how to suppress a
wildland fire. When a fire starts, the land manager at the affected
local unit is responsible for determining the strategy that will be
used to respond to the fire. A wide spectrum of strategies is available
to choose from, some of which can be significantly more costly than
others. For example, the agencies may fight fires ignited close to
communities or other high-value areas more aggressively than fires on
remote lands or at sites where fire may provide ecological or fuel-
reduction benefits. In some cases, the agencies may simply monitor a
fire, or take only limited suppression actions, to ensure that the fire
continues to pose little threat to important resources, a practice
known as ``wildland fire use.''
federal agencies are taking some steps to contain wildland fire costs,
but results are unknown
The Forest Service and Interior agencies have initiated a number of
steps to address issues that we and others have identified as needing
improvement to help federal agencies contain wildland fire costs, but
the effects of these steps on containing costs are unknown, in part
because many of the steps are not yet complete. Dozens of studies by
federal agencies and other organizations examining federal agencies'
management of wildland fire have repeatedly identified a number of
similar issues needing improvement to help contain wildland fire costs.
These issues generally fall into one of three operational areas--
reducing accumulated fuels, acquiring and using firefighting assets,
and selecting firefighting strategies. Recent studies have also raised
concerns about the framework used to share the cost of fighting fires
between federal and nonfederal entities.
First, federal firefighting agencies have made progress in
developing a system to help them better identify and set priorities for
lands needing treatment to reduce accumulated fuels. Many past studies
have identified fuel reduction as important for containing wildland
fire costs because accumulated fuels can contribute to more-severe and
more costly fires. The agencies are developing a geospatial data and
modeling system, called LANDFIRE, intended to produce consistent and
comprehensive maps and data describing vegetation, wildland fuels, and
fire regimes across the United States.\6\ The agencies will be able to
use this information to help identify fuel accumulations and fire
hazards across the nation, help set nationwide priorities for fuel-
reduction projects, and assist in determining an appropriate response
when wildland fires do occur. According to Forest Service and Interior
officials, the agencies completed mapping the western United States in
April 2007; mapping of the eastern states is scheduled to be completed
by 2008 and of Alaska and Hawaii by 2009. The agencies, however, have
not yet finalized their plan for ensuring that collected data are
routinely updated to reflect changes to fuels, including those from
landscape-altering events, such as hurricanes, disease, or wildland
fires themselves. Forest Service and Interior officials told us that
they recognize the importance of ensuring that data are periodically
updated and are developing a plan to operate and maintain the system,
including determining how often data will be updated. The agencies
expect to submit this plan to the Wildland Fire Leadership Council for
approval in June 2007.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ A fire regime generally classifies the role that wildland fire
plays in a particular ecosystem on the basis of certain
characteristics, such as the average number of years between fires and
the typical severity of fire under historic conditions.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Second, the agencies have also taken some steps to improve how they
acquire and use firefighting personnel, aviation resources, and
equipment--assets that constitute a major cost of responding to
wildland fires--but much remains to be done. The agencies have improved
their systems for dispatching and monitoring firefighting assets and
for gathering and analyzing cost data. However, they have yet to
complete the more fundamental step of determining the appropriate type
and quantity of firefighting assets needed for the fire season. Over
the past several years, the agencies have been developing a Fire
Program Analysis (FPA) system, which was proposed and funded to help
the agencies:
determine national budget needs by analyzing budget
alternatives at the local level--using a common, interagency
process for fire management planning and budgeting--and
aggregating the results;
determine the relative costs and benefits for the full scope
of fire management activities, including potential trade-offs
among investments in fuel reduction, fire preparedness, and
fire suppression activities; and:
identify, for a given budget level, the most cost-effective
mix of personnel and equipment to carry out these activities.
We have said for several years--and the agencies have concurred--
that FPA is critical to helping the agencies contain wildland fire
costs and plan and budget effectively. Recent design modifications to
the system, however, raise questions about the agencies' ability to
fully achieve these key goals. A midcourse review of the developing
system resulted in the Wildland Fire Leadership Council's approving in
December 2006 modifications to the system's design. FPA and senior
Forest Service and Interior officials told us in April 2007 they
believed the modifications will allow the agencies to meet the key
goals. The officials said they expected to have a prototype developed
for the council's review in June 2007 and to substantially complete the
system by June 2008. We have yet to systematically review the
modifications, but after reviewing agency reports on the modifications
and interviewing knowledgeable officials, we have concerns that the
modifications may not allow the agencies to meet FPA's key goals. For
example, under the redesigned system, local land managers will use a
different method to analyze and select various budget alternatives, and
it is unclear whether this method will identify the most cost-effective
allocation of resources. In addition, it is unclear how the budget
alternatives for local units will be meaningfully aggregated on a
nationwide basis, a key FPA goal.
Third, the agencies have clarified certain policies and are
improving analytical tools to assist agency officials in identifying
and implementing an appropriate response to a given fire. Officials
have a wide spectrum of strategies available to them when responding to
wildland fires, some of which can be significantly more costly than
others. For individual fires, past studies have found that officials
may not always consider the full range of available strategies and may
not select the most appropriate one, which would consider the cost of
suppression; value of structures and other resources threatened by the
fire; and, where appropriate, any benefits the fire may provide to
natural resources. The agencies call a strategy that considers these
factors the ``appropriate management response.'' The agencies updated
their policies in 2004 to require officials to consider the full
spectrum of available strategies when selecting one to use.
Nevertheless, other policies limit the agencies' use of less aggressive
strategies, which typically cost less. The Forest Service and Interior
agencies are working together to revise these policies--revisions that
could, for example, allow different areas of the same fire to be
managed for suppression and wildland fire use concurrently or allow a
fire that was previously being suppressed to be managed instead for
wildland fire use. The agencies are also continuing to refine existing
tools, and to develop new ones, for analyzing both fuel and predicted
weather conditions to model expected fire behavior, information that
officials can use to identify appropriate suppression strategies; these
tools are still being designed and tested. It is still too early to
tell, however, to what extent the policy changes being considered or
the new tools being developed will help to contain costs.
Finally, we and others have also reported that the existing
framework for sharing firefighting costs between federal and nonfederal
entities insulates state and local governments from the cost of
protecting homes and communities in or near wildlands, which may reduce
those governments' incentive to adopt building codes and land use
requirements that could help reduce the cost of suppressing wildland
fires.\7\ Federal agencies, working with nonfederal entities, have
recently taken steps to clarify guidance and better ensure that
firefighting costs are shared consistently for fires that threaten both
federal and nonfederal lands and resources. In early 2007, the Forest
Service and Interior agencies approved an updated template that land
managers can use when developing master agreements--which establish the
framework for sharing costs between federal and nonfederal entities--as
well as agreements on how to share costs for a specific fire. Because
master agreements are normally updated every 5 years, however, it may
take several years to fully incorporate this new guidance. Although the
new guidance states that managers must document their rationale for
selecting a particular cost-sharing method, officials told us that the
agencies have no clear plan for how they will provide oversight to
ensure that appropriate cost-sharing methods are used.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\7\ GAO, Wildland Fire Suppression: Lack of Clear Guidance Raises
Concerns about Cost Sharing between Federal and Nonfederal Entities,
GAO-06-570 (Washington, D.C.: May 30, 2006).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
lack of clear goals or a strategy hinders federal agencies' management
of wildland fire cost-containment efforts
Despite steps taken to strengthen their management of cost-
containment efforts, the agencies have neither clearly defined their
cost-containment goals and objectives nor developed a strategy for
achieving them--steps that are fundamental to sound program management.
To manage their cost-containment efforts effectively, the Forest
Service and Interior agencies should, at a minimum, have (1) clearly
defined goals and measurable objectives, (2) a strategy to achieve the
goals and objectives, (3) performance measures to track their progress,
and (4) a framework for holding appropriate agency officials
accountable for achieving the goals.\8\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\8\ Principles of sound program management for federal agencies are
established in, among other sources, the Government Performance and
Results Act of 1993 and GAO, Standards for Internal Control in the
Federal Government, GAO/AIMD-00-21.3.1 (Washington, D.C.: November
1999).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
First, although the agencies have established a broad goal of
suppressing wildland fires at minimum cost considering firefighter and
public safety and the resources and structures to be protected, they
have established neither clear criteria by which to weigh the relative
importance of these often-competing priorities nor measurable
objectives by which to determine if they are meeting their goal.
Without such criteria and objectives, according to agency officials we
interviewed and reports we reviewed, officials in the field lack a
clear understanding of the relative importance that the agencies'
leadership places on containing costs and, therefore, are likely to
select firefighting strategies without due consideration of costs.
Second, the agencies have yet to establish an overall cost-
containment strategy. Without a strategy designed to achieve clear
cost-containment goals, the agencies (1) have no assurance that the
variety of steps they are taking to help contain wildland fire costs
are prioritized so that the most important steps are undertaken first
and (2) are unable to determine to what extent these steps will help
contain costs and if a different approach may therefore be needed.
Third, the agencies recently adopted a new performance measure--
known as the stratified cost index--that may improve the agencies'
ability to evaluate their progress in containing costs, but the measure
may take a number of years to fully refine. Also, although the agencies
have in recent years improved their data on suppression costs and fire
characteristics, additional improvement is needed. In particular, cost
data for ``fire complexes''--that is, two or more fires burning in
proximity that are managed as a single incident--are particularly
difficult to identify. Thus, the costs of many of the largest fires are
not included in the index, limiting its effectiveness. Further, to
date, the index is based solely on fires managed by the Forest Service.
Forest Service researchers are currently developing, at Interior's
request, a similar index for fires managed by the Interior agencies,
but it will be several years, at the earliest, before enough data have
been collected for the index to be useful. In addition, because the
stratified cost index is based on costs from previous fires--and
because the agencies have only recently begun to emphasize the
importance of using less aggressive suppression strategies--we are
concerned that the index does not include data from many fires where
less costly firefighting strategies were used. As a result, the index
may not accurately identify fires where more, or more-expensive,
resources were used than needed. According to Forest Service officials,
data from recent fires will be added annually; over time, the index
should therefore include more fires where less aggressive firefighting
strategies were used.
Finally, the agencies have also taken, or are beginning to take,
steps to improve their oversight and accountability framework, although
the extent to which these steps will assist the agencies in containing
costs is unknown. For example, the agencies have issued guidance
clarifying that land managers, not fire managers, have primary
responsibility for containing wildland fire costs, but they have not
yet determined how the land managers are to be held accountable for
doing so. Rather, the agencies have taken several incremental steps
intended to assist land managers in carrying out this responsibility--
such as assigning ``incident business advisors'' to observe
firefighting operations and work with fire managers to identify ways
those operations could be more cost-effective, and requiring land
managers to evaluate fire managers for how well they achieve cost-
containment goals. The utility of these steps, however, may be limited
because the agencies have yet to establish a clear measure to evaluate
the benefits and costs of alternative firefighting strategies. Some
past studies have concluded that the absence of such a measure
fundamentally weakens the agencies' ability to provide effective
oversight.
conclusions
Continuing concerns about the cost of preparing for and responding
to wildland fires have spurred numerous studies and actions by federal
wildland fire agencies, but little in the way of a coordinated and
focused effort to rein in these costs. Although the agencies have
taken--and continue to take--steps intended to contain wildland fire
costs, the effect of these steps on containing costs is unknown, in
part because the agencies lack a clear vision for what they want to
achieve. Without clearly defined cost-containment goals and objectives,
federal land and fire managers in the field are more likely to select
strategies and tactics that favor suppressing fires quickly over those
that seek to balance the benefits of protecting the resources at risk
and the costs of protecting them. Further, without clear goals, the
agencies will be unable to develop consistent standards by which to
measure their performance. Perhaps most important, without a clear
vision of what they are trying to achieve and a systematic approach for
achieving it, the agencies--and Congress and the American people--have
little assurance that cost-containment efforts will lead to substantial
improvement.
Thus, to help the agencies manage their ongoing efforts to contain
wildland fire costs effectively and efficiently, and to assist Congress
in its oversight role, we recommended in our report that the
Secretaries of Agriculture and the Interior work together to direct
their respective agencies to (1) establish clearly defined goals and
measurable objectives for containing wildland fire costs, (2) develop a
strategy to achieve these goals and objectives, (3) establish
performance measures that are aligned with these goals and objectives,
and (4) establish a framework to ensure that officials are held
accountable for achieving the goals and objectives. Because of the
importance of these actions and continuing concerns about the agencies'
response to the increasing cost of wildland fires--and so that the
agencies can use the results of these actions to prepare for the 2008
fire season--the agencies should provide Congress with this information
no later than November 2007.
In commenting on a draft of our report, the Forest Service and
Interior generally disagreed with the characterization of many of our
findings; they neither agreed nor disagreed with our recommendations.
In particular, the Forest Service and Interior stated that they did not
believe we had accurately portrayed some of the significant actions
they had taken to contain wildland fire costs, and they identified
several agency documents that they believe provide clearly defined
goals and objectives that make up their strategy to contain costs.
Although documents cited by the agencies provide overarching goals and
objectives, we believe that they lack the clarity and specificity
needed by their land management and firefighting officials in the field
to help manage and contain wildland fire costs. Therefore, we believe
that our recommendations, if effectively implemented, would help the
agencies better manage their cost-containment efforts and improve their
ability to contain wildland fire costs.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my prepared statement. I would be
please to answer any questions that you or other Members of the
Committee may have at this time.
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
I believe Senator Domenici has another hearing he's going
to have to go to, so let me defer to him for his questions
first.
Senator Domenici. Thank you very much. I'll try to be
brief.
I want to go over first with you, Under Secretary Rey--2
years ago, I worried that the Lincoln National Forest was ripe
for an insect and disease outbreak that would put a number of
communities, and also the Mescalaro Apache Land at risk. Now we
are seeing 15,000 to 20,000 acres of de-foliated forest around
the community of Cloudcroft, which I think you're familiar
with. Which, if nature takes its normal course, will lead to
outbreaks of spruce bud worm, and mountain pine needle,
followed by--what we're talking about here today--catastrophic
fires.
What has the Forest Service done, or what are they doing to
salvage dead and dying forests to provide that this community
some chance of surviving a firestorm, if one should occur in
this season?
Mr. Rey. What's happening in that forest is an outbreak of
a complex of insects, including spruce bud worm, hemlock
looper, and probably mountain pine beetle, as well. Over the
course of 2006, we tried to evaluate whether what we were
seeing was a cyclical phenomenon, because all three of these
insects are endemic to the mountains around Cloudcroft. But
whether we're seeing a true epidemic--and that became clear
last fall.
The two questions we've been asked are, what are you doing
about the trees that have experienced mortality--and some
haven't--the defoliators have just worked them over, and
they're going to sprout new growth as it cycles into the next
season, but some have died. So, the first question is ``what
are you doing about the trees that have died?''. The second
question is, ``are you going to spray for any of the
defoliators?''. You can't spray for mountain pine beetle,
because it exists under the bark.
As for the first question, we have two exercises underway.
One, an analysis under a series of categorical exclusions to
remove trees close in to the communities, that analysis will be
complete this summer, and trees will start to be removed this
fall.
Then the larger term effort, further away from the
communities, is being analyzed under an environmental
assessment which will be completed next spring in time for
harvesting to begin during the next operating season.
As far as the use of insecticides, we're evaluating that.
The two defoliators are defoliators that are not effectively
contained through insecticides until the early fall,
particularly the looper, is a fall defoliator. So, if we're
going to use pesticides, they're ineffective, until we get to
about the September timeframe, and we're still evaluating
whether we're going to use some limited insecticides this fall.
As I said earlier, you don't really get much benefit out of
trying to use insecticides with mountain pine beetle.
Senator Domenici. Well, it seems like--with no aspersion on
you, but you know, your answer sounds just about right. It's
full of words about the future, like ``we're studying,''
``we're evaluating,'' ``we don't know what to do yet.'' I've
come to the conclusion that you can't do what is logical and
reasonable, and I wish you'd tell me why. Is it----
Mr. Rey. Well, I--you know, I--maybe I wasn't clear enough.
We're done evaluating, we're going to start cutting this
summer.
Senator Domenici [continuing]. Wait a minute, let me just
talk to you a minute.
All of us here know that if we took time enough to go out
and tour the National Forests, we would find areas that
embarrassed us, because they have been full of insects for a
long time, they're full of rotten trees, you'll find them all
over, and nothing--it seems like nothing's done, or it takes so
long that by the time you get around to it, the trees are
really no good.
Now, we're entering a little change era, with reference to
the value of these kind of forests, because this whole idea of
cellulosic energy, seems to be directed at using forest
products, as part of the feeding of the cellulosic exercise.
In some private moment when you weren't burdened by all of
the legal, legalese, and people biting you all over, have you
ever thought of what would be a common sense approach to this?
That you might ask us for? Or have you assumed we would just
conclude there's nothing we could do?
I have other questions, but I'm not going to ask them, Mr.
Chairman. Thank you.
Go ahead, would you just talk a little?
Mr. Rey. I think we're on the right path, but the rate of
progress is less than ideal. You know, in the decade of the
1990s, we were treating about a million acres of Federal lands
a year, we're now treating over 4 million acres of Federal
lands a year, so we've quadrupled the amount of treatment work
that's being done.
We've been devoting record amounts of funding to this
effort. We have developed some expedited procedures, and we're
using those procedures----
Senator Domenici. What is one of the procedures?
Mr. Rey [continuing]. Greater reliance on the use of
categorical exclusions, the accelerated use of environmental
assessments under the Healthy Forest Restoration Act, some of
the other experimental procedures under the HFRA--all of those
are contributing. We are increasing our rate of treatment.
At the same time, a couple of other things are increasing,
and one other thing has probably not changed as much as we'd
like. The two other things that are increasing are the spread
of the Wildland Urban Interface and the growth of the new homes
constructed in those areas, which complicate both cost
containment and firefighting strategy.
The second thing that's increasing is the size of some of
these epidemics--they've moved from smaller epidemics to near-
system wide epidemics, and you know, I would say that
historically, some of these are comparable to the similar
epidemics that we saw at the turn of the last century in some
of these systems, like the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska, like the
Colorado Front Range, and these stands of trees are
susceptible, because they were set up after that first set of
epidemics over 100 years ago. So, we're probably going to be
hard-pressed to keep up with that.
What's changing more slowly, but still changing in a
positive direction is public attitudes toward the need to get
this work done. You know, the fire that's burning in Tahoe
today is a perfect illustration of that. The fire that's
burning in Tahoe today is the largest fire that's ever occurred
in Lake Tahoe's history in the Tahoe Basin, at 2,500 acres,
which is not really a very big fire by inter-mountain State
standards.
But, it's indicative of the fact that in the Tahoe Basin,
with a much lower fire frequency, there's a lot more resistance
to doing the fuels treatment work that needs to be done to make
these homes safe. That's changing, I think, it's probably a
fair bet that it's going to change pretty quickly now that
people have seen the implications of not doing that work.
But, heretofore, our fuel treatment costs in the Tahoe
Basin were the highest in the system, spiking at as much as
$10,000 an acre. The reason for that was public resistance to
having the work done, an insistence that if it got done, it got
done in the most expensive way possible--with hand treatments
rather than any kind of mechanical treatments--and a very
strong reticence to removing enough material to actually create
a fire-resistant forest. Some days in the Tahoe Basin, I used
to think that we were going to have to name and hug every tree
before we cut it, in order to make people accept the fact that
some of these trees needed to be removed.
So, that's the lay of the land as I see it. I see a lot of
progress being made, but I also see that we've got a problem
that we've spent 100 years getting into, and it's probably
going to take us about 8 to 10 years of the kind of work we've
been doing to get out of it.
Senator Domenici. Thank you, Mr. Secretary.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Senator Salazar.
Senator Salazar. Thank you very much, Senator Bingaman, for
holding this hearing on this very important subject.
Under Secretary Rey, I have a couple of questions for you
related to our favorite subject, and that's the insect
infestation in the West, and in Colorado, which I think is
creating a powder keg, certainly in Colorado, where we
currently have close to 2 million acres of our forestlands that
have been infested by the bark beetle problem.
So, my first question to you is what is it that we are
doing, from your perspective, to try to address the bark beetle
infestation problem that will deal with this fire danger in the
West?
Mr. Rey. In the Front Range, we're soon going to be
enjoying the results of some community partnerships that I
believe will accelerate our rate of treatments, particularly
close in around the communities. We are starting to write some
longer-term stewardship contracts, we have run into a couple of
technical impediments in terms of securing capital for those
contracts, and I'd be happy to work with the committee to look
at a few small-dimension fixes to our contracting arrangements
to facilitate the acceleration of the stewardship contracts.
But I think the----
Senator Salazar. Can you in just a paragraph tell us what
those technical problems are?
Mr. Rey [continuing]. The biggest technical problem is that
we've got to allocate a substantial amount of money and hold
it, if we're going to offer a large--or a long-term--10-year
contract. If we could have a little bit more opportunity for
liquidity there, I think we could probably do more work,
because we wouldn't be putting a lot of money down in
anticipation of out-year contract work. That's as simple as I
can explain it, because it's a fairly complicated contract
issue. But it's one we have a solution for, that we'd be happy
to work with you on.
Senator Salazar. Let me ask you this question, in terms of
the broad issue--you know, obviously for me, I focus on it in
Colorado, because if I drive I-70 or up to Keystone, I see the
large areas of forest lands which are now dying, and I do think
they are creating this tinder box that, in the past, I've
called the Katrina of the West.
But, it's not limited to Colorado. You know, obviously,
Senator Domenici was talking about a beetle problem in the
State of New Mexico. I know in Idaho, and Wyoming and a whole
host of other States, it's becoming a huge problem in the West.
So, is there a comprehensive approach from the Department
of Agriculture, at least with respect to the Forest Service
lands, in terms of how you deal with the bark beetle problem,
which is upon us. Not your fault, not our fault, it's
happened--how are we dealing with it in a comprehensive manner?
Mr. Rey. I think the simplest way I can explain what we're
doing, is we're trying to focus on the near-in areas first, to
build defensible space, and eliminate the mortality around
communities, and then working our way back into the back
country, where we have important ecological values at risk.
Now, admittedly, what that means is that there's going to
be some of the area that's infested that we're not going to
treat. It's (a), too remote, and (b), has no particular
ecological values at risk. That's going to be more high
elevation--now I'm speaking about Colorado, rather than other
places in the West--those places are going to be more high
elevation and remote areas, typified by lodge pole pine, rather
than the lower elevations which, parenthetically, tend to be
the ones where we've got more homes and communities, which are
ponderosa pine systems.
Ponderosa pines are responding better to thinning----
Senator Salazar. Let me just say, I want to ask is that we
get something from your Department that gives us a description
overall----
Mr. Rey [continuing]. Sure, panoramic.
Senator Salazar [continuing]. On what it is that you're
doing there.
Let me, just quickly ask another question. That's with
respect to the fuel treatment capacity. I know in my State, I
think the number of acres that have been NEPA-approved for
fuels treatment is 283,000 acres. Yet in 2006, we treated, I
think, 74,000 acres under the U.S. Forest Service. So, a big
gap between what's been approved, and what we actually are
doing to deal with the treatment. How can we close the gap?
Mr. Rey. That's an area where, I think, we have a common
goal that we can pursue. We did allocate additional funding
into Region Two, to begin to use some of that NEPA-cleared
acreage during 2007, and that's also something that our 2008
budget, as it was proposed, and also as it was reported by the
Appropriations Committee last week, provides some additional
assistance. That's actually good news. The fact that we've got
NEPA-cleared projects that are ready to go means that every
dollar that we now allocate into Colorado, we can put directly
onto the ground.
Senator Salazar. I appreciate your answers, and I look
forward to working with you on these issues. Thank you very
much.
The Chairman. Senator Craig.
Senator Craig. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Salazar, this picture over here is an interesting
one in a couple of respects. First of all----
Senator Salazar. I note Senator Craig, the title of the
picture, The Red Hand of Death.
Senator Craig. How about that? What's more important, is
the difference between the red and the green. Now, while the
green was a clear-cut 40 years ago, it is a young, vibrant
stand of trees today. Youthful trees, versus older trees,
handle stressed environments better. Older trees that are
stressed, or heavily populated areas, when stressed, become
vulnerable to bug kill.
We've left the forests, we've left them heavily populated,
and they are now dead and dying. The public won't let us back
in to do reasonable things. I won't argue that clear-cutting
was a reasonable thing, but it is now a vibrant, youthful stand
of trees, some 40 years old, or younger.
Isn't it interesting that that is a living demonstration of
the argument against the very thing that's happening?
You know, Mr. Chairman, and all on the committee, when I
see a picture like this I have two emotions. I had two emotions
this morning when FOX News said that now these 270-plus
homeowners are angry and want to do something, because they
lost their homes, and they are now blaming environmentalists.
Mark, you served with us on this committee, on the staff,
at a time when we looked at the Tahoe watershed, a good number
of years ago. We pronounced it dead and dying. And, as a result
of that, we put money in the budget to thin and clean, to save
the watershed, to save the quality of Lake Tahoe, and to save
the homes. Interests in that area, both local and national,
said ``No.''
Homeowners out there--hear us. We tried, we were not
allowed to, and you lost your homes. So, I don't know whether I
want to laugh, or I want to cry because I have both emotions at
the moment of this great tragedy that is largely human caused.
What do we do about it? Well, we try to get the healthy
forests and we have a judge in Alaska that says, ``No, you
can't have categorical exclusions to go in and thin and clean
the urban watersheds,'' dominantly. We've got a situation in
North Idaho where we think we'll probably be blocked again.
It's an urban watershed that needs to be thinned and cleaned to
save the watershed. Yet, the attitudes out there are what they
are. Of course, we in the West know in drought environment, or
stressed environment what happens to a heavily stand forest, if
you will. That's the reality we're dealing with today.
I must also say to you, Robin. I don't care how much cost
containment we do--when you move from 5 to 6 to 7 to 8 to 10
million acres last year of fire land, of burned acres--the
reality is you can contain all the costs you want, if you don't
fight the fires the costs are going to go up, astronomically.
Because we're not doing--or being allowed to do--the other
right things to bring those costs down.
Now Mark, I hope you're right. I hope we are on the right
course. But in the 8 or 10 years that we will be denied access
to those lands, we will burn tens of millions of acres of
phenomenal watershed and wildlife habitat. We will lose
thousands and thousands of homes all in the name of what? A
very narrow attitude about the environment expressed by some.
There are many ironies, and I'm going to ask that this be
put in the record. The Washington Post, In the Loop the other
day, I don't know if you saw this Mark--fascinating about Jake,
I believe it's Gurlick, Earth First environmental activist. He
went to jail in Idaho a few years ago. He went to jail in
Malaysia for chaining himself to old growth. He was one of
those that you said you ought to hug it and name it before you
cut it. He has lawsuits filed blocking, now, Forest Service
policies in Idaho for fuel reduction, the clearing of brush and
smaller trees. His group the Wild West Institute has filed
those suits.
Now, while he has done that, on his 25 acres that he owns
in Montana he's got a chainsaw out and he's thinning it and
cleaning it. Why? To reduce the number of trees within in the
area to reduce the fire danger around his home, so quoted by
the Missoula newspaper. How fascinating. Well, he admits, as
you are reflecting Secretary Rey, that the world is changing.
We went from a policy of ``no cut'' on Federal lands, to
acknowledging the need for some cut, especially near
communities. We need to get our past polarity, we need to reach
out to land owners and the Forest Service for common ground, so
he says.
Then he was asked if he would drop the lawsuits in Idaho.
He said, ``No.'' Probably that's his business, that's where he
makes his money so he can't do that. He'll keep filing his
lawsuits, but he'll keep thinning the trees around his home to
save his home. I hope what I've just said gets back to him
because that's the reality we're into.
We will struggle here mightily. We'll put a lot of money
into the budget. I just stuck $107 million in the Interior
Budget to help you all out. We will spend hundreds of millions
of dollars, if not billions, on firefighting. Yet, the publics
will not allow us to make the forests healthier to bring these
costs down. Of course, on the bottom of this article is a
marvelous graph of the number of homes that are in or near the
Wildland Urban Interface that has changed the dynamics.
Mr. Chairman, as I said when you were out, I don't know
whether to smile or to cry. No matter what the policy we push
here that creates any greater flexibility on the land itself to
allow the right things to be done, it will probably be blocked
or contested in the courts. That's the reality we're into
today. So my guess is, we're going to have to do a lot more
burning before smoke gets enough in somebody's eyes to clear up
their vision as to the reality that's going on out there.
Former Congressman from New York, no longer serving, when
we passed the Healthy Forest Act I asked him why he was at the
signing at the White House. He supported it. He said, ``Smoke
got in my eyes and it improved my vision.'' It appears there's
going to be a lot of smoke out West in the next decade or so.
We are a very dry and hot place at the moment.
So, let me ask one question after that rant. I guess I had
to get it off my chest.
The Chairman. Why don't you do that in a hurry, here.
Senator Craig. I'll ask one question, thank you.
The Chairman. Senator Tester has to preside and I was going
to give him a chance to ask one question.
Senator Craig. Well, I was just whacking at one of his
constituents. He may not want to respond to that.
But, one question, under current authority, taking into
account current litigation hurdles and evolving legal
interpretations, has it been difficult for the agencies to
employ proper management objectives, such as thinning? And
would this likely reduce the size and intensity of fires and
assist in reducing overall fire cost as well as to reduce the
danger of fires within the current areas? Mark and Steve, if
you would wish to respond to those comments, or that particular
question.
Mr. Rey. I think I would characterize, you know, what is
happening now as an exercise in two steps forward and one step
back. I mean, we are making forward progress using the tools
that Congress has given us and the funds that you've given us
to use those tools to work with. But, at the same time, you
know, we still have a democratic dialog going on in a third
branch of Government. As new legal opinions come down it
changes what we can do. It causes us in cases to have to stop
and reassess and reevaluate.
So, progress is being made, but I think I'd characterize
the whole area as an exercise in two steps forward and one step
back. That's still progress, but it's not as rapid of progress
as many would like.
Senator Craig. Steve.
Mr. Allred. It frustrates me when we see so many projects
that are challenged, primarily on procedural grounds, not on
the aspects of it that would have to do with treatment. Part of
that is the agency's problem, but part of it is the innovative
approach that our opponents take with regard to the courts.
Another huge problem for our range lands, as you are aware,
are invasive species. It is much more difficult to treat those,
the large expanses that we have and yet, they are very hot
burning, very fast burning areas, particularly the cheet grass.
Those are expanding at a tremendous rate. That's probably the
biggest threat, I believe, we have to our range lands. There is
no real alternative many times as to how we attack those
stands.
Senator Craig. Well, thank you all.
Mr. Chairman, you've been very generous with the time and
thank you for holding this hearing. It's going to be a long hot
summer in the West, maybe by fall we'll be able to reassess. I
hope we can move something before then. Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Senator Tester.
Senator Tester. I will make this very, very quick. Senator
Murkowski, thank you.
That is, just if you answer quick, we can get done with
these real fast. Do you have a local liaison on the ground for
each fire that works with the local firefighting units and
their resources?
Mr. Rey. Yes.
Senator Tester. The other one was, has the Healthy Forest
Initiative done anything to help reduce the energy load out
there?
Mr. Rey. Yes.
Senator Tester. Thank you very much.
The Chairman. Senator Murkowski.
Senator Murkowski. Well Senator Tester, that has to be the
quickest question and answer that we've had in this committee.
Senator Tester. I have more and they'll be submitted in
writing. Thank you.
Senator Murkowski. Well, I thank you Mr. Chairman, for this
hearing. I don't know that there's ever been a time when we've
come to hear the status on the fire when we haven't had a fire
raging in the State of Alaska. We've got a couple going now.
Secretary Allred, you mentioned the Caribou, the Caribou
Hills fire, 55,000 acres, 88 cabins gone, over 100 outposts,
over $1 million, 500 people on the ground. So, we are into the
fire season. That's in the part of the State where, according
to your map, we're not even in and above normal fire range.
This is down on the Kenai Peninsula.
But, as we have had testimony in this hearing, the
peninsula is one of those areas that, due to the spruce bark
beetle infestation over the years, it is, it's just dry tinder
on the floor. As Senator Craig and others have mentioned, the
fuels that are sitting on the floor of the forest at present,
are a huge concern for us. Then we see them manifested in these
very fast-moving fires, such as we're seeing right now with the
Caribou Hills fire.
A very quick question for you, Mr. Rey. In view of what
we're trying to do with regards to the reduction of the
hazardous fuels there on the peninsula, are we doing enough?
What more can we be doing there in the Chugiak to have a
positive affect on our goals to reduce the cost of fire
suppression?
Mr. Rey. I think we're doing about as much as we can to
reduce the fire risk close into the communities. We have not
probably done as much as we could to look at utilization of
much of the beetle killed material that's further away and in
more remote areas. One of the, sort of, the problems in that
area is that there's no usable market for that material. It's
relatively small diameter and very low quality material.
We had a, for a while a pretty good chip market in the Far
East. That's rebounded again and we've got a new processing
facility, which USDA Rural Development helped commercialize.
Just a near point, I'm drawing a blank on the location, it's
near Anchorage.
Senator Murkowski. It was down in Homer, but that one has
moved.
Mr. Rey. Yes, it's moved up now to Anchorage. So, that will
help some. If we can start building cellulosic ethanol plants,
that's another possibility. But, what we're going to have to
have if we're going to do any sort of major modifications
there, moving off of the areas near into the communities, is
some local markets for that material to reduce the cost of
removing it.
Senator Murkowski. We believe that there's some
opportunities there with the biomass and would look to explore
those.
Secretary Allred, I want to ask you about the assets that
are currently stationed in Alaska or available in Alaska as we
go into this fire season. Are we, have we lost any of the
assets that we have relied on previously? Recognizing the
interagency effort that goes on up there, do we have what we
need as we go into this fire season?
Mr. Allred. Senator, I think we have about the same asset
picture as we had last year. That changes, obviously, as we go
through the season. We are relying more upon assets that we can
move strategically this year. For purposes of cost containment,
probably, we'll do more of that next year. But, I think we have
the, we have at least the equal assets that we have. We have
the availability on an as-needed basis to bring more in.
Whether or not with what's happening so far this year, those
will be sufficient. We'll have to see as we progress, but we
believe we are prepared.
Senator Murkowski. Of course that makes us a little
anxious, not knowing. We've been pretty responsive in terms of
getting us the hot shot crews when we need them, but whether
it's the Scoopers or the fire retardant tankers. Those are
issues that, of course, are a great concern.
Secretary Rey, we have also had multiple conversations
about the ability to utilize the Canadian tankers that are
currently allowed to provide for the suppression over State
lands, but not over Federal lands. We've had the discussion,
you know, when you're fighting a fire who knows what is State,
who knows what is Federal. Of course, the issue about the
safety of the Canadian tankers was one that we had discussed at
some length in past years, but given the safety record of the
State's federally contracted Canadian air tankers, isn't it
time that the Agency and the Interior Department let the State
of Alaska utilize these more fully? Are we at that point that
you are comfortable with the safety aspects? Because that was
what was keeping, us from being able to utilize it on Federal
property, as I understood.
Mr. Rey. Well, not exactly. There are two models of
aircraft that the Canadian Government uses and that we contract
to use in Alaska. The first model is the C, I think a C-130
Scoopers. We have data that indicate that those are aircraft
that are, that can be flown safely in the firefighting
missions. So there's no issue with those.
There are also some Canadian DC-6s, which we are not
comfortable can be flown safely in the firefighting mission. As
long as it's a State-controlled fire, they can contract with
whomever they want. But, I will tell you that we spent years
after the air tanker crashes of the early part of this decade
going through all of the existing aircraft models in all of
the, in all of the governmental and private fleets to establish
those models for which we could develop damage tolerance
limits, and therefore have some confidence that they could be
flown safely, and those that we couldn't. As far as the DC
series airplanes, DC's fours, sixes, and sevens, the Boeing
Corporation, which now having bought McDonald-Douglas, is sort
of responsible for the history of those aircraft, has informed
us in very direct terms; No. 1: they were not designed for this
purpose and No. 2: they want no part of any kind of remedial
assessment of whether they can flied, flown safely for this
purpose.
Senator Murkowski. Well, I want to make sure that I
understand though. If they're the C-130's and it is a federally
controlled fire, are you still okay?
Mr. Rey. We're OK with the Scoopers, whoever is in control
of the fire, because we have the data on the Scoopers to show
they can be flown safely.
Senator Murkowski. All right. So jurisdictionally it's not
an issue.
Mr. Rey. Not, an issue.
Senator Murkowski. It's not a problem.
Mr. Rey. Right. The DC-6s, on the other hand, we would not
contract with for a federally controlled fire. If it's a State
fire, then, you know, that's up to the State to decide whether
they want to fly them or not.
Senator Murkowski. Have we had any incidents or crashes
with the DC-6s in the, you know, past 5 years?
Mr. Rey. We haven't, but that doesn't mean that we might
not. What you have on these aircraft are stresses that are not
stresses that were anticipated when the aircraft were
originally designed, nor were they stresses that are associated
with the original mission profile. The DC-6 was a regular
transport plane that was thereafter modified for firefighting
use. Flying a load of material from one airport to another
airport is a lot less stressful mission than flying a load of
water or retardant at low altitude in high turbulence
conditions, dropping that all suddenly, and then powering your
plane out.
So, what we have to be able to establish for these
airframes flying for this modified mission is that at what
point in the life of these aircraft is there a high likelihood
of catastrophic metal failure and therefore, a prudent
requirement that we set them down after so many hours.
So, after the crashes in the early part of this decade, we
went through as many aircraft models as we could to figure out
what that point should be. With the help of Lockheed, we were
able to calculate that for the P2V's and the P3 O'Ryans. With
the military data, we were able to calculate that for the C-130
series planes, and that left us in the, sort of the standard
fleet with just the DC-series planes and there we ran into a
complete lack of information, one, and a fairly strong
unwillingness on the part of the manufacturer to even engage in
speculation, even informed speculation based on available
engineering data about what the service life limit of a DC-6 or
a DC-4 being flown in this mission should be.
On, their view is that these are all high-hour aircraft,
for the most part, and the probability is that they've already
flown more hours than they should for this mission. At least
that's Boeing's view of it. We were happy to continue to forge
on, but we, essentially, ran up against a lack of any further
mechanism to try to establish that limit. So, that's why we
don't fly DC's fours, sixes, and sevens. If the Canadian
Government wants to do that or the State of Alaska or the State
of Oregon, you know, that's really their decision to make, but
I can't tell you today that if we put one of those in the air
it won't crash tomorrow or next week or next year because I
don't have any basis for knowing whether that aircraft is still
safe to use as an air tanker in the kinds of conditions that
they fly.
Senator Murkowski. I appreciate the response and certainly
don't want to compromise safety. I guess we're looking at it
and saying we want to make sure that we've got the assets
there. The Canadians have been using them successfully and
safely and we've been using them on the State-controlled fires
safely and successfully. So, you can certainly see why the
confusion exists. When we need another aircraft it's there, but
because it's a Federal-controlled fire, all of a sudden we
can't use it.
Mr. Chairman, my time's expired. I thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
Ms. Nazzaro, one of the points you make in your report is
that, you say third, the agencies have clarified certain
policies, and are improving analytical tools that assist
officials in identifying and implementing an appropriate
response to a given fire, but several other policies limit the
agencies' use of less aggressive firefighting, which typically
cost less. Could you elaborate on that a little bit?
Ms. Nazzaro. We believe that there's not a transparent
decisionmaking process. They do have broad goals that tell them
to fight fires at a minimum cost, considering firefighter and
public safety and protecting the resources, but what we don't
see is how do you then weigh these competing demands. What we
heard on the ground was that the local firefighters don't know
how to weigh these competing demands and what strategies they
should select to ensure that cost considerations are given
their due consideration.
The Chairman. But, what are these policies that limit the
agencies' use of less aggressive firefighting strategies? Are
there some specific policies?
Ms. Nazzaro. For example, if they make a decision that
they're going to suppress the fire, they can't change their
mind and say, ``OK, now, maybe we decided to fire suppression
in this area, but this area we can let it burn.'' They can't
make those changes mid-course. So, we believe that does limit
their capability to effectively contain costs.
The Chairman. OK.
Let me, let me just ask Mark Rey a question about, I think
this issue has come up before, but I'm still very troubled by
it. We have this letter or statement really by various former
chiefs of the Forest Service and it's a very distinguished
group of former chiefs, Max Peterson, Dale Robertson, Jack Ward
Thomas, Michael Dombeck, Dale Bosworth. As I understand the
gist of their concern, they talk about, essentially, flat
budgets for the Forest Service. The fact that while we have
flat budgets for the Forest Service, each year the amount that
is going to wildfire suppression is growing. It has been for
several years and I think they mentioned that even using this
10-year average cost of fire suppression, it is increasing
about $80 million per year and with more increases likely in
the future.
I think in your statement, you say that wildfire seasons
have lasted longer, they've been more severe, we've got more of
this Wildland Urban Interface problem, which is documented in
that article in the New York Times this morning. So, their
plea, as I understand it, is that we need to provide
flexibility to finance emergency firefighting outside the
Forest Service Discretionary Budget so that you don't continue
to have more and more cuts in the rest of the Forest Service
Budget in order to get this done. Is there any serious effort
going on within the executive branch with OMB to try to do
that, to try to have separate requests for the other Forest
Service activities separated from what is needed for wildfire
suppression?
Mr. Rey. There is ongoing discussion and we have tendered
proposals to Congress for alternative ways to fund
firefighting. In the 2003 budget request we proposed a
Government-wide emergency account that would be separate from
the discretionary budget and cover, not only firefighting
costs, but some FEMA disaster response costs as well.
Unfortunately, that wasn't well received. Perhaps in part
because we proposed to offset some of the costs of that, the
creation of that account and maybe nobody was interested in
doing that. But that's a discussion we're willing to continue
to have with the appropriators.
The Chairman. It would seem to me that trying to say, let's
set up an emergency account for all potential, you know,
whether it's a fire, a tornado, a hurricane, whatever, that's
defining the problem bigger than we have to define it for
purposes of this problem. Couldn't we just propose something
related to fire suppression because that seems to be an issue
we can almost predict, that the amount we're going to have to
spend on fire suppression is going to be greater 3 years from
now, 5 years from now than it is today, given the history of
the last decade or so?
Mr. Rey. I think we're open to reengaging on the question
of an emergency account. I don't know that, you know, fire is
any different than hurricane response. In some respects, it's a
predictable situation that's going to generate emergency
response needs during the course of the season.
In the firefighting area, we actually have a little more
predictability in the sense that, you know, we suppress on the
initial attack somewhere on the average of 98 percent of
ignitions. That work costs us about 15 percent of our
firefighting budget and then the balance, the remaining 85
percent of the firefighting expenditures are consumed by the 2
percent of the fires that escape initial attack.
The Chairman. But am I wrong, I mean, my strong impression
is that we've got a pretty clear trend and you alluded to it in
your statement as I understood it. The fire season is getting
longer, has been getting longer, trending longer. The severity
of the fires is greater. The amount of construction in these
areas that we call the Wildland Urban Interface is growing. So,
all of the trends in those areas would indicate we're going to
have to spend more on fire suppression in the future. As long
as we just say the Forest Service's job is to take it out of
their hide, we're going to keep the Forest Service budget
pretty flat and it's up to them to figure out what to cut in
order to pay for these growing costs. That's just not a very
enlightened approach. Am I missing something there?
Mr. Rey. I think trends are pretty much as you describe
them for the foreseeable future. As we get more and more fuels
treatment worked on we'll probably start to round on, at least
a couple of the trends in fire severity. But, at the same time,
the Wildland Urban Interface is going to continue to grow and
that's a creative, I mean, it's not going to wax and wane. It's
always going to go in one direction. So as I said, I think, you
know, we're open to talking about alternatives, including those
which we proposed as well as others that make sense.
One of the things, you know, that we've been doing is
emphasizing cost containment to see if we can mitigate some of
the affects of those trends. We expect this year that as a
result of the cost containment measures that I described in
previous hearings before the committee that we'll probably
shave about $130 to $150 million off of what we would have
otherwise spent. So, at least that's helping, but it's probably
not reversing the trend, it's just moderating it.
The Chairman. Let me see if Senator Craig had more
questions.
Senator Craig. Well, Mr. Chairman, thank you for pursuing
the questioning that you just did because clearly the old model
that we're operating out of is an old model that had a revenue
that largely has gone away.
Especially during the decade of the eighties and now into
the, or the nineties and now into 2000 and that was, we cut
trees. We had a very large cash-flow coming off of timber
sales. That's 90 percent down, 85 percent down. We're
struggling to bring it up in the right way, in the publicly
acceptable way. But the reality is, we're operating off of an
old model. The Forest Service is broke. I think those are terms
we ought to put it in.
Now, we either change the model to fit the situation, and
that's what you're suggesting. I'm very much in favor of that,
that we ought to look at it differently. Fires, fire has
changed. The intensity of it has changed dramatically. The
relationship of fire to dwellings has changed, you've mentioned
that. We ought to change with it. If we don't and we continue
the current model, we will stress the Forest Service out and
they will do damage to the other things they're doing.
We've got a great debate going on in Idaho and the rest of
the country now about transportation plans. Well, one of the
reasons the Forest Service wants to close a bunch of roads,
while they may argue some environmental reason, the other
reason, they have no money to maintain them, period, end of
statement. Why do they not have money to maintain? Because
they're stressed out in all other accounts. Then, when we play
the shift game and, we've done that Mr. Chairman, we beg and
borrow from all the accounts to fight fire, then we don't
replenish it at the end of the year. That then pushes the whole
envelope further out.
Let me approach this from a slightly different area because
what Secretary Rey just talked about, what Robin has talked
about as we look at how we're fighting fire today and the cost
containment of it. Many of us who visited fire scenes have seen
large urban areas built, temporary urban areas, trailers,
trucks, tents, supplies, thousands of pieces can come into a
fire camp in a way that historically never, never existed
before. But, here is another area that fascinates me and it is
a problem as it relates to the contemporariness of what we're
doing.
In this last year a fire officer was indicted on criminal
charges. Mark, I want you to hear this because I need both you
and Steve's response. I think this will send a negative signal
to many of the fire personnel that are on the ground everyday
making life and death decisions. Recently in Interior
Appropriations Subcommittee we added language that would allow
more firefighters to access liability insurance. Can you
explain to this committee how this may help alleviate some of
the concerns from many of our firefighters? That's one
question.
Further, post-incident investigations are designed to find
the truth, however, if a firefighter is to be indicted on
criminal charges he or she may not be as forthcoming as
possible, even though a great deal can be learned from the
truth. Is there any congressional action that needs to be taken
to, needs to take place to provide firefighters with the
security to speak out about tragic events without the fear of
being charged with a crime? So, both you Mark and Steve, do you
feel as though our firefighters may avoid positions of
responsibility due to the perception set by this indictment.
Has that had a chilling affect across the community?
Mr. Rey. I think that we're, we, we're seeing some
uneasiness among a specific category of firefighting managers,
the Type-3 Incident Commanders because they are part of the
firefighting militia. This isn't, is necessarily a full-time
job and the question is, do I want to accept the liability
associated with being in a line decisionmaking position in this
area. I think what you've proposed in the Interior
Appropriations Bill, to extend liability insurance to them as
it's available to other first responders will help
significantly in that area and give them a mechanism for some
assurance that if they, you know, do run into a problem here
that they've got somebody on their side, as it were.
The other issue you raised goes to internal versus external
investigations. It's an issue that we face, that the military
faces, that NASA faces. Both the military and NASA, when they
do their after-accident investigations, do it for one reason
and reason only and that's to learn what happened to see if
there are lessons for the future, to avoid those circumstances
happening again. If you're going to try to accomplish that,
it's imperative that the people involved in the incident feel
free to speak without wondering whether they're putting
themselves in legal jeopardy.
So, both the military and NASA have adopted a concept of
privilege for their investigative reports, sort of insulating
them from use in any subsequent investigation to determine
negligence or any form of criminal liability. What we're
looking at is doing that ourselves. We're not certain yet
whether we have the authority to do it administratively, if we
don't we'll probably be coming and asking Congress for
assistance.
Senator Craig. OK, thank you.
Steve.
Mr. Allred. I think what Mark described is similar to the
situation within Interior. One thing that is frustrating that
we need to take care of ourselves is that we have, within the
agencies, identified guidelines that our firefighters are
supposed to look at when they're involved in a fire. Not all of
those guidelines apply in any particular fire. However, some
prosecutors have tended to look at those as a duty rather than
as a guideline. One of the things that we need to make very
clear is that those are not duties and that they are not a
standard of conduct to be assumed in every situation, but
rather a set of guidelines to be applied in a specific
situation. So, we can do some of that ourselves, as well.
Senator Craig. Well, this is one member of the Senate that
stands willing to help, if you find it necessary to provide
that. Because clearly to know what goes on and we know the fire
scenarios out there are changing, the hotness, the intensity,
the need to think well ahead of yourself is a reality today
that may not have been a decade ago and we want to make sure
that our professionals have that flexibility and have a
reasonable degree of protection against the liability issues.
Mr. Chairman, thank you very much.
The Chairman. Senator Murkowski, do you have other
questions?
Senator Murkowski. No, I'm fine.
The Chairman. Well, thank you all very much. I think it's
been a useful hearing and we appreciate your testimony.
The hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:26 a.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
APPENDIXES
----------
Appendix I
Responses to Additional Questions
----------
Response of Robin Nazzaro to Question From Chairman Bingaman
Question 1. The agencies and GAO apparently both agree that the
Fire Program Analysis system (FPA) is critical to improving the
agencies' budgeting and planning processes. Yet the GAO and others have
raised serious questions about recent design modifications that the
agencies have made to the FPA system. Do you think that an independent
technical analysis of FPA and the recent design changes would be
helpful in illuminating the concerns GAO and others have raised?
Answer. Yes. Given the agencies' planned use of the FPA system in
allocating tens of billion of dollars in future wildland fire
management funding, we believe it is very important that the Congress
and the public have (1) a comprehensive, clear, and detailed
understanding of the capabilities and uses of the FPA system and (2)
confidence that these capabilities and uses have been objectively
assessed.
Responses of Robin Nazzaro to Questions From Senator Domenici
Question 2. Ms. Nazzaro, this is the third or fourth time that GAO
has suggested the Forest Service doesn't have a cohesive strategy to
reduce its cost of fire fighting.
It is obvious that the GAO doesn't believe it is seeing a cohesive
plan, so what in your estimation would such a plan encompass?
Answer. Unlike any other document issued by the agencies to date, a
cohesive strategy would delineate alternative long-term investment
paths for fuel reductions and identify their varying likely consequent
effects on long-term suppression and related costs. The purpose of this
would be to provide the Congress and the public with a better
understanding of what alternative schedules are feasible for
accomplishing the long-term objectives of reducing wildland fire risks
to communities and ecosystems, and the tradeoffs involved with these
different levels of funding. Pivotal to such a strategy is identifying
more precisely the relationship between fuel reductions expenditures
occurring now and reduced future suppression costs.
Question 3. In GAO's estimation, would shifting funding to
hazardous fuels treatments, even it if meant providing sufficiency from
some environmental laws, help reduce the cost of federal wildland fire
fighting?
Answer. The extent to which increased fuel reductions would reduce
future fire fighting costs is a technical question that we have not
analyzed. Any judgments on this would have to be based on substantial,
highly context-specific empirical analysis. The cohesive strategy that
we recommended the agencies develop could shed some light on the
potential tradeoffs. The decision concerning the proper balance between
fuels treatment activities and environmental protection is a policy
decision for the Congress to make.
Question 4. If GAO had it in its power, what one step would you
have the Forest Service take to significantly reduce its cost of fire
suppression?
Answer. Given the cost savings in both suppression and fuel
management that can occur as a result of increased wildland fire use,
one action that the agencies should consider is accelerating the
completion and supplementation of their fire management plans to ensure
that they are aggressively focused on identifying opportunities and
circumstances under which wildland fire use is permitted and
encouraged.
______
Response of C. Stephen Allred to Question From Chairman Bingaman
Question 1. In the agencies' comments on the GAO's report, Mr.
Cason and Chief Kimball asserted that ``we do have objectives and
clearly defined goals that make up our strategy for better managing
large fire suppression costs.'' Can you tell me, specifically, what the
agencies' ``clearly defined goals'' are for containing costs?
Answer. The principal wildland fire management doctrine provides
interagency goals and objectives. The doctrine includes ``The Federal
Wildland Fire Policy,'' the ``Healthy Forests Initiative,'' ``Healthy
Forests Restoration Act,'' ``Protecting People and Natural Resources--A
Cohesive Fuels Treatment Strategy,'' and the ``10-Year Strategy
Implementation Plan.'' We have adjusted major components of the program
to allow for better management of large fire suppression costs. For
example, we have changed our policies on land use plans to require the
consideration of cost. We have changed our training plans to provide
greater training opportunities for volunteer and local fire units.
Increasing the number of first responders who are available to suppress
unwanted fires decrease the potential that the fire will become a large
and costly fire.
We are also broadening implementation of the Appropriate Management
Response (AMR) strategy. This approach provides risk-informed fire
protection by introducing the concept of managing wildland fire in
relationship to the risk that the incident poses. A risk-informed,
performance-based strategy increases flexibility in wildland fire
decisions, and in some cases may reduce costs relative to a full-
suppression strategy and secures desirable environmental outcomes
without compromising cost containment objectives. Combined with using
new rapid-assessment tools, this will enable a more efficient and cost-
effective use of available firefighter numbers and capacity.
The mission of the Cohesive Fuels Treatment Strategy ``is to lessen
risks from catastrophic wildfires by reducing fuels build-up in the
forests and woodlands and by reducing threats from flammable invasive
species on rangelands in the most efficient and cost effective manner
possible.'' The strategy embraces cost containment through its four
guiding principals:
Prioritization
Coordination
Collaboration
Accountability
The 10-Year Strategy Implementation Plan specifically details four
implementation goals, implementation outcomes, performance measures,
and priority tasks. The performance measures enable all parties to
assess and track progress toward the desired implementation outcomes
envisioned by each goal. The implementation tasks identify specific
actions needed to realize measurable progress.
Goal 1--Improve Fire Prevention and Suppression
Goal 2--Reduce Hazardous Fuels
Goal 3--Restoration and Post-Fire Recovery of Fire-Adapted
Ecosystems
Goal 4--Promote Community Assistance
This strategy seeks to create landscape conditions that improve our
effectiveness in suppressing unwanted fires and reducing risks to
firefighters, communities, and the environment, and to use desirable
fires to help achieve natural resource management objectives--acting in
the most economical and effectual means possible.
Both the Department and USFS also continue to report on the five
common performance measures outlined in the National Fire Plan related
to reducing fire risk, such as the performance measure that captures
the number of acres in fire regimes 1, 2, or 3 that moved to a better
condition class. Additionally, the Administration is measuring the
percentage of total National Forest System land for which fire risk is
reduced through movement to a better condition. Fuels reduction and
restoration treatments are designed to reduce the risks of catastrophic
wildland fire to people, communities and natural resources.
In addition, responsible Federal and state agencies are working to
share costs and determine up front how costs will be distributed.
Sharing responsibility enhances financial accountability and decreases
costly duplicative efforts.
Responses of C. Stephen Allred to Questions From Senator Salazar
Question 2. I am concerned about reports of fire positions being
abolished in Colorado. Specifically, my office is aware of position
cuts out of the San Juan Public Lands Center in Southwest Colorado.
Will you provide me with documentation of the Federal fire preparedness
resources currently located/available in Colorado by district, forest,
or other administrative region and how those levels compare to past
years?
Answer. BLM is part of an interagency firefighting organization in
Colorado that combines federal and state resources to most effectively
manage a response to wildland fires. In addition, at any given time,
Colorado has access to resources located throughout the country that
are capable of responding within 48 hours. Current firefighting
resources in Colorado, by management unit, include the following:
NW Colorado Fire Management Unit--Within this unit, BLM, National
Park Service (NPS), and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service resources are
administratively combined under ``Service First'' authority, which is
designed to achieve the most effective organization. Fire Management
Officers are located at Craig, Meeker, Dinosaur National Park, and
Browns Park Wildlife Refuge. These managers supervise a total of seven
fire engines and host the Craig Hotshot crew, a national resource.
Upper Colorado River Fire Management Unit--Within this unit, BLM,
U.S. Forest Service (USFS), and NPS units are administratively combined
under ``Service First'' authority. Fire Management Officers and
Assistants are located at Grand Junction, Rifle, and Eagle. They manage
a total of nine engines; two 3-person Initial Attack squads; a
helicopter and 6-person helitack crew at Rifle. They also manage the
Grand Junction Air Tanker Base, which also hosts national resources
that include 10-15 smokejumpers and the 6-person Unaweep Fire Use
Module.
Montrose Interagency Fire Management Unit--Within this unit BLM,
USFS, and NPS units are administratively combined under ``Service
First'' authority. Fire Management Officers and Assistants are located
at Montrose and Gunnison. Eight engines are located throughout the area
in Montrose, Gunnison, Norwood, and Paonia.
San Juan Public Lands Center--USFS and BLM units are
administratively combined under ``Service First'' authority. Fire
Management Officers are located at Durango, Dolores, and Pagosa
Springs. They manage seven engines and the Durango Air Tanker Base,
which also hosts a helicopter and helitack crew. Both the helicopter
and crew are national resources.
San Luis Valley Public Lands Center--USFS, BLM, and NPS units are
administratively combined under ``Service First'' authority. Fire
Management Officers are located at Monte Vista, Del Norte, Saguache, La
Jara, and Great Sand Dunes National Park. Three engines are managed
within this unit.
Front Range Fire Management Unit--This is a BLM and USFS unit
managed at Canon City. They currently have three engines. The BLM Fire
Management officer coordinates his activities as a part of the larger
Pike and San Isabel National Forest management.
Dispatch Centers--In Colorado, there are six federally operated
zone dispatch centers, one each in Craig, Grand Junction, Montrose,
Durango, Pueblo, and Fort Collins. The Rocky Mountain Area Coordination
Center (RMACC) located in Lakewood is one of 11 regional centers across
the country that coordinates the mobilization of firefighting
resources. RMACC is responsible for wildfire activity in the five-state
region of Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas.
Aviation--There are three Air Tanker bases in Colorado available to
support heavy air tankers in Grand Junction, Durango, and at the
Jefferson County Airport. BLM has also created six secondary Single
Engine Air Tanker (SEATs) bases at Craig, Rifle, Montrose, Cortez,
Kremmling, and Canon City. The Colorado State Office also has a shared
BLM/NPS Aviation position.
The numbers and locations of these resources have not significantly
changed in recent years, although management practices have changed
slightly to improve efficiency and cost-effectiveness.
Question 3. Are you able, at this time, to tell me what that
documentation will show?
Answer. The documentation is outlined above.
Question 4. Will you also provide a justification for these
resource levels?
Answer. Currently, the numbers and locations of firefighting
resources in Colorado, as in other states, are based on fire history
and historic organizational needs. In Colorado, the BLM firefighting
resources are blended with other agencies to minimize resource
duplication and to achieve the most efficient and cost-effective fire
organization possible.
Question 5. In the eyes of the Forest Service and BLM have cuts to
other National Fire Plan programs such as Volunteer and State Fire
Assistance negatively impacted local and state resources available to
respond to fires in Colorado?
Answer. Local fire departments are an integral and important
component of the nation's wildland fire community. Their first-response
capabilities are crucial to the success of land management agencies in
protecting lives and values at risk.
Funding through the National Fire Plan has provided significant
assistance to support and enhance the capabilities of these partners.
Although the Department's Rural Fire Assistance program was highly
successful, it achieved the primary goal of updating equipment and
prevention programs in rural fire departments across the country. This
program was also duplicative of other Federal fire assistance grant
programs. DOI is now focusing efforts and funding on the Ready Reserve
program.
The Ready Reserve program, which is focused on the same rural and
local departments as RFA, is designed to provide wildland fire training
to enhance the safety, effectiveness, and capability of local
firefighters who respond to wildland fires near their communities. The
program includes providing the training in a format and on a schedule
that meets the needs of the local departments; as well as providing
some training on-line for greater accessibility. This training includes
traditional wildland firefighting courses, simulation exercises, local
engine academies, and more.
Through the Ready Reserve fire training and assistance with grants
from other sources, the Department continues to support the safety,
effectiveness and the role of these units in the nation's wildfire
response community.
Question 6. Last week in Garfield County, Colorado a small fire
that threatened over 100 homes was quickly suppressed sparing all but 3
homes which were lost. Local first responders benefited from the quick
response by the BLM helicopter crew stationed in the county. It is
reported that this resource is slated to be transferred from its
current base of operations in the future. Can you tell me how your
agencies make these decisions?
Answer. BLM is part of a national interagency firefighting team
that combines federal, state, and local resources to mobilize resources
to effectively manage wildland fires. The Type 3 helicopter currently
stationed at Rifle is considered a national resource, similar to the
Single Engine Air Tanker stationed in Grand Junction. National
resources may be relocated temporarily or permanently based on national
fire activity and resource needs.
For now, the home base for this helicopter will remain in Rifle.
The helicopter's location may be re-visited at sometime in the future,
depending on several factors including the level of fire activity, both
regionally and nationally; fire potential; and risks to communities.
The Department focuses its firefighting resources in areas with the
greatest fire activity and resource needs. The Interstate-70 corridor
has valuable natural resources, urban development, and complex
topography, all of which are considered in the location of the
helicopter and other fire resources.
Question 7. It is reported that this resource is slated to be
transferred from its current base of operations in the future. Can you
tell me how your agencies make these decisions?
Answer. National resources can be transferred to any location in
the country where they are most needed. The Type 3 helicopter in Rifle
is regarded as a national resource. The transfer of it would be based
upon the factors mentioned above: level of fire activity on both a
regional and national basis; potential for new fire activity; and risks
to communities and important natural resources. It's important to note
that the system works both ways. If Colorado experiences a difficult
season, then national assets from other parts of the country would be
sent there. The decision to move national resources is made by the
National Multi-Agency Coordinating Group (NMAC) in Boise, Idaho, which
is composed of senior fire managers representing federal and state fire
agencies.
Question 8. Will you also provide my office with notices and
justification for any resource transfers that affect Colorado in the
future?
Answer. Yes, BLM Colorado can brief your staff on fire resource
status, locations, and fire activity on public land in the state.
Question 9. Have your agencies done everything in their power to
insure that the resources needed to protect life, property, and other
important resources are in place for this fire season?
Answer. Yes. BLM, along with our interagency partners, is part of a
national interagency firefighting team that combines federal, state,
and local resources in order to mobilize necessary resources to
effectively manage wildland fires based upon fire activity, fuel
conditions, and fire activity potential.
Question 10. Are there unfunded needs to be addressed in terms of
preparedness?
Answer. The Department supports the funding levels proposed in the
President's Budget. The Department is continually working to adapt to
the challenges we face and plans to implement a number of strategies to
maintain the most efficient on-the-ground firefighting force possible.
Question 11. Are there other legislative authorities that federal
agencies require to respond to fire incidents effectively and
efficiently?
Answer. Title IV, Section 428 of S. 1696, the Department of the
Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2008,
authorizes the Departments to pay for up to one-half of the cost of
personal liability insurance for an expanded number of agency wildland
firefighters. This provision would allow the agencies to provide
assistance to many of the firefighters who risk their lives to protect
public resources.
Question 12. What action will the Forest Service and Department of
Interior take in response to the GAO report unveiled today?
Answer. We are currently reviewing the report and will present a
formal response to GAO in the future.
Responses of C. Stephen Allred to Questions From Senator Domenici
Question 13. What did the BLM do with the emergency fire funding
that it got in September of 2006? Was it utilized to pay back the fire
borrowing it did in FY 2006?
Answer. Of the $100 million emergency funding received in September
2006, $96 million was used to repay all Section 102 emergency transfers
from the fire bureaus' construction and land acquisition accounts. One
million of the carry-over was used to partially repay the Burned Area
Rehabilitation account. The remaining three million helps allow the
program to fund suppression at the ten-year average.
Question 14. Are the BLM and Park Service fully prepared for this
fire season?
Answer. For the 2007 fire season, we have secured firefighting
forces--firefighters, equipment, and aircraft--comparable to those
available in 2006. Our fire managers assign local, regional and
national firefighting personnel and equipment based on anticipated fire
starts, actual fire occurrence, fire spread, and severity with the help
of information from Predictive Services.
Question 15. If there were one thing you would have this Congress
do to reduce your agencies' cost of fire fighting, what would that be?
Answer. We believe it would be helpful to provide more information
to the public about wildland firefighting roles and responsibilities.
Managing the expectations of our partners, continuing a national
education strategy, maintaining community assistance, and relying on a
risk-based approach to suppression operations will help reduce the cost
of firefighting in the long-term.
Our educational outreach includes, but is not limited to:
Community Wildfire Protection Plans (CWPPs)--an essential
element for reducing the risk to communities from wildland
fire.
--A CWPP Handbook was developed and sponsored by the Society of
American Foresters, the National Association of Counties,
the National Association of State Foresters, and the
Western Governor's Association.
--Communities with CWPPs in place are given priority for funding of
hazardous fuels reduction projects carried out under the
auspices of the Healthy Forest Restoration Act.
The Forest Service's Volunteer Fire Assistance (VFA) program
provides Federal financial, technical, and other assistance
through State Foresters or similar officials to organize,
train, and equip fire departments in rural areas and rural
communities of 10,000 or less, to prevent and suppress fires.
The VFA program is sponsored and funded by the Forest Service
and administered by the State Foresters through the state and
private forestry system.
The Department's agencies and their state partners initiated
the Ready Reserve program in 2006. This program focuses on
training rural and volunteer firefighters. Training for rural
fire departments through Ready Reserve focuses on enhancement
of firefighter safety, building wildland suppression skills,
and improving overall cooperator effectiveness, particularly in
WUI firefighting operations.
The Forest Service State Fire Assistance program supports
critical preparedness needs for firefighter safety, increased
initial attack capability and training. Base levels of funding
are distributed to the State Foresters based on recognition of
the need for states to maintain and enhance coordination and
communication with federal agencies.
______
Responses of Mark Rey to Questions From Chairman Bingaman
[Responses to the following questions were not received at the time
the hearing went to press:]
Question 1. In the agencies' comments on the GAO's report, Mr.
Cason and Chief Kimball asserted that ``we do have objectives and
clearly defined goals that make up our strategy for better managing
large fire suppression costs.'' Can you tell me, specifically, what the
agencies' ``clearly defined goals'' are for containing costs?
Question 2. The Management Efficiencies document you submitted in
January indicates that 25-75% of large fire costs could potentially be
saved by changing agency policy to ``allow movement between suppression
and wildland fire use as needed.'' Has the agency changed policy
accordingly, and, if not, when will that policy be revised?
Question 3a. At a hearing before the House Natural Resources
Committee last week, you testified that there are about 80 million
acres of high-priority acres in need of fuel treatments.
How did you arrive at that number?
Question 3b. Can the agency identify where exactly those acres are?
Question 3c. Does the agency have an estimate of the cost of
treating those acres?
Question 3d. How long do you think it will take for the agencies to
treat those acres?
Question 4. The Independent Panel's review of the quality of some
of the Forest Service's Fire Management Plans indicated that none of
them even approached an adequate discussion of all of the key issues
for wildfire management. As a result, the study recommends that Fire
Management Plans should be dynamic, integrative, and collaborative
strategic assessments of fire management planning and policies that:
a. assess in-depth and continually-update fire history since
2000 in terms of expected fire behavior, intensity, and risk
(p.17);
b. organize the forest into zones or areas that clearly
identify both forest resource management and fire protection
goals (p.13);
c. monitor the growth of the WUI and compare fire management
priorities and protection policies with state, local, tribal
neighbors--and private and public interests in a highly
collaborative process that includes enough detail to define
protection roles (p.17);
d. provide guidance on the appropriate response to wildfires
(p.13);
e. refine and explain cost-management expectations for fire
management programs (Prevention, Fuels Reduction, Suppression,
and Restoration) (p.17);
f. include up-to-date information on size, location, and
maintenance of fuels reduction projects (p.14);
g. create a strong linkage from the FMP to the WFSA process
(p.17); and
h. include information on all other forest activities that
affect fire planning (p.14).
In an agency press release in May, you stated that ``the
recommendations of the panel will be acted upon immediately.'' Can you
tell me how you have acted on the specific recommendations listed above
to-date and when we can expect the Fire Management Plans to comply with
these criteria?
Responses of Mark Rey to Questions From Senator Salazar
Question 5. I am concerned about reports of fire positions being
abolished in Colorado. Specifically, my office is aware of position
cuts out of the San Juan Public Lands Center in Southwest Colorado.
Will you provide me with documentation of the Federal fire
preparedness resources currently located/available in Colorado by
district, forest, or other administrative region and how those levels
compare to past years?
Question 6. Are you able, at this time, to tell me what that
documentation will show?
Question 7. Will you also provide a justification for these
resource levels?
Question 8. In the eyes of the Forest Service and BLM have cuts to
other National Fire Plan programs such as Volunteer and State Fire
Assistance negatively impacted local and state resources available to
respond to fires in Colorado?
Question 9. Last week in Garfield County, Colorado a small fire
that threatened over 100 homes was quickly suppressed sparing all but 3
homes which were lost. Local first responders benefited from the quick
response by the BLM helicopter crew stationed in the county.
It is reported that this resource is slated to be transferred from
its current base of operations in the future. Can you tell me how your
agencies make these decisions?
Question 10. Will you also provide my office with notices and
justification for any resource transfers that affect Colorado in the
future?
Question 11. Have your agencies done everything in their power to
insure that the resources needed to protect life, property, and other
important resources are in place for this fire season?
Question 12. Are there unfunded needs to be addressed in terms of
preparedness?
Question 13. Are there other legislative authorities that federal
agencies require to respond to fire incidents effectively and
efficiently?
Question 14. What action will the Forest Service and Department of
Interior take in response to the GAO report unveiled today?
Responses of Mark Rey to Questions From Senator Cantwell
Question 15a. Secretary Rey, we are observing serious wildland fire
conditions such as an increasing number of large and severe wildfires,
lengthened wildfire seasons, increased areas burned, and increasing
numbers of large wildfires in fire-sensitive ecosystems. The annual
number of acres burned on public lands has been increasing over the
last couple of decades. Recent research suggests that these trends are,
in part, related to shifts in climate. For example, a warming climate
is contributing to longer wildland fire seasons with more extreme
wildland fire events, which greatly increase the risk to human lives
and infrastructures, particularly within the wildland urban interface.
The Forest Service is still managing forests mainly for commodity
outputs, but managing forests for carbon sequestration may be the most
valuable role for our nation's future generations. Without taking
action to manage fire-dependant ecosystems today and in the absence of
thoughtful preparation and planning for the future, wildland fires are
likely to become increasingly difficult to manage. Last November, the
Association for Fire Ecology in the ``San Diego Declaration on Climate
Change and Fire Management'' issued specific actions that federal land
managers can take to better prepare for and mitigate future impacts of
climate change on wildland fire management.
Secretary Rey, are you familiar with the ``San Diego Declaration on
Climate Change and Fire Management''? Does the Administration endorse
the policy principles laid out in the Declaration?
Question 15b. What is the Forest Service doing to implement the
recommendations in the Declaration to ensure that the federal
government is prepared to address the impacts of climate change on
wildland fire management?
Question 15c. How, if at all, are you integrating climate change
scenarios into long-range forest and fire management planning?
Question 15d. How are you integrating impacts of climate change,
like changes in temperature, precipitation, and storm frequency, into
post-fire management proposals?
Question 15e. What kinds of monitoring programs have been
established to track changes in vegetation, fuels, and fire regime over
time, especially in areas undergoing rapid change due to global
warming?
Question 15f. What kinds of information and education systems has
the agency established to inform the public about the potential impacts
of climate change on natural resources and fire disturbance regimes?
wildland firefighter safety
Question 16. Earlier this year, I introduced and this committee
unanimously recommended the Wildland Firefighter Safety and
Transparency Act of 2007, S. 1152. This bill directs the Secretary of
the Interior to submit annual reports to Congress on the wildland
firefighter safety practices of the Secretaries of wildland
firefighting agencies, including training programs and activities for
wildland fire suppression, prescribed burning, and wildland fire use. A
report by the Department of Agriculture's Office of Inspector General
(Report No. 08601-42-SF, March 2006) identified significant problems
with oversight and administration of the Forest Service contracts and
agreements for private wildland fire crews. These and other reports
highlight the need for Congress and the Federal agencies to improve
oversight in the area of wildfire safety. The agencies indicated at the
January 30, 2007 Committee oversight hearing on wildfire that they are
working on making some major changes to their training and other safety
programs, which further highlights the need for Congress to keep
abreast of the agencies' wildfire safety program. The annual report to
Congress required by S. 1152 will help Congress do so.
Will the Administration commit to supporting this common sense and
necessary legislation that will allow Congress and the Federal agencies
to improve oversight in the area of wildfire safety?
Question 17. Because of the inherent risks and growing complexity
of managing wildland fire, I understand some wildland fire managers in
the Forest Service and Department of the Interior purchase personal
liability insurance. The interest in personal liability insurance by
these managers has increased since the Department of Justice recently
decided to pursue criminal charges against a Federal wildland
firefighter relating to a number of fatalities during a 2001 wildfire.
Along with Chairman Bingaman and Ranking Member Domenici, I recently
introduced legislation that would expand access to professional
liability insurance for our brave wildland fire managers. Provisions of
this legislation were included in the Senate Appropriations Committee
Fiscal Year 2008 Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies
Appropriations Act.
Secretary Rey, in your testimony you indicated that, as a result of
the criminal charges stemming from the 2001 wildfire, there is some
uneasiness among some wildland firefighters. You also indicated that
the legislation I introduced along with Chairman Bingaman and Ranking
Member Domenici would help significantly in that area and improve
morale among federal wildland firefighters. Can you elaborate on your
support this legislation, and how it can help ensure thorough
investigations in the aftermath of wildland fire fighter fatalities?
recreation and environment
Question 18. Earlier this year, Senator John Warner and I, along
with 17 other Senate Colleagues, introduced bipartisan legislation that
would codify the 2001 Roadless Rule. The Forest Service's failure to
address the more than $8.4 billion road maintenance backlog, while
advancing an agenda that promotes new road construction and increased
commercial logging compounds the Forest Service's fiscal problems.
Moreover, Americans have expressed their strong desire to see the last
30 percent of pristine land on National Forests protected. In drafting
the Roadless Rule, the Forest Service held more than 600 meetings and
hearings in 37 states, the majority in communities near National
Forests. More than 25,000 people participated. Of the more than 1.6
million comments submitted on the then proposed Roadless Rule, an
overwhelming 95 percent favored the strongest possible protection for
roadless areas. As well, in 18 separate opinion polls, conducted by
both Republicans and Democrats, Americans demonstrated robust support
for roadless area protection. Clearly the American people understand
the need for strong roadless forest protection. Representing less than
two percent of our country's landscape, these pristine lands are
sources of clean drinking water for millions of Americans and wonderful
backcountry recreation, including hiking, hunting and fishing. They
offer safe harbor for vanishing and imperiled wildlife and fish
species. They also provide a wide range of economic values and improve
the overall quality of life in communities adjacent to National
Forests.
Secretary Rey, the Bush Administration has spent six years trying
to overturn the 2001 Clinton Administration Roadless Rule. As you know,
the most recent ruling in this costly legal saga reinstated the 2001
Rule. Will the Bush Administration finally end its divisive efforts to
overturn this broadly popular Rule?
Question 19a. Mount St. Helens in southwest Washington is currently
a National Volcanic Monument managed by the Forest Service. Thousands
of Americans each year visit the Mt. St. Helens National Volcanic
Monument to see the stunning effects of the 1980 eruption. This unique
destination showcases the eruption's dramatic aftermath, and lets
visitors see returning plants and animals firsthand. Unfortunately, in
the face of maintenance backlogs and budget constraints, the Forest
Service has recently announced plans to scale back visitor center
operations at the monument, including plans to close the Coldwater
Ridge Visitor Center during 2008. Yet, Administration budget requests
for Region 6 programs that support the Monument have seen steady
decreases since FY 2001. Recreation, Wilderness and Heritage in Region
6 has decreased from $28.5 million for FY 2003 to under $19 million for
FY 2008, a 35% decrease. Capital Improvements for Trails in Region 6
has decreased from $10 million in FY 2004 to $7 million in FY 2008, a
30% decrease. More than $13 million in deferred maintenance has been
identified for the Monument, which apparently precipitated the Forest
Service's plans to scale back visitor center operations at the
monument. Yet, the Administration's Forest Service FY 2008 budget
request for Deferred Maintenance is a 25% decrease from FY 2006 funding
levels, and the Administration requested no money for Deferred
Maintenance in FY 2004.
In light of the Administration's steady trend of reduced budget
requests for programs that support the Mt. St. Helens National Volcanic
Monument, what is the Forest Service's plan to protect natural
resources while also expanding recreational and visitor opportunities
at Mt. St. Helens?
Question 19b. Please provide the Administration's budget requests,
and final appropriation, for all Region 6 accounts for FY 2001--FY 2008
that support programs at the Monument, including the Capital
Improvement and Maintenance accounts for Deferred Maintenance,
Facilities, and Trails, and also the Region 6 Recreation, Wilderness
and Heritage account.
Question 20a. The Forest Service estimates that it needs several
billion dollars nationwide to maintain existing roads, replace
culverts, and decommission old roads, including over $300 million in
Washington. However, the Forest Service is spending just $3 million
annually on road maintenance in Washington's national forests, while
the backlog of deferred maintenance grows by $8 million each year.
Unfortunately, the Administration's budget request for FY 2008 will
significantly worsen the problem of Forest Service roads. Nationally,
the budget proposes a 31 percent cut in Forest Service road
maintenance, while road decommissioning will decline from 682 miles in
2006 to 375 miles in 2008--a 55 percent reduction.
What are the current estimated costs of deferred road maintenance,
culvert replacement and repairs, and road decommissioning?
Question 20b. How have those estimated costs changed since 2000,
when the Forest Service FY 2000 Proposed Budget estimated $8.4 billion
in road needs?
Question 20c. To what extent are those changes due to better road
information versus reduced maintenance standards?
Question 20d. How much money has the Forest Service spent in each
of the last five fiscal years to address the road maintenance backlog?
Question 21a. The Forest Service was sued by Forest Service
Employees for Environmental Ethics (FSEEE) for its use of toxic fire
retardant chemicals. In response to a court order, the Forest Service
conducted an Environmental Assessment and was supposed to have issued a
decision in March 2007. According to the agency's official website for
the Environmental Assessment process, it has yet to announce any
decision or provide an update. Aviation costs to apply fire retardants
are one of the highest cost centers in suppression operations.
Taxpayers are paying twice: first, the economic costs of using
aircraft, and second, the ecological costs of polluted water and killed
fish, including endangered species.
What is the status of the Environmental Assessment for the aerial
application of fire retardants?
Question 21b. When will a Decision Notice or Environmental Impact
Statement be issued?
Question 21c. How does the agency intend to monitor and track the
effects of fire retardants to be used this season?
fire management strategy and cost containment
Question 22a. Fire costs threaten to consume the majority of the
Forest Service's discretionary budget, leaving them very little money
to do anything else. The Forest Service's wildland fire costs increased
from 13% of their budget in Fiscal Year 1991 to a staggering 45%
projected in Fiscal Year 2008, and experts are predicting that global
climate change will only lengthen the fire season. Funding for non-fire
Forest Service programs decreased 14% between Fiscal Year 2002 and
Fiscal Year 2006 (adjusted for inflation). It's clear that something
needs to change. In a recent report the USDA IG recommended that the
Forest Service expand its Wildland Fire Use (WFU) program to help
reduce suppression costs. Moreover, from the outset, one of the primary
goals of the federal Wildland Fire Policy, Ten-Year Comprehensive
Strategy, and National Fire Plan was to restore fire-adapted
ecosystems, including using wildland fires to help make landscapes more
fire-resilient and help protect communities. However, in 2006 only
165,000 acres were managed as Wildland Fire Use out of the almost 10
million acres that burned.
Would you agree that the Department of Interior and Forest Service
should allocate more funding for WFU training and implement policy
changes that better incentivize WFU?
Question 22b. What policy incentives do you believe would be the
most effective in achieving an expanded WFU program?
Question 22c. What current policies, as noted by the USDA-OIG and
GAO, that constrain the implementation of wildland fire use are you
revising in order to expand WFU?
Question 22d. What assurance can you provide the committee that
these policies changes will be pursued?
Question 23a. The Forest Service is proposing a new fire
suppression approach (``risk-based'' or ``risk-informed'' suppression)
that recognizes that not all wildland fires need to be managed in the
same way that they will be implementing during this fire season. Under
this approach, WFU should be a more readily available alternative for
managing wildland fire. This is an important step in the right
direction, because the agency has acknowledged that full suppression
attack is not always the right tactic in every situation.
Do you think that this change in suppression response, i.e. not
actively suppressing all fires or all portions fires but instead
determining the appropriate management response based on a set of risk
factors, will help contain suppression costs?
Question 23b. What results do you expect to see in the 2007 fire
season? Within the next five years?
Question 23c. How is the agency working to ensure that this
approach is adopted throughout the agency--district, forest, regional
levels?
Question 23d. The new suppression performance measures proposed in
the budget do not seem to be designed to capture accomplishments that
would result from using this new approach. How will the Forest Service
measure success in this new fire management approach?
Question 24a. The GAO has recommended numerous times that the land
management agencies need a cohesive strategy for managing wildland fire
that explicitly identifies the long-term options and related funding
needed to reduce fuels in national forests and rangelands and to
respond to wildland fire to allow the agencies and Congress to
determine the most effective and affordable long-term approach for
addressing wildland fire problems.
What actions have the Forest Service and DOI taken to incorporate
GAO's Wildland Fire Management recommendations?
Question 24b. Please describe in detail what elements the agencies'
cohesive strategy should contain and how the agencies will use this
type of strategy to better implement wildland fire management.
Question 24c. GAO has stated that the agencies' fuels strategy does
not address their recommendation. Why is this the case?
Question 25a. The 1995 and 2001 Federal Fire Policy clearly states
that, ``Every area with burnable vegetation must have an approved Fire
Management Plan (FMP).'' FMPs are one of the foundational elements of
Fire Preparedness, and they help make fire management safer, more
economically efficient, and more effective. Failure to have a current
approved FMP means land managers have only one option in response to
wildland fires: total aggressive suppression. The Forest Service has
been successfully sued twice for failure to develop FMPs in compliance
with NEPA. In response, the agency has withdrawn the FMPs from the Six
Rivers and Sequoia National Forests in California, and has threatened
to withdraw them from the National Forests in Region 3 if additional
lawsuits are filed there.
What is the status of FMPs in our National Forests?
Question 25b. Given that it has been twelve years since the Federal
Wildland Fire Policy mandated FMPs, what number and percentage of all
National Forests have current, approved FMPs?
Question 25c. What role, if any, will the public have in developing
FMPs?
Question 25d. How will the Forest Service ensure that FMPs utilize
the best available science, include public input, and fully comply with
NEPA?
Question 26a. According to the Federal Wildland Fire Policy, a
current, approved FMP is required in order to implement WFU. The Forest
Service is currently revising its Manual in order to remove any
requirement for completing FMPs. If FMPs are abolished, this may
prevent the option of WFU which is a safer and cheaper method for
managing wildland fires than full suppression.
Why is the Forest Service removing requirements for FMPs from its
Manual?
Question 26b. If FMPs are no longer required on National Forests,
how can land managers implement WFU?
Question 26c. How will the Forest Service be in compliance with the
Federal Wildland Fire Policy if it implements WFU without FMPs?
Question 26d. What effect will withdrawing FMPs have on the
planning efforts of interagency partners?
Question 27a. here are approximately 40 million acres of Fire
Regime I and III (short-interval or high fire frequency with low
severity) that have been identified in Condition Class II or III
(moderate to high fire danger due to missed fire cycles). These
ecosystems benefit from prescribed burning or WFU, and rapidly degrade
to a high wildfire danger without regular, repeated burning.
How many acres of forests and grasslands in Fire Regimes I and III
have been prescribed burned in the last year? In the last five years?
Question 27b. What percentage of the total acreage of land in Fire
Regimes I and III is this amount?
Question 27c. What is the reason for failing to increase amount of
prescribed burning or WFU on these lands?
Question 28a. Of the 1.1 million acre Colville National Forest,
approximately 300,000 acres are in immediate need of thinning and fuels
reduction activities--in the short-term 20,000 acres could be treated
there annually. At least one-third of this 300,000 acres is inside the
wildland urban interface and consists of dense timberlands that must be
mechanically thinned. Local counties have prepared community wildfire
protection plans that support this need and a collaborative group of
stakeholders, including the conservation community, have been in
support of large-scale thinning projects for nearly two years.
Unfortunately, the Forest Service has been unable to move anywhere near
fast enough to prepare these large-scale projects and the local mills
are struggling to survive. We will lose the ability to do this work
economically if we lose more mills.
Can you explain the reasons for the delays on the Colville?
Question 28b. Can you please provide me a list of the planned
future projects on the Colville and the number of acres to be treated,
as well as funding available to that forest in FY 2005 to FY 2007?
Question 29a. The Administration's 2008 budget request continues a
downward trend in funding for community fire protection programs.
Programs such as State and Volunteer Fire Assistance are critical in
helping communities prepare for wildland fire--through firefighter
training, hazardous fuels reduction on non-federal lands and Community
Wildfire Protection Planning. These proactive steps are also key in
reducing federal suppression costs. However, under the President's
Budget these programs continue to struggle to simply keep up with
inflation. This budget proposes, for example, that the State Fire
Assistance program be reduced to $68.1 million, a 14 percent cut from
the FY2007 level of $78.7 million.
How will the Forest Service help ensure that at-risk communities
are adequately prepared for the inevitable wildland fire when community
assistance programs are under-funded and funding for them continues to
decline?
Question 29b. How do State Fire Assistance funds help meet
Congress' goals as stated in the 10-year Strategy Plan and the Healthy
Forests Restoration Act?
Question 29c. Are State Fire Assistance funds matched or leveraged
at the state and local level? If so, what sort of leverage do State
Fire Assistance funds provide and to what benefit?
Responses of Mark Rey to Questions From Senator Domenici
Question 30. If the Forest Service did not have to fulfill the
requirements of NEPA and if it were insulated from legal challenges,
how many acres of mechanical treatment could it accomplish a year with
$1.5 billion dedicated to treating the forest stands that are
considered to be at high risk in Stand Condition Class II and III
areas?
Question 31. In September of 2006, Congress provided the Forest
Service $100 million to repay the fire borrowing that occurred during
that fiscal year.
Have those funds been used to repay the fire borrowing that
occurred that fiscal year? If not, why have they not been repaid?
Question 32. Just a couple of weeks ago, Congress provided the
Forest Service another $400 million in emergency fire fighting funding.
Can you tell me how much of that $400 million will be withheld from
the field in the form of National and Regional Office overhead and
other national assessments? Please give me your answer as a percent of
the total $400 million.
Question 33. Are the Forest Service's fire fighters fully prepared
for this fire season?
Question 34. I saw a letter from five former chiefs of the Forest
Service about the cost of fire. I am wondering what each of the five
Chiefs did to control the cost of fire.
Question 35. Chief R. Max Peterson served between about 1978 and
1987. In terms of percent of the discretionary budget, how much did the
fire programs cost annually on average during his tenure? Please
include fire preparedness, fire suppression, and hazardous fuels in
your cost estimate.
Question 36. Chief Dale Robertson served between 1987 and 1994.
In terms of percent of the discretionary budget, how much did the
fire programs cost annually on average during his tenure? Please
include fire preparedness, fire suppression, and hazardous fuels in
your cost estimate.
Question 37. Jack Ward Thomas served between 1994 and 1997 and he
convinced Congress to provide the agency an additional $2 billion for
the national fire plan. Most of that funding went into the fire
fighting accounts.
What steps did he take during is tenure to control the cost of fire
fighting?
Question 38. Michael Dombeck served from 1997 to 2001 and costs
continued to escalate.
What steps did Chief Dombeck take to decrease the cost of fire
fighting?
Question 39. Dale Bosworth served from 2001 to 2007.
What steps did he take to reduce the cost of fire fighting in the
agency?
Question 40. Have you taken the time to look back at how the
program was run during the Max Peterson and Dale Robertson era to see
if perhaps some of the practices and policies adopted during those eras
might need to be reconsidered?
Question 41. I saw a February 21st Yakima Herald-Republic news
article that said 23 percent of 3,300 fire fighters who participated in
a survey would decline to serve as an incident commander, and 36
percent of those surveyed indicated they would decline fire fighting
assignments this next summer as a result of the recent involuntary
manslaughter charges resulting from the Thirtymile Fire case.
Are you familiar with this survey which was done by the
International Association of Wildland Fire Fighters?
Question 42. How much credence do you put into this survey?
Question 43. What percent of your Level I and Level II Incident
Commanders and key members of those teams have opted to forego working
on those teams this fire season?
Question 44a. Could you provide the Committee with the following:
An estimate of how much of the discretionary budget is consumed by
salaries, benefits, and travel for each of the following work areas:
Research, State and Private, National Forest Systems; and the national
fire plan.
Question 44b. An estimate of how much of the discretionary budget
is expended at the following line levels: the Washington Office; the
Regional Offices; the Forest Supervisors Offices; the District Offices;
and the Research Stations.
Appendix II
Additional Material Submitted for the Record
----------
Statement of the Federal Wildland Fire Service Association
preface
The FWFSA recognizes the significant time constraints placed on the
Committee members. Much of our commentary pertaining to preparedness
levels is based upon information submitted to this Committee in our
January 30, 2007 written testimony concerning Wildland Fire Suppression
Cost Containment.
That being said, we will attempt to keep the instances of
redundancy to a minimum in this testimony and ask the Committee members
and all other interested parties to refer to our January 30, 2007
testimony as entered into the record.
the agency spin on fire preparedness
Year after year representatives from the USDA and the Forest
Service appear before this and other committees of jurisdiction and
recite the same refrain: ``. . . we are fully prepared for the fire
season.'' In March of 2006 as a fire season that will live in the minds
of many firefighters who lost too many colleagues; to others who saw
record-breaking acreage burned as well as record-breaking expenditures
in suppression, USDA Undersecretary for Natural Resources and the
Environment Mark Rey once again repeated the all too often heard phrase
``. . . the Agency is fully prepared for this season.'' He went on to
report that ``We think what we've allocated (for fires) is going to be
appropriate and adequate for the task.'' How wrong he was!
These rhetorical claims of preparedness echo those of previous
testimony from the ONLY voice Congress has heard from on such matters,
Agency representatives. Additionally, despite stunning expenditures in
suppression, losses of firefighter lives and all that is a wildfire
season, the Agency continues to suggest each year that it has achieved
a 98-99% initial attack (IA) capability without providing any hard data
to validate such claims.
The FWFSA, whose members fill every conceivable fire position in
each land-management agency from entry-level firefighter to Fire Chief
simply must refute such statements as misleading and inaccurate.
the national fire plan
A key component of the National Fire Plan is fire preparedness. The
concept is fundamental in that being properly prepared will lead to
reduced suppression costs. The text of the NFP states, pertaining to
preparedness ``Assuring that necessary firefighting resources &
personnel are available to respond to wildland fires that threaten
lives & property.''
Despite this component, the Administration continues to reduce
preparedness funding & increase suppression funding. Furthermore, the
Agency has refused to educate the Administration via OMB that the
priority should in fact be preparedness & not suppression.
Undersecretary Rey stated categorically before the record-breaking 2006
season that ``while money for fire preparation has been cut, the Agency
has increased funding for fighting fires once they have started.'' Thus
the Administration and the Agency have embarked on wildland fire
preparedness policies that contradict the National Fire Plan. These
policies needlessly lead to significantly inflated suppression costs.
the 2006 preparedness truth
At the same time Mr. Rey was providing the aforementioned testimony
to Congress & the Press, federal wildland firefighters across the
country employed by the Forest Service were being informed by their
Regional Forest Service offices of significant cuts to preparedness
resources. Although Mr. Rey was candid about the reductions in
preparedness allocations, no one in Congress bothers to ask why.
Although our previous testimony refers to this issue it bears
repeating. Hundreds of millions of dollars in fire preparedness & fuels
funding appropriated by Congress continued to be systematically
diverted by the Washington Office (WO) and a host of line officers from
Regional Foresters to Forest Supervisors & District Rangers to fund a
variety of non-fire projects. The most visible illustration of this is
the HR Service Center in New Mexico, part of the Forest Service'
Business Operations Transformation Program. Despite the Forest Service
patting itself on the back and testifying that the service center
became operational in 2005, it most certainly is not. At one point, Mr.
Hank Kashdan, Deputy Chief of Business Operations explained why the
move to Albuquerque had been so costly. The WO had no idea that ``T-1
data lines'' were not available to most field stations and that the
entire internal field level dependent customers were left to travel in
excess of 25 miles to perform basic transactions. In just one Forest
Service region, unfunded preparedness resources included: 48 engines,
7-Type 1 Hand crews, 1 Type 2 Hand Crew, 12 water tenders and misc.
resources such as prevention personnel, dozers, dispatchers and
approximately 515 firefighter positions not being staffed.
In fact, a Forest Supervisor in California sent a memo to Forest
employees dated 3-30-06 which stated in part:
We are having great difficulties financing our current
organization as structured with our current funding level &
possibility of facing a RIF.
Unable to fill critical positions currently vacant due to
funding limits.
Centralization of many administration functions (HR move to
New Mexico) has left us unable to meet the additional residual
workload in these areas.
Further analysis shows that the number of employees we need
on this Forest exceeds the amount of money we receive (from the
Washington Office).
Anytime an effort such as this is announced, there will be
stressed. Employees become concerned about whether or not they
will have a job in the end.
Until the 2006 fire season, such unfunded preparedness resources
were not an issue because the Forest Service allowed Forests to operate
with a deficit budget. For the 2006 season, former Forest Service Chief
Dale Bosworth indicated that deficit spending would no longer be
allowed.
Suddenly as the 2006 Season commenced, Fire Management Officers
were dealing with unfunded preparedness resources; a staggering
retention problem and having to figure out how to best prepare for the
season. Many engines were staffed with only 3 personnel instead of
five. Many engines operated only five days a week instead of 7.
Still, before the season truly took off, the FWFSA implored
Congress to recognize the consequences of a fire season disaster of
unfunded preparedness resources and uncontrolled retention problems.
evidence of lack of preparedness in 2006
There is no question in our mind that the lack of federal
preparedness resources in 2006, caused primarily by the systematic
diversion of such funds to non-fire projects, cost pools, admin costs
etc., needlessly increased suppression costs and increased the risk to
our firefighter's safety.
There are many incidents that occurred during the 2006 season, (one
in which Mr. Rey claimed to be adequately prepared for) that
illustrated the lack of preparedness. As we have previously testified
to, lists referred to as ``Unable to fill lists'' compiled by The
National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) in Boise, Idaho which
traditionally were sentences long, were now pages long. These lists
note the resources requested and the incident requesting it. Simply
put, requested federal resources were unavailable.
Federal fire preparedness resources that Congress appropriated
money for simply were not in place during the 2006 season. As a result,
fires that should have been handled on initial attack instead grew in
size, intensity, danger and of course cost while either awaiting
federal resources from much greater distances or because significantly
higher-priced non-federal resources were summoned.
We informed Congress as early as February 2006 that without these
preparedness resources being funded, the Agency would exhaust its
suppression budget, exhaust the reserve $500 million and by the fall,
seek an emergency supplemental appropriation for suppression. All came
true.
budget transfers
As long ago as March 2004 before this very same committee, Mr. Rey
stated that the Agency would ``support a solution to the fire transfer
issue.'' This was in response to a comment from Senator Bingaman that
he ``was concerned about the chronic failure to address the chaos of
fire transfers to meet fire suppression needs.''
Yet as recently as August of 2006, former Forest Service Chief Dale
Bosworth was notifying his Regional Foresters of his ``concern about
the seriousness of this year's fire season and the mounting costs and
threat of fire funding transfers.'' As the FWFSA predicted to Congress,
the suppression funds were wiped out within weeks of this memo from
Chief Bosworth and additional funding sought. Apparently as of August
2006, there is no solution to the budget transfer problem.
history repeats itself
In the fall of 1995, nearly 12 years ago, a Fire Management Officer
from the Angeles National Forest in California was interviewed and
quoted in the Los Angeles Times about temporary firefighters being laid
off at the height of the season as the Forest was facing a budget cut
of $2 million. The FMO indicated that on the ANF, 130 temporary
firefighters (those paid for through preparedness funding) were being
laid off. Additionally, the San Bernardino National Forest (location of
last year's Esperanza Fire tragedy) was laying off 120 temporary
firefighters and similar layoffs were reported on the other two
Southern California Forests, the Cleveland & Los Padres. The FMO went
on to say that engine companies ``will respond with three person crews
instead of five'' and that fire stations would no longer operate seven
days a week. He went on to say that Forest Service firefighters would
need to rely more heavily on municipal & county firefighters (already
costing 4-5 times that of their federal counterparts).
The FMO went on to say that the staffing reductions carry ``an
inherent increase in risk.'' He was quoted further as saying:
The key in wildland forest management is `Hit them hard &
keep them small.' If you hit a fire hard at the beginning, it
won't become a danger to anyone but the firefighters. Its when
a fire escapes that it causes problems . . . And as far as
what's going to happen with fires escaping, well, that's going
to be a crapshoot now.*
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* The FMO on the Angeles National Forest in 1995: Tom Harbour, now
Fire & Aviation Management Director for the Forest Service.
In response, to the cuts, Harry Croft, Asst. Director for Planning
in the Fire & Aviation Dept. of the WO blamed ``a lack of planning at
the national forest level.''
How prophetic the comments of the ANF FMO would be in 2006. These
same comments were echoed throughout last year and have already been
spoken this year.
2007 preparedness: are we ready?
Despite the annual assurances from the Agency that it is adequately
prepared for the 2007 fire season, our firefighters, the true experts
on the matter, say otherwise and the facts support their concerns.
On the San Juan National Forest in Colorado, the Forest's Workforce
Planning Group incredulously chose to cut 17 fire positions. The losses
of the highly trained and experienced firefighters are set to commence
this year. We have implored the offices of Senators Allard & Salazar to
take action to stop these cuts.
In California (Forest Service Region 5), the scenarios prove even
more dire. On just one ranger district on the very same Angeles
National Forest that Mr. Harbour served on, there is a 46% vacancy rate
in fire positions. In fact, the former fire chief of the ANF recently
abruptly retired. Shortly before he did, he confided in the FWFSA's
Business Manager Casey Judd that the Forest Service' fire program was
``falling apart at the wheels.'' Subsequent to his loss, the Deputy
Fire Chief will be forced into retirement within the next month leaving
no fire leadership on the forest as the season starts.
To compound California's problems, a significant number of
firefighters, engineers (fire apparatus operators) & captains have left
the federal system for CAL-FIRE (formerly California Dept. of Forestry
& Fire Protection) for better pay & benefits. This, coupled with a
seriously dysfunctional hiring process and unfunded preparedness
resources has created serious staffing shortages. In a recent memo to
ANF employees, Forest Supervisor Jody Noiron pointed out the obvious:
``As with other forests in the region, the ANF currently has a
significant number of vacancies.'' Fire Management Officers are having
to treat employees as chess pieces in an effort to maximize staffing.
Despite heroic efforts, engines remain completely un-staffed as do
other support apparatus such as water tenders. This had led to letters
from the public being sent to Forest Supervisors urging them to re-open
stations and staff engines.
To further compound this problem, as a result of the ``exodus'' to
CAL-FIRE, the number of very limited to no experienced firefighters
being asked to hit the front lines is enormous. Stunningly, in many
locations, Forest Supervisors (most with little to no fire experience
or expertise themselves) are making it clear to the FMOs in charge of
ensuring these new firefighters are ready & trained for the season,
that the priority is for these new firefighters to complete their
AgLearn courses, leaving little time to prepare for the fire season.
The situation could only get worse as the season wears on. In July,
it is expected that CAL-FIRE, since getting approval from the Governor,
will be able to go to outside hiring for chief officer positions and
has already targeted a number of Forest Service FMOs. Additional losses
in those ranks will create absolute chaos in the fire program in
California and there are questions as to whether it will remain viable.
where's the forest service air tanker plan?
Last summer, USDA's Mark Rey promised that a new Agency air tanker
plan would be submitted this Spring. As of the hearing date set for
June 5, 2007, that will leave approximately 2+ weeks before summer
officially starts. As of May 28, 2007, no member of Congress has seen
the promised air tanker plan which obviously plays a key role in
preparedness for the season.
It had been hoped that Mr. Rey would have delivered on his promise
by now or at the very least mention the plan at the recent Senate
Subcommittee on Interior Appropriations hearing. No comments were
forthcoming and no questions as to the plan were offered by committee
members.
conclusion
The commentary provided in this testimony, coupled with that of our
January 30, 2007 testimony on suppression costs paints a dire picture
of preparedness & cost containment for this season and suggests that
unless Congress makes some serious changes, the status quo will
continue from season to season.
It stands to reason and common sense would dictate that being
properly prepared would 1) improve firefighter safety and better ensure
the safety of citizens 2) significantly reduce the costs of
suppression. We cannot understand why this basic fundamental principle
is being ignored by the Administration and the Forest Service.
As offered in previous testimony, we firmly believe that policy,
more than climate, urban interface etc., is driving suppression costs
skyward. Being properly prepared significantly mitigates the impact of
climate (drought, lightning strikes) and urban interface.
Preparedness funds appropriated by Congress must not be diverted or
siphoned off for non-fire projects, cost pools etc. Given that
temporary firefighters make up nearly 46% of staffing each season,
these funds are essential and must not be abused.
Congress must also address the archaic pay & personnel policies
which are forcing so many of our federal firefighters to waste the
investment our American taxpayers have made in them and transfer to
state & municipal fire agencies.
We categorically disagree with Mr. Rey's position on such losses in
which he has stated, ``it doesn't matter, we'll see them again on the
fire line.'' We may in fact see them on the fire line again at 4-5+
times the cost to the American taxpayer. That is neither cost-effective
nor cost-efficient fiscal management
______
Statement of Albert C. Hyde, Senior Consultant, Center for Executive
Education, The Brookings Institution
Thank you Chairman Bingaman and other distinguished members of this
committee for the opportunity to appear and present testimony for this
hearing on the preparedness of the federal land management agencies for
the 2007 Wildfire season and to review recent reports on agency cost
containment efforts. This testimony is presented on behalf of the panel
members of the large wildfire cost review panel which delivered its
report in May 2007.
These six panel members (Mr. Richard Clevette, Ms. Lauren Cragg,
Mr. Gary Morgan, Lieu. Jeffrey Rubini, Mr. Frank Shelley, and Dr. John
Shelley-along with Dr. Sharon Caudle with GAO who served as a senior
advisor) were specifically chosen as external reviewers. Two were
former senior fire management executives from Canada and Australia, two
Coast Guard experts in incident and risk management, one a private
sector risk management executive and consultant, and a forest science
researcher in academia.
While the Panel's work was managed under a contract with the
Brookings Institution, the Panel was an independent undertaking and the
findings and perspectives expressed in the report are solely those of
panel members.\1\
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\1\ As with any study or publicized work, it is important to note
that the analysis and views expressed in the report are soley those of
its authors and members, and do not reflect the views of the Brookings
Institution, its Trustees or its research staff.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I appreciate this opportunity to summarize the findings from the
panel's work and to present their recommendations on the complex issues
of large-fire suppression costs management.
panel's review of fiscal diligence
Before delving into the panel's findings, it should be noted that
this was not the first such fiscal and strategic review report of large
fire costs on an incident basis. Both in 2004 and 2005, another
independent panel. chaired by a former deputy regional forest
supervisor, Mr. Richard Ferraro, assessed five fires in three regions,
two of which exceeded 100,000 acres in size. This 2006 large fire
review covered a much larger group of fires: 20 fires in five regions,
covering 17 National forests in six states. These 20 fires had
suppression cost approaching $500 million in total, exclusive of burned
area emergency rehabilitation costs and accounted for over 1.1 million
burned acres. One fire (Sawtooth) was excluded as a state managed fire.
Reports by an independent review panel to examine fire suppression
costs for wildfire incidents are required by appropriation language
that states for all fires that exceed $10,000,000 in cost, an
independent review is required to: ``Determine if the Forest Service
exercised fiscal diligence in managing specific incident suppressing
activities.'' This was the first task for the Panel and it formally
voted ``No'' in terms of the forests having exercised inappropriate or
inadequate fiscal diligence for each of the 19 fires assessed, just as
the 2004 & 2005 panel reports found.
This review of fiscal diligence was not taken lightly. A final vote
was taken at the end of each site visit on the 16 forests where the
fires occurred (four forests had two fires each exceeding the $10
million mark). These site visits featured strategic discussions of pre-
fire conditions, extensive discussions of the fire chronology and
suppression actions and results, and assessments of cost management and
fire outcomes. The forests were asked to provide extensive
documentation on all aspects of the wildfire incident--land management
and fire management plans, fire progression maps and situation reports,
the wildland fire situational analysis (WFSA) and delegation of
authority letters, incident management team reviews, cost reports, and
post fire documents--burned area emergency restoration and fire
severity reports, among others.
cost management issues at the forest level
A second objective of the Panel was to focus on strategic decisions
and actions, compliance with policy and law, and risk analysis and
management. The Panel was to address cross-cutting cost management
issues and potential strategies that could impact fire suppression
costs at strategic levels. Cost management begins at the Forest level
but is increasingly a regional and national issue.
However the dilemma facing national forests over containing
suppression costs and protecting resource values inside the forest and
communities at risk outside the forest is both real and difficult.
Agency administrators, certainly the ones interviewed in this review,
understand the critical importance of balancing those risks, knowing
that large wildfires are commanding a greater share of the agency's
budget. At the same time, their span of control over suppression costs
is small. The use of incident business advisors (IBAs), daily cost
reporting, assertive monitoring of requisitions for equipment and
supplies, and releasing crews and assets at the earliest possible
moment can and does save money. The Panel recognized and commended the
efforts made to ensure proper ``fiscal vigilance'' is in place on large
wildfires. It is essential that national forests and IMTs work
constantly at eliminating even the appearance of waste, abuse, and
potential conflict of interest. But such savings, when they happen, are
marginal at best and not a key to significant cost management.
The Panel noted that while the ultimate management control and
fiduciary responsibility rests with these agency administrators, their
real decision space, especially to affect costs, is very limited. Once
a wildfire escapes initial attack control efforts, it quickly escalates
through extended attack to much more than the simple management of an
incident. Factor in the difficulties of managing multiple fires under
one management (complexes), long duration fires (campaigns) or cross
jurisdictional concerns, and fire incidents develop into complex
situations. And most of the 19 fires reviewed for this report were
characteristically multiple fires, lasting multiple days, and crossing
multiple boundaries.
Adding to the forest supervisors' dilemma is the perception of
values at risk. In some cases, most notably Southern California, every
large wildfire is viewed as a high-risk wildland urban interface (WUI)
fire potentially threatening thousands of homes and millions of dollars
of commercial and property interests. In remote locations, forests
would consider watersheds, species habitat, recreational and grazing
interests, and the recognition that there are few wilderness areas left
that are big and isolated enough to simply let a large wildfire ``run
around uncontrolled''.
The business case of the values being protected from large
wildfires may sometimes be overstated, but every forest's assessment of
values has its own merits. Additionally critical species habitat and
watersheds, while often identified, were difficult to place a tangible
value on. This can in part be attributed to the lack of a decision
strategy model that can factor in non-monetary values at risk. But in
terms of socio-economic factors (commercial interests, large employers,
elected officials' priorities, historical landmarks, etc.) there are
always values around which a compelling case for suppression action can
be made. The real problem is that while every forest has a rationale
for assessing the values at risk that is useful in defining a fire
specific suppression strategy; when viewed from the cost management
perspective it is difficult to see how this approach helps the forest
to convey forward the information needed to assign suppression
priorities on a regional or national level in an era of limited
suppression resources.
Agency administrators hoping to confine and possibly fight fire
less aggressively to contain cost, increasingly confront situations
where the best place to fight and contain large wildfires that start
inside the forest is outside the forest boundaries and often in
conflict with neighboring priorities. Considering the apparent increase
in large, complicated fires and the competing demands of protecting
natural resources, protecting the desires of the forest's neighbors,
and containing costs, agency administrators will increasingly need to
develop strategies that do not stop at the forest boundary.
strategic cost management issues
The Panel chose to focus much of its inquiry into cost management
strategies that could potentially impact fire suppression costs at
larger levels. The panel adapted as its analogy A business sector
example that for fire cost management, forest and IMT strategic
decisions should be focused on understanding why and where fire costs
tended to increase, rather than why administrators and incident
commanders were unable to reduce costs. Such an analogy may be even
more apt if future predictions about the probability of average fire
years in the range of 8 to 12 million acres a year prove true.
Four issue areas were addressed that could, in the view of the
Panel, potentially help impact suppression costs and future increases
in wildfire costs at much higher levels. Recommendations were developed
(they are included at the end of this statement) for the following:
1. land management and resource plans and fire management plans as
strategic frameworks for managing fire suppression investment
The Land Management (and Resource) Plans (hereafter referred to as
simply LMP) and the Fire Management Plans (FMP) are the two main
documents that provide direction and guidance for all the activities
undertaken by a national forest in managing all the resources of the
forest. The FMP is in a sense an extension of the LMP that specifically
addresses all management issues related to fire, whether they are
wildfires, wildland fire use fires, or prescribed fires. If these two
documents are not aligned and linked and the FMP does not directly
reference the guidance of the LMP, conflicts or confusion may arise.
Previous reviews of large fires have mentioned this potential confusion
as a source of concern. The Panel examined the two documents relevant
to each fire and evaluated how well the documents work together as
tools for guiding wildfire suppression strategy.
The Panel concluded that much could be done to improve these two
critical documents. While the current legal situation of the LMPs is
problematic, there is perhaps now a ``strategic opportunity'' for
future revisions of the plans to address the impacts of climate change
and forest health, including recent fire history as a core element.
Fire management plans are largely static documents that are used as
internal program reference sources by design. The panel strongly
recommended refocusing Fire management plans to:
assess in depth and continually update fire history since
2000 in terms of expected fire behavior, intensity, and risk;
monitor growth of the WUI and compare fire management
priorities and protection policies with state, local, tribal
neighbors--and private and public interests in a highly
collaborative process;
refine and explain cost management expectations for fire
management programs (Prevention, Fuels Reduction, Suppression,
and Restoration);
create a strong linkage from the FMP to the WFSA process.
2. the wildland fire situational analysis and delegation of authority
as fire suppression management and cost factors
At the outset of a potential large escaped fire, forests are
required to complete a situational assessment and complexity analysis
to both determine what type of incident management team to request and
to scope the proposed fire effort. These assessments are completed by
the forest fire staff, resource planners and district rangers for
review by the forest supervisor. Once the agency administrator has
approved and signed the WFSA, it along with a delegation of authority
letter, is passed to the incoming IMT commander. Both documents are
included in the briefing package for the newly arriving IMT.
As might be expected, the WFSA is most problematic on large
wildfires. The Panel heard mixed messages about WFSAs. It seems many
administrators agree with the premise that the process can help focus
thinking, encourage collaboration, and assist in formulating
suppression strategies. But, as it is currently implemented the WFSA
process falls short in effectively reaching any of these goals. All 19
of the initial WFSAs selected target in terms of predicting the size of
the fire (acres burned) and choosing suppression strategy were exceeded
by the actual final size of the fire. WFSAs also include a worst case
scenario, and even that estimated size was below the fire size
approximately half the time. The panel concluded that the current WFSA
process on these fires was inadequate in helping forests determine
their suppression strategy, concurring with the comments of several
forest supervisors that the WFSA failed in ``forcing us to think big
enough.''
The Panel also reviewed the delegation of authority letter. This
document is vital because it provides the IMT commander legal authority
to operate and make decisions on behalf of the line officer. This
review revealed that in the vast majority of cases (16 out of 19 fires)
it was a standard form letter with little detail specific to the
wildfire. It referenced the WFSA and included text reaffirming public
and firefighter safety. In only two or three instances did the
delegation of authority letter include a specific cost containment
objective.
Several recommendations were made on WFSAs and Delegation of
authority letters to change the content, timing, and levels of
collaboration. The panel urged that WFSAs develop and contain scale-
down triggers for resource management, especially with regard to the
length of time Type I and Type II teams remain on fires. Likewise, on
campaign or longer duration fires, there should be mechanisms for
switching procurement and resource ordering strategies from short term
to long term.
3. incident management team structure & transitions as fire
suppression cost factors
Large fire management is a complex interaction between local forces
on the national forest where the fire breaks out and the various
nationally and regionally assigned incident management teams who come
to the forest to lead the suppression effort. Current policy limits
assignments to 14 days for national teams, although some teams depart
early and occasionally a team will extend past the 14 day deadline.
National Type I and Type II teams are essentially franchise assets with
their assignments being carefully monitored with an expectation that
they will be assigned to the most complex and highest priority
situations.
The panel saw several significant issues with the assignment and
use of incident management teams and found transition costs due to IMT
deployment time limits and rotations were rising. The panel also found:
Flexibility and agility of IMTs are not currently core
strengths. IMTs are founded on consistency and reliability
which is ingrained in their structure, team member selection,
and training and development. Understanding the need to staff
fully supported IMTs, some of the core ICS tenants must change
to have scalable and flexible IMT organizations. Lack of
management flexibility adds to cost.
Type III IMT in-house capabilities for handling the end
stages of incidents are often regarded as insufficient. The
Panel's review looked especially hard at the last 20% of the
fire cycle-namely, how long it took the forest to get the fire
turned over to a local type III team and hence a lower cost
expenditure level. Many Type I and II IMTs remained on scene
after the fire exhibited other than Type I incident
characteristics. Comments during the site visits were
repeatedly made that additional time on scene generated costs
that would not have been incurred if the Type III IMT had the
needed capacity to take over.
4. formulating a new collaborative cost management strategy
There is general recognition and acceptance from IMTs and field
personnel to agency administrators of the importance of keeping fire
suppression costs in check. However, no one is exactly sure what cost
management means or how to achieve it other than exercising various
forms of fiscal vigilance on resource ordering and usage. Asked about
the escalating costs for the full range of assets used on large
wildfires, fire staff would generally reply that people had to
understand fire fighting is expensive, but still cost-effective
considering the potential losses averted. Similarly, in the panel's
interviews with Forest Supervisors, line officers would note that when
wildfires reach large sizes, there is enormous social and political
pressure to use every available resource, regardless of cost, to
control the fire.
In this last issue area, the Panel attempted to address some of the
political and economic factors that must be confronted if cost
management strategies are to have any chance of keeping fire costs from
growing even larger. These factors included understanding the complete
cost cycle on large wildfires. Costs are large on wildfires in part
because different actions are being taken and then lumped into one
incident cost. Initial Attack costs are not reported. Likewise,
demobilization, rehabilitation and restoration efforts towards the end
of the fire are not broken out. Burn-out operations, often taken at the
end of the incident are not accounted for separately and actually add
acres to the final fire size. Each of these components has cost
implications and should be tracked from fire origin to completion of
the burned area emergency restoration work.
While some of these components are covered by different budget
funding codes, at the forest (and regional level) there is not an
accounting of the separate phases, core activities, and cost
implications within each large wildfire.
The panel's final main point remains that collaborative cost
management must be both strategic and innovative. It should focus on
national and regional costs and contracts and not induce forests to try
to contain costs by searching for the cheapest resources. However, it
should also draw IMTs and forests and contract suppliers into a
productive search for ``constraints-driven'' solutions and cost
innovations. Finally, collaboration should include clarifying
protection priorities, suppression objectives and cost between the
national forests and neighboring jurisdictions beyond current practice
of agreeing on protection boundaries and responsibilities.
Summary of Recommendations
the complete list of panel recommendations follows
Land Management & Fire Management Plans
1A. Develop guidance for future revisions of land management
plans. Future land management plans would incorporate elements
on fuels reduction activities, changes in the Wildland Urban
Interface, the impacts of climate change and forest health,
including fire history as an integral component.
1B. Transform the fire management plan from a static, program
reference document to a strategic assessment of fire management
planning and policies. The fire management plan would factor in
fire protection policies with state, local, tribal neighbors,
cost management expectations, and establishes a strong linkage
from the fire management plan to the wildland fire situational
analysis process.
1C. Expand appropriate management response guidance beyond
the model and textual boilerplate currently found in most fire
management plans.
Wildland Fire Situational Analysis (WFSA) and Delegation of Authority
2A. Encourage more collaboration in the WFSA process while
rethinking the WFSA process to allow incident management teams
and line staff to jointly develop wildfire strategies through
(WFSA or replacement process for the WFSA), within 36 hours
from the time of assignment.
2B. Address options for short term and long term management
of suppression resources. WFSAs should develop and contain
scale-down triggers for resource management, especially with
regard to the length of time Type I and Type II incident
management teams remain on fires.
2C. Make delegation of authority letters strategic documents.
They should contain specific statements outlining larger
suppression objectives, resource values and final restoration
concerns, and expectations about containing fire cost growth.
Incident Management Team Structure and Transitions
3A. Tailor more agile incident management teams to the needs
of the incident, as opposed to a standard incident management
team formula. Make teams more adaptable towards selective
deployment capability.
3B. Enhance local Type III incident management teams to
provide for a more robust capability during incident close out
while capitalizing on state and local resources to provide
additional protection resources or to supplement the incident
management team.
3C. Instill more flexibility when committing incident
management teams to prolonged large fire operations. By pre-
setting trigger points (up/down/maintain) based on incident
complexity and tactical resource commitments that indicate a
need to rescale incident operations, particularly during the
closing phases of fire fighting operations.
Formulating a New Collaborative Cost Management Strategy
4. Formulate a collaborative cost management strategy that
provides a better picture of fire suppression costs over the
incident span, establishes short term and longer term cost
plans for fire resource ordering and procurement, and reaffirms
the regional and national role in pricing fire resources
(federal, state & local, private contractor and military).
TABLE 1--FY 2006 FIRES THAT EXCEED $10 MILLION (REVIEWED BY LFC PANEL)
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Size Cost
Fire Dates State Region/Forest County (acres) ($MM)
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Derby............................... Aug 22--Oct 3.......... MT.................... 1/Gallatin and Custer. Sweet Grass, 223,570 22.5
Stillwater, Park.
Potato.............................. Jul 27--Aug 25......... ID.................... 4/Salmon-Challis...... Custer................ 18,236 14.1
Red Mountain........................ Aug 14--Sep 24......... ID.................... 4/Boise............... Boise................. 35,482 13.7
Rattle-snake........................ Aug 21--Oct 3.......... ID.................... 4/Boise............... Valley................ 45,500 13.2
Bar Complex......................... Jul 23--Oct 15......... CA.................... 5N/Shasta-Trinity..... Trinity............... 100,024 66.0
Pigeon (pt of Bar).................. Aug 2--Sep 7........... CA.................... 5N Shasta-Trinity..... Trinity............... in Bar 22.0
Orleans Complex..................... Jul 24--Aug 31......... CA.................... 5N/Six Rivers......... Humboldt, Siskiyou.... 15,710 16.9
Uncle Complex....................... Jul 23--Oct 15......... CA.................... 5N/Klamath............ Siskiyou.............. 30,425 14.7
Happy Camp.......................... Jul 23--Sep 24......... CA.................... 5N/Klamath............ Siskiyou.............. 6,134 12.5
Ralston............................. Sep 5--Sep 19.......... CA.................... 5N/Tahoe.............. Placer................ 8,423 13.0
Hunter.............................. Jul 24--Aug 7.......... CA.................... 5N/Mendocino.......... Mendocino............. 16,297 12.1
Day................................. Aug 4--Oct 5........... CA.................... 5S/Los Padres......... Ventura, Los Angeles.. 162,702 73.5
Horse............................... Jul 23--Aug 1.......... CA.................... Cleveland............. San Diego............. 16,681 13.7
Sawtooth............................ Jul 9--Jul 26.......... CA.................... 5S/San Bernardino..... San Bernardino........ 61,700 17.9
Heart/Millard Complex............... Jul 9--Jul 25.......... CA.................... 5S/San Bernardino..... San Bernardino........ 23,917 13.0
Tripod Complex...................... Jul 24--Oct 5.......... WA.................... 6/Okanogan............ Okanogan.............. 175,184 74.2
Columbia Complex.................... Aug 21--Sep 2.......... WA.................... 6/Umatilla............ Columbia, Garfield.... 109,402 35.9
Shake Table Complex................. Aug 22--Sep 15......... OR.................... 6/Malheur............. Grant................. 14,453 16.1
Maxwell............................. Jul 24--Aug 13......... OR.................... 6/ Ochoco............. Wheeler............... 7,157 11.3
Cavity Lake......................... Jul 14--Aug 20......... MN.................... 9/Superior............ Cook.................. 31,380 11.4
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Data Source: Final ICS 209's submitted for each incident, provided by NIFC.
Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology,
Eugene, OR, June 21, 2007.
Hon. Jeff Bingaman,
Chairman, Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, U.S. Senate,
Washington, DC.
Hon. Pete Domenici,
Ranking Member, Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, U.S. Senate,
Washington, DC.
Dear Chairman Bingaman and Senator Domenici: Thank you for this
opportunity for Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology
(FUSEE) to provide input on issues related to the preparedness of
federal land management agencies for the 2007 wildfire season and
suppression cost containment issues.
FUSEE is a nonprofit organization whose members include current,
former, and retired wildland firefighters; fire ecologists and
managers; fire scientists and educators; forest conservationists; and
other citizens who promote safe, ethical, ecological wildland fire
management. We support a new, emerging paradigm that seeks to
holistically manage wildland fire for its multiple social and
ecological benefits instead of endlessly ``fighting'' it across the
landscape. Our ultimate vision is the creation of fire-compatible human
communities able to live safely and sustainably within fire-adapted
ecosystems and fire-permeable landscapes.
In our view, preparing for wildland fires and containing the costs
of emergency wildfire suppression is both a practical and an ethical
issue for two important reasons. First, every taxpayer dollar that goes
to suppressing wildfires represents less money available for other
valued public services, including ecological restoration of public
lands. Federal lands are degraded by decades of inappropriate fire
suppression, commercial logging, livestock grazing, and road-building--
all of which contribute to increased wildfire hazards and suppression
costs. These public lands are in desperate need of restoration
treatments not only to repair the damage of the past but also to
prepare for the changes in the future due to global warming.
Second, for those times and places where wildfire suppression is
necessary and desirable, every taxpayer dollar that is spent on
inefficient or ineffective suppression actions represents waste and
abuse not only in terms of misspent money, but also degraded natural
resources, destroyed homes, and increasingly, lost firefighter lives.
Thus, in our view, lack of preparedness for wildland fires leads to
lack of cost constraints for emergency wildfire suppression. Thus,
requiring federal land management agencies to be fully prepared for
wildland fire is fundamentally an ethical issue interrelated with
issues involved firefighter and community safety, environmental
protection, and ecological restoration.
In this spirit, FUSEE would like to offer the following
constructive criticisms and policy recommendations:
1) Fire management planning is vital for wildfire preparedness.
The 1995 Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy (Fire Policy) was
developed in the wake of the terrible 1994 fire season in which 34 of
the nation's most elite trained firefighters died in the line of duty.
The 1995 Fire Policy called for a fundamental shift in agency
philosophy and cultural attitudes toward fire, the integration of fire
management with forest and resource management objectives, and the full
involvement of interagency partners and the public in fire management.
This effectively expanded the mission of fire managers beyond their
traditional duties of preventing or suppressing wildfires to include
reducing hazardous fuels and restoring fire-adapted ecosystems.
The 1995 Fire Policy clearly stated that,
Every area with burnable vegetation must have an approved
Fire Management Plan (FMP) . . . Fire Management Plans must
also address all potential wildland fire occurrences and
include the full range of fire management actions.
Essentially, the entire federally-managed landbase should undergo
fire planning wherever wildland fires might start or spread.
Proactive fire management planning was so important that it was
discussed in four of the Fire Policy's nine Guiding Principles, and was
put at the top of the list of 83 Action Items in the Fire Policy's 1996
Implementation Action Plan.
Following the ``millennial fire season'' of 2000, the Fire Policy
was formally reviewed and updated, further emphasizing the importance
of developing current, approved FMPs in six of the 17 Policy
Statements, and four of the 11 Implementation Actions. Noting that
federal land management agencies had not been developing FMPs, the Fire
Policy Update stated that,
Fire Management Plans that implement Federal Fire Policy must
be completed as soon as possible. All land management agencies
should place a high priority on completion of these plans. If
necessary, land management plans should be updated, revised, or
amended to allow full implementation of Federal Fire Policy.
This call to action to develop FMPs was also echoed in reviews
conducted by the National Academy of Public Administration, and the
Government Accountability Office.
In 2000 the Western Governors' Association (WGA) also developed an
important policy document, ``A Collaborative Approach for Reducing
Wildland Fire Risks to Communities and the Environment: 10-Year
Comprehensive Strategy,'' (Comprehensive Strategy) that later became a
formal part of the National Fire Plan. The WGA's Comprehensive Strategy
emphasized the importance of FMPs in two of its Implementation Tasks
and two of its Performance Measures; for example, ``Percent of burnable
acres covered in federal FMPs in compliance with Federal Wildland Fire
Policy'' was a performance measure for federal fire managers.
In sum, the 1995 and 2001 Federal Wildland Fire Policy provides the
philosophical and policy foundation for all federal wildland fire
management activities. The WGA's Comprehensive Strategy and the
National Fire Plan also guide fire management programs. Each of these
policy documents clearly state the critical need to develop science-
based collaborate FMPs. We emphasize this history of policy development
of FMPs because FMPs are one of the essential elements of Fire
Preparedness that helps make fire management safer, more efficient,
more effective, and less costly.
Unfortunately, Forest Service officials and some members of
Congress dismiss fire planning as nothing more than ``bureaucratic
paperwork'' that needlessly takes time, energy, or money away from
``actions on the ground.'' On the contrary, FMPs represent wise,
strategic investments essential to wildfire preparedness. Indeed, it
begs the question, what does it mean to be ``prepared'' if one does not
have an adequate plan?
2) FMPs can help contain wildfire suppression costs
FMPs can contain suppression costs by helping to focus firefighting
actions to the times and places and methods it is most safe, effective,
and necessary. FMPs can also reduce suppression costs by setting
priorities for hazardous fuels reduction, and designing ecosystem
restoration programs and projects that in the long run will reduce
uncharacteristic wildfire severity and improve forest ecosystem health.
One fire management method that effectively accomplishes both hazardous
fuels reduction and ecosystem restoration is Wildland Fire Use (WFU).
WFU has the added economic benefit of avoiding damaging suppression
actions that then require costly post-fire rehabilitation treatments.
In fact, the U.S.D.A. Inspector General's recent ``Audit Report on
Forest Service Large Fire Suppression Costs'' noted the potential cost
savings related to WFU, and strongly recommended its increased
application. According to current Forest Service policy, though, FMPs
are required in order to implement WFU. Without a current, approved FMP
in place that authorizes WFU, the agency has only one option in
response to wildland fires: total aggressive suppression. It must be
emphasized that each and every time the agencies engage in emergency
wildfire suppression, it involves risks to firefighter safety, costs
taxpayers lots of money, and inflicts damages on the natural
environment. WFU is a proven means of reducing those risks, costs, and
impacts.
In comparing costs of wildfire suppression versus WFU, acre for
acre WFU is far cheaper. For example, in the Environmental Assessment
for the Sequoia/Kings Canyon National Park's FMP, it was disclosed that
for large fires, wildfire suppression cost an average $1,300 per acre,
while WFU on large fires cost only $87 per acre! On small fires,
wildfire suppression cost $5,900 per acre while WFU cost $2,600 per
acre (the difference in costs between large and small fires are due to
the economies of scale). Increasing the use of WFU would have multiple
positive impacts on reducing fire management costs, especially wildfire
suppression and hazardous fuels reduction programs, however, WFU is not
an option if there is no FMP in place. We support the Inspector
General's call for increasing the use of WFU, and removing all
institutional and policy obstacles that constrain WFU opportunities.
3) Existing Forest Service FMPs have serious flaws
The U.S.D.A. Secretary chartered an Independent Large Wildfire Cost
Panel to explore suppression cost containment issues. Their report,
``Towards a Collaborative Cost Management Strategy: 2006 U.S. Forest
Service Large Wildfire Cost Review Recommendations'' (The Brookings
Report), discusses in detail the shortcomings of Forest Service FMPs,
and recommends the use of FMPs as ``strategic frameworks for managing
fire suppression investment.'' In the Brookings Report's examination of
the FMPs for the National Forests that experienced the largest, most
expensive wildfires in 2006, the majority of FMPs:
Lacked information on recent fire history that could have
guided suppression strategies and tactics.
Defined fire management units according to management
objectives rather than geographic boundaries that made sense
for managing fire.
Lacked information on the Wildland/Urban Interface and
Intermix or adjacent non-Forest Service lands.
Did not define management techniques for the implementing
the Appropriate Management Response (AMR), and defined AMR only
from a suppression point of view.
Authorized WFU on less than half of available lands; nearly
half of the National Forests in the sample did not authorize
WFU at all.
Lacked up-to-date information on recent fuels reduction
treatments.
Did not provide any substantive guidance for managing the
costs of wildfire suppression.
The Brookings Report concludes that existing Forest Service FMPs
were static documents poorly linked to underlying Land and Resource
Management Plans, and have minimal to no value in developing the actual
strategies and tactics used to respond to wildfires. Clearly, the
agency's whole approach to pre-fire planning-the essence of wildfire
preparedness-needs to be fully examined and fundamentally changed.
4) The U.S. Forest Service is shirking its responsibility to develop
FMPs that comply with the Nation's environmental laws, best
available science, and democratic principles
Existing Forest Service FMPs are not only insufficient for meeting
the challenges of modern fire management, but they are also illegal
since they do not comply with the National Environmental Policy Act
(NEPA). For example, almost all Forest Service FMPs lack a foundation
in sound fire ecology science. Thus, when FMPs mandate aggressive fire
suppression and fire exclusion in remote areas located in fire-
dependent ecosystems, this causes forest health problems that
ultimately increase wildfire hazards, thereby increasing suppression
costs. All FMPs are devoid of analysis and discussion of a range of
alternative management strategies. This analysis is essential for
implementing AMR and developing successful cost containment strategies.
All FMPs fail to include public processes for informed citizen review
and comment. FMPs developed by a few Forest Service staff thus lack the
benefit of local community knowledge of the values-at-risk, and this
leads to the agency engaging in suppression actions where the costs of
suppression outweigh the benefits. Moreover, the agency lacks the
ability to prioritize both fuels reduction treatments and protection
actions that matter most to the public.
In response to litigation by environmental organizations and the
California Attorney General's Office, two separate federal court
decisions ordered the Forest Service to develop FMPs that comply with
the NEPA. The Forest Service reacted to these court orders in 2006 by
withdrawing the FMPs from the Six Rivers and Sequoia National Forests
at the onset of wildfire season. The agency is threatening to withdraw
more FMPs if additional lawsuits are filed. Furthermore, it is in the
process of eliminating requirements for FMPs in the Forest Service
Manual. It took over a decade since the adoption of the Federal Fire
Policy for the Forest Service to develop FMPs for every National
Forest, and now the agency is beginning to remove them. In essence, the
Forest Service is going in reverse in terms of implementing the Fire
Policy, and in so doing, is becoming dangerously less prepared for
wildland fire.
Imagine if a federal court ordered the city of New Orleans to
involve the public and scientists in hurricane response planning, and
the response of local government officials was to withdraw its plan and
eliminate hurricane planning altogether! The Forest Service's attitude
and response to FMP litigation is analogous, and is a recipe for future
wildfire disasters at huge taxpayer costs.
We have belabored the issue of FMPs in the Forest Service because
we feel that it is the very foundation of preparedness for all aspects
of wildland fire management. Beyond planning for wildfire suppression,
FMPs should also provide analysis and strategic guidance for prescribed
burning and ecological restoration projects, fuels management and
vegetation monitoring, fire communication and prevention education
programs, wildland fire use objectives, Appropriate Management Response
methods, analysis of the environmental effects of fire suppression and
fire exclusion, and especially cost containment factors for fire
management activities. After numerous internal reviews and external
studies on this subject, the Forest Service continues to approach
suppression cost containment from a reactive perspective-how to cut
costs during wildfire emergencies-rather than from a proactive and
strategic perspective-how to prevent the need for costly emergency
wildfire suppression in the first place.
FUSEE believes that the solution to efficient and effective
wildfire preparedness and cost reductions in fire management programs
is not to ``cheapen'' suppression operations, but rather, to invest in
more robust pre-fire planning, public fire education, fire ecology
research, community fire preparedness, and ecological fire restoration.
The goal really should be to make emergency wildfire suppression the
exception, rather than the norm.
Again, without strategic FMPs in place before wildfires ignite, the
Forest Service is basically choosing to blindly fight wildfires, with
all the risks to firefighters, costs to taxpayers, and impacts to
natural resources and ecosystems inherent in reactive, emergency
wildfire suppression. There is one additional value and need for
strategic, long-term fire planning--perhaps the most important one of
all: the need to prepare for the coming changes in vegetation, fuels,
and fire regimes caused by global warming and climate change. We
strongly urge that members of the Committee examine the ``San Diego
Declaration on Climate Change and Fire Management,'' drafted by the
Association for Fire Ecology and ratified at the Third International
Fire Ecology and Management Congress, for advice on policies helping to
developing long-range fire and land management plans to prepare for
climate change.
Thank you for this opportunity to provide input to the Senate
Energy and Natural Resources Committee for your June 26, 2007 Oversight
Hearing on wildfire preparedness and suppression cost containment
issues.
Sincerely,
Timothy Ingalsbee,
Executive Director.