During a House Natural Resources Committee hearing before the congressional recess, Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-ARK) questioned witnesses about wildfire prevention.
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00:00And the football players next, very recognized.
00:03Thank you, Chairman Gosar.
00:04I hope I'm a better forester than I was a football player.
00:08Again, thank you to the witnesses.
00:10There's so many questions I've got on this issue,
00:12but Mr. Wright, I want to start with you.
00:14Last year, I had a chance to get out to Orange County
00:17and was with Representative Young Kim,
00:21and she had kind of a town hall meeting on wildfire.
00:26And I saw something there I've not seen in other places.
00:29There were people talking about not being able to sleep at night,
00:32worried about wildfire.
00:34There were people really with some serious concerns about their home,
00:41which may be the biggest asset they have,
00:42and not being able to get insurance on it.
00:45The issue, I think, is much, much greater
00:48than what the full country understands it to be.
00:52And we know between 2020 and 2022,
00:55insurance companies declined to renew 2.8 million
00:58homeowner insurance policies in the state of California.
01:03All states stopped issuing new insurance in 2022
01:06and increased premiums on existing policies last year by 34%.
01:11It doesn't appear this is getting any better anytime soon.
01:15If we fail to act,
01:16what will happen to the insurance industry
01:18and home markets in fire-prone states like California?
01:21So first of all, California's primary insurance problem
01:27deals with the regulations that have been in place,
01:29and they're on a pathway, presumably, to address those elements.
01:34And so much of what homeowners across the state,
01:36whether or not they have wildfire or not,
01:37they have that reality.
01:40Those are the companies that you've named in that space.
01:42What I can tell you is insurers are looking forward
01:45to a day by which the rate adequacy is in place,
01:49and they are focused specifically on what does a home look like
01:52that has addressed its risk.
01:54Has it narrowed the path of destruction?
01:56So if wildfire does come blowing in with embers,
02:00will they be able to land and extinguish
02:02before they move down the road?
02:05Homeowners are in that space
02:06where they want their home to survive,
02:08they want their community to survive,
02:10and they want it to be insurable.
02:12And I think the actions that we're talking about here
02:15address the fuel loads in the wildland
02:18and ensure that when fire approaches
02:20and it comes into the community,
02:22we're not seeing the conflagration of home after home lost.
02:26Yeah, and that, I think of it as triage.
02:29We've got to address the wildland-urban interface.
02:31We've got to address transportation corridors,
02:33transmission corridors, watersheds.
02:37It's a vast problem that took decades to happen,
02:40but we've seen results of how good management practices work.
02:47And Captain Chapman, we bumped into each other in the elevator this morning
02:52and were recounting years ago, I made a trip out to Flagstaff,
02:56and we saw some forest management there.
02:59Can you describe the benefits of those thinning projects
03:05and what kind of forest do you have left?
03:07Did something get clear-cut and paved over, or what happened there?
03:12Thank you for the question.
03:15I think I can describe it well, avoiding, you know,
03:19we could easily talk about basal area and, you know, canopy cover,
03:23but the homesteaders in the Flagstaff area said they could take a horse
03:27and a carriage and a trot through the forest at all times.
03:29That's how open, and it was just full of these big fire-tolerant trees.
03:34It changed, and it filled in, and now we have hundreds of trees per acre,
03:38so exponential increase in density.
03:43We have proven over and over again,
03:45when we go in and we restore that natural structure and pattern
03:49of a fire-adapted Ponderosa pine forest
03:51that we can keep the fire on our terms.
03:54Even on red flag, windy days,
03:56when a fire starts in a spot that's either had prescribed fire
04:00or a thinning treatment and prescribed fire,
04:02or in an area where we've had a beneficial wildfire,
04:06we can control that fire.
04:08We can keep it out of the community,
04:09and we can steer it in a positive way.
04:12And keep the forest intact.
04:13And the forest stays healthy, exactly.
04:15And so really, having all of those things in alignment
04:18is so important for us to protect our communities,
04:21protect our first responders,
04:22and get those treatments on the ground,
04:24and doing it in a cross-jurisdictional way,
04:26because as we've heard earlier,
04:28fire doesn't care if there's a fence line there.
04:29It's going to keep moving.
04:31Yeah.
04:32Quickly, Chief Muncy,
04:34you put the picture up that showed the road infrastructure
04:39from decades ago.
04:41Last fall, we took a CODEL over to Scandinavia,
04:46went to Finland,
04:47where they have some of the most,
04:50I won't say intense,
04:52but most detailed forest management
04:55of any place in the world.
04:57And they were talking about
04:59how they very rarely had problems with fires
05:01because of their management
05:02and also because of their road network,
05:05that if they had a fire,
05:06they could get in and put it out.
05:07And when I explained to them
05:08that if we build a road
05:10on the forest in the U.S.,
05:12we have to tear the road out
05:15after we're through doing the work.
05:17And even these Europeans thought we were crazy
05:20that we did something like that.
05:22We actually spent money to build a road,
05:24then we spent money to tear the road out.
05:27And we know the roadless rule came into effect,
05:29probably targeting my friend,
05:32Representative Begich's Tongass forest.
05:35It was a way to keep harvest
05:36from happening in the Tongass,
05:37but it's affected the whole country.
05:40And I'm way out of time,
05:43but if Mr. Muncy would like to add anything
05:45about the roadless issue
05:48and how big of an issue that is
05:51on not being able to manage
05:52and to keep fires under control.
05:55First, I'm grateful your leadership.
05:57I'm also grateful you haven't seen my CNN interviews.
06:01You're right.
06:02And after the line fire
06:04that burned through 50,000 acres,
06:05we can clearly see the corn rows
06:07where the old roads existed.
06:09And we asked our local forest
06:11if we can reestablish these roads.
06:13We can't because of environmental concerns.
06:15And that makes almost no sense.
06:16This is what worked for almost a century
06:20to keep our fires small.
06:22This is the Civilian Conservation Corps
06:24from the 1930s that put all those roads in.
06:27It is critical that we have early access
06:29to these fires.
06:30We've got to get there quick.
06:32We've had a mindset in the fire service
06:34for way too long
06:34that we're going to keep wildfires
06:3610 square acres or less 95% of the time.
06:4010 square acres or less 95% of the time.
06:42The problem is,
06:43what about that other 5%
06:45or 10% and some other agencies?
06:47These fires are getting huge.
06:49And a lot of it has to do with access.
06:52The second is these roads
06:54can be used as control points.
06:55The fire will bump up into it.
06:58Having these access allows us
07:00to maintain these forests
07:01to introduce good fire
07:02as they're doing in Flagstaff
07:04so that we can have healthy forests.