Bruce Westerman Presses Witnesses About Forest Thinning Strategies For Wildfire Management

Forbes Breaking News

During a House Natural Resources Committee hearing before the congressional recess, Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-ARK) questioned witnesses about wildfire prevention.

Transcript

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.

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