U.S. Army Corps of Engineers PACIFIC PALISADES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES

Military France

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Recovery Field Office Commander Col. Eric Swenson provides a look at the past six months of collaboration and debris removal effort in the Eaton and Palisades fire impact area.

Transcript

00:00Hi, my name is Colonel Eric Swenson, Army Corps of Engineers and I'm the recovery field office

00:19commander. The fires in the Eaton Fire Impacted Area started on the 7th of January. I arrived

00:24with my colleagues from the Army Corps of Engineers starting on the 12th of January and

00:28we quickly partnered with local, state, and federal government in order to figure out

00:33a way to get all of this public health and safety threats removed so the

00:37community can rebuild. And it's been a long journey over the past six months to

00:41get to this place. When I first got here, what we saw were thousands of homes

00:45destroyed by a fire. Families who were impacted that evacuated the night of the

00:507th or the morning of the 8th, oftentimes in the cover of darkness, escaping to

00:54save their lives and taking only their most valuable possessions with them. When

00:58they returned home a day or two or three days later, what they found was their

01:02homes had been impacted by this fire and everything they had worked for was lost.

01:06When we came in, we wanted to partner with a local community and with these

01:10survivors and provide them a heart and handshake to get these community back on

01:15their feet. And over the past six months, we have met these community where they're

01:19at. We have worked with them. We've helped them find lost articles that they thought

01:24were lost to the fire. We have found possessions that might not have any

01:28material value but had great value to the survivor who thought they were lost. In

01:32the past six months, we have cleared over 95% of the parcels in both the Eaton

01:38Fire Impacted Area and the Palisades Fire Impacted Area. And that represents

01:42somewhere on the order of 4 million tons of debris have been removed from these

01:46communities and safely transported on highways to proper disposal sites. And in

01:51the case of the recyclables, they can get reused in the supply chain. Behind me, what

01:55you see is the six-month effort of the Army Corps of Engineers to remove the fire

02:00ash and debris, that public health and safety threat that brought the Corps to

02:03this community to help them recover from the devastating wildfires that started on

02:07the 7th of January. And today, I'm pleased to announce that we are almost done with

02:12all of the debris removal from this fire in this community. And our efforts

02:15to go fast, to go safely, has enabled residents like the one behind me to

02:20start rebuilding their home. So the recovery effort that's underway right now

02:24has truly been a record-setting pace. I think nowhere else in modern history has

02:29the Corps of Engineers or even the state been able to recover and get the debris

02:33removed this quickly after a devastating wildfire. And we're proud to be part of

02:37this and part of the story of this community and helping them get themselves

02:41back onto their feet. But on behalf of the federal government, it's an honor to be

02:44here to help this community recover and to bring a federal benefit to those in

02:49this community which is in need as they are still recovering from the

02:53devastating impacts of the fires that struck this community on the 7th.

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