 Without further ado, I will have Cal OES and Cal Recycle come up here. Word of note after, so this meeting is going to be kind of describing the program, what benefits are offered, what are kind of the rules, and we have county staff available to assist you with filling out a right of entry agreement. If you had previously filled out one of our old right of entry agreements, we need to have you fill out a new one for this program because they're doing more work so that old county agreement won't be any good. But we have staff that will actually help you go through that agreement and help you fill it out correctly so there won't be any hiccups. I know, I just realized that I didn't introduce myself. I was so worried about having people hear me. My name is Tom Parker and I am a senior hazardous materials specialist with the Environmental Health Division of the Public Health Department. And without further ado, Melinda, do you want to come up here? Testing. I know, hello, hello. The video? Hmm, I could sing. Alright, let's not. Hi, my name is Melinda Starr, I'm with Cal OES. I've been the debris management coordinator for Cal OES for 18 years before I retired. I did retire, been gone almost a year when they called me back to help out with this. So we've done this a long time. Every time we do it, we get better at doing it. And first of all, let us say we're so very, very sorry for your losses. We really are. We understand and we see firsthand the devastation that happens and we're truly, truly sorry. And we're here to help you at least take a breath and decide what you want to do now. We're here to support next. The program was started back in 2007 as part of the Tahoe Angora Fire. Since then, we've been all over the state. I've been to places I never, ever thought I'd go, but it's all been good because we're here to help and this is what we can do. We can't fix everything, but we can clean up your lots for you and give them back clean and we know that they're clean. And you'll know that they're clean. I'm going to have a lot of questions about the program. I understand. I'm going to let Todd go over that more. He was the one that developed it. Basically, there are a couple of key things. Insurance is a big one. If you have insurance, we ask only for that much that is designated from your policy. If it's 5%, whatever. That's all we take. We don't take a bove and bryard. Insurance, you're in the program anyway. Sure, sure. So what it is, is if your policy, say your policy is $50,000. Oh, God, you're going to make me do math. Yeah. So $100,000. That's good. Let's do that. 10% of that, $1,000. Or $10,000. I don't know which. $10,000. See? He does the math. I don't. $10,000. I don't ask for any more of that. But if it's 5%, it's 5%. That's it. Even though it may cost us $150,000 to clean your lot, all we're going to ask for is that amount that is allotted by your insurance company. If it's not in there, ask them. Ask them to write you something that says, hey, there's nothing in here for insurance. Or if it's part of your rebuild cost, which some policies have, get an estimate. Just ask for an estimate from a contractor. And then submit that. We'll go with that. We want to be fair. We're not going to take all your money. That's not the basis of this program. And believe me, if we didn't have to do it, we would. But it's in the federal and state regulations. We have to go after whatever your insurance would pay to avoid duplication of benefits. It's just the law we have to do. Correct. Out of insurance money, not out of you. We're not taking any money from you personally. No. Okay? Correct. As long as your insurance has it. Sir. If my insurance company tells me that they'll take care of this, I don't need you people at all. Nope. You're going to opt out. You don't have to use this. Sure. Yes, it is. It's correct. It's correct. Well, that's fine. Free to ask questions. No problem. You're good to go. If your insurance company will take care of it for you. Fine. Okay. Sir. Sure. What you'd lost. Correct. Okay. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. Okay. You're going to do it. You're leaving an email. You know, when he does a program. You'll wait just a minute. Yeah. Yeah, I do understand. We understand. No problem. We'll answer that for you. Okay. All right. So anyway, without further ado, I'm going to let Todd go. Because I know you guys have lots of questions, but we truly are here to help you and we're going to try and make this less painful. It's all we can do. Okay. Thank you, Todd. Okay. So we did this. I'm gonna probably say a lot of same things. I know some of the county officials came down here before. My name's Todd Thalheimer. I work for Cal Recycle. I do understand what you're going through. I lost my childhood home in the Valley Fire and I lost my second childhood home in the Tubbs Fire in Sonoma County. So I understand what it is to lose everything. I understand where you're at. I understand where you're going. You're going to meet new people here that you have not met before. You now have a bond with your community that you've never had before. Community will rebuild and you guys will be back on your feet shortly. There's some things you're gonna have to go through, some insurance questions, policies, procedures, how we do our program. I'll explain everything. After I'm done here, I'm gonna be here until the last question is answered or asked. We may not have all the answers to you, but I will tell you this. We are planning on starting with our consultant doing our surveys and we'll explain that process here shortly. The contract will be awarded Thursday. They should be on the ground on Friday, probably Monday. The contractor will be awarded on the 13th. So the crews will be here that following couple of days. I anticipate starting with 10 crews and getting up to 30. So I'm gonna bring everything to the table that I need to make it work. It just depends on how many ROEs that we have. And from there, we'll continue on. So if we have lots of ROEs that come in, then I'll bring lots of crews. If we just have a short amount of ROEs, I'll bring a short amount of crews. So let me explain the process. The process starts with the right to enter. I'm somewhat of a constitutionalist. I don't like to trespass on your property unless you ask me to trespass on your property. In other words, you give me permission. And in our program that allows me to come to your property and then look for additional hazmat. So we have DTSC, which is my sister agency, working through the community to let me know where the asbestos hotspots are, where there's other issues that may or may not be there. Will our program clean up your old dump that's in the back? No. But if it's something that's burned and there's a big pile somewhere, we'll take care of the best we can, but we're not gonna excavate down 20 or 30 feet. Let me just go through the whole process and then we'll do questions at the end. Because sometimes I can actually get back to your question as we go. Just give me 10 minutes and I'll walk everything through. So it gives us the right to enter. And during that right to enter, we'll do a couple of things for you. If we come on your property to do a survey, we're gonna make a phone call and tell you that, hey, we're coming on your property to do a survey. What is the survey? That's gonna go and document where your foundation was, where your shop was, where your RV was. They're gonna take photographs of all your debris and that goes into our file. The reason that goes into our file is it does help you later if you have an insurance question that says, hey, I had an RV and the insurance company will say, no, you didn't. And I'll say, well, yes, he did. Here's a picture of it. So we document that to get to specifics. If you're still itemizing your items for what you need to do, you can sign an ROE and say, please wait three, four weeks, whatever it is, I would like to be last. Those types of things you can put on your ROE. The ROE is gonna have a section on the back, which gives you a whole area that you can sketch out. We wanna know where your septic tank is. We wanna know where your old oil tank is. We wanna know if you had 40 pounds of mercury in your garage. It's happened more than once. World War II metals, wedding ring. Those are things that if you're looking and you haven't found sketch a drawing so my crew can look, we will look. We have a procedure to look. Have we been successful? We have. Are we very successful? We are not, but we will look. So we've found things that normally I would tell you there's no way that you can find them and we have found them. So Bible, wedding ring, cake, trimmels, coin collections, dishes, sometimes things just appear and it is for what it is. But put it on your ROE. If you have a World War II grenade that your grandfather gave you and it's a dud, let me know. Oh my God. Rocket launchers, anti-tank mines, 500 pound World War II bombs. Okay. Shell casings off of a World War II naval battleship that unfortunately somebody put a primer back in and kind of made an umbrella stand but it was upside down and we didn't know. So that's kind of shuts us down for a little while but when we make a phone call and we find out that it's your uncle's umbrella stand that it was in the, we're good with that. But let us know. So if you had a big collection of aircraft dials from World War II, they're very radioactive, let us know. These are things that I want to communicate to my crew so that we can have an idea what's coming. So if you have an above ground tank, if you want to get rid of it, we can get rid of it. All that's gotta be put on the ROE. So sometimes it's two pages. I have one in Trinity. I think the site drawings themselves are 12 pages long because it was a shop and it was this and it was this part of this and it's gonna cost us a lot of money and his insurance is not gonna cover much but we're gonna clean it up. The whole idea, the whole concept of this program when I decided is, look, we're trying not to impact you a second time. There's been a lot of ash, a lot of debris so we're gonna coordinate it. Just I'm a firefighter, I'm a civil engineer. I try to do just like the fire service. We're gonna bring resources in, we're gonna coordinate those resources, they're gonna come and go, they're gonna go in a certain pattern and they're gonna come in and out. Or if there's a school nearby, we're gonna put up air sampling on the school. You'll see water tenders, you'll see a street sweeper. We do things a little bit differently than a general contractor would do. Again, they have one house. I have a community I have to work for. So you'll see a lot more resources in here than you normally would. So sign up in the ROE, gives us permission. We'll give you 24, 48 hours and notice before we start the removal. The removal is such that we come in, we remove the metals, we scrape the ash and debris. That goes in a truck with a liner and it gets tarped. That then goes to a particular landfill that I'm required to send it to. I can't just send it to the transfer station because it needs to go to landfill with a liner. The reason it's going to the liner is that there's been studies and there's actually a case study in Alberta where a lot of the waste went to. It was an online facility and now they have a metal leachate problem at the landfill. So we're sending it to a landfill that has a liner. So it contains it. The ash itself, is it hazardous? Is it a hazardous waste? I get that question. By the studies that are out there, it is not a hazardous waste. Does it contain hazardous constituents? Is it toxic? The answer is simply yes. Would you let a small child play in it? So if you can't answer that question yes, then we all know what the answer really is. So my guys will be in suits. They'll be in respiratory protection. It has asbestos. If it's an older home prior to 1980, lead paint has really high lead levels. So we clean it up to a very high level of standard. So the ash comes out, the foundations, they come out. Quick discussion on foundations. There's a reason they don't make chimneys out of concrete. It doesn't work. Around 300 degrees, chemically starts to change concrete at 1000 degrees. Concrete is no longer concrete. It's different. It's chemically changed. We tear out the concrete for a number of reasons. We want you to rebuild on something that's sound, something that's going to work. We then, after the concrete is pulled back, we take anywhere between two to three, sometimes six inches of soil. And I say six inches because I'm just being truthful. Sometimes we find a burned home on top of a burned home. And sometimes in Lake County, we found a burned home on top of a burned home, burned down three times and rebuilt on the former ash and debris pile. So I can say there I've cleaned up, between Melinda and I, we've probably cleaned up about 4,000 homes. So I can say right here, I haven't seen everything because every time I do a project, something new pops up that I haven't seen that. But there's a reason we do it is. Because at the very end, when we scrape the soil, I take confirmation sampling. That sampling is then put through a very rigorous standard. The standard is an EPA standard along with California standard that looks at lead, looks at all the heavy metals and says, look, a three-year-old could play in this dirt for the next 30 years. So it's a residential cleanup goal that if you're going to develop an industrial site and you want to put homes to it, that's the level that we're using. So sometimes we take more dirt than we should. Sometimes I find more contamination than I should. We find a lot of contamination in sheds and shops. Again, that's where we put everything we don't want in our house. So sometimes the sheds, sometimes they're 20 by 10 or 10 by 10 and they're six inches down in the ground. And people look and they, well, why did they excavate that? Simply put is that it didn't meet the cleanup goals. If I don't meet the cleanup goals, I'm gonna come back and scrape more dirt. And you have the option, tell me I can go away. I'm not gonna tell you that I have to keep scraping dirt, but at the very end, I'm going to sign a letter that says your site met the cleanup goals for this project. Now, if you tell me to go away and don't scrape any more dirt, you're not gonna get that sign off as far as what I scraped the dirt. That make sense? Just a goal. So what I'm saying is that your property does not meet the residential cleanup goals. That's it, just a goal. But I can tell you right now, real estate agents and other people that when you had that piece of paper, you can say it was cleaned up to a standard. This is the only place in the world that cleans up to a standard. And it's been looked at throughout the world. Guaranteed. So at the very end of the project, we'll come in, we'll do erosion control, we'll do a final site walk, we'll work with the county, we give a couple outs in the system so that when you finally get done with your soil sampling, we let the county know you can start the building plan process. And then once we sign it off, you can start your building plans. So I know there's a lot of questions. I've covered a lot of material quickly, but what I like to do is I just go around the room and we can go through these questions. I do wanna save for the insurance. Let me clarify the insurance question. There's three types, well, four types of insurance. One, you don't have insurance. It's okay, sign up, we'll take care of you. No questions asked. You don't have insurance, you're covered. That's what the program's for. You have a policy where you have a debris limit, 10%. That cost me $40,000 to do the work and your policy's $200,000 because dwelling and everything else, that means your debris limit is $20,000, you're responsible for $20,000. That's it. There's no changes, there's no tricks, there's none of this. We've said, we've done this 4,000 times. So let me repeat that. Whatever your debris policy limit is, is what you're responsible for. We've had some, a little bit of blowback from Valley because it took us a long time to generate the billing. We weren't used to 1,400 homes and some homeowners have spent their debris funds. They're a little bit of hot water because they all knew when they signed up they weren't supposed to spend their debris funds and they've spent their debris funds. So there's a little bit of controversy saying, well, now you owe the county your $10,000. Well, I don't have the $10,000. Remember, if your insurance gives you a specific item for debris, that's all you're responsible for. Somebody's gonna ask me, what are my costs running right now? A Mariposa, I've been cleaning up lots of ranches, very large homes, we're about anywhere between 50 and $60,000. Sometimes 80, I've got one that's gonna cost me at least $150,000 and one that's gonna cost that just to remove the mercury. So again, it's a benefit to you. The other part of insurance, sometimes it's a flat policy. Doesn't say anything about debris. It just says, here's a check for $200,000. Thank you, we're done. This is where it gets tricky. I need you to do the following. If you don't have a debris limit, I want you to get an estimate from a contractor. And here's the reason why. If Melinda and I are not standing here and our partners and the federal agencies aren't here, you're responsible for that debris. Always go back to the fundamentals and the fundamentals is this. If a house burns down and butte outside of this incident, you have to work through your county officials. You have to work through your insurance. You cannot leave your debris on your property. It's a hazard. So you would have to pay something to clean it up. So what I'm saying is that what I'm asking you is if you wanna come into our program, come see us. We have a disaster operation center, 4451 Highway 20. It's about 30 minutes from here. It's in the middle of all three of the disasters. Come in with that insurance policy and work with us. Work with us, try to figure out what the issue is. We'll get you a contractor, we'll get you an estimate. Whatever that estimate is, that's responsible for. It goes back to the fundamentals. If we're not here, you're gonna have to clean up your debris anyway. So that's what you would be responsible for. You can come to us with that estimate. That's all you're responsible for. So the last part of the fourth one is sometimes insurance policies have some special caveats, some special circumstances. And we can work through those issues, come see us. We're here. You don't have to sign up this week. You don't have to sign up next week. There'll be a deadline to sign up. But right now, since I don't have crews on the ground, I can't really tell you that it's a deadline. I can't really be fair. The goal is, I've heard the goal is by Christmas, but until I get a contract signed by my contract's people and I'm actually handed to the operational hard hat, I can't make promises and I won't make promises. But I will tell you this, we'll bring heaven back to make it happy. So we'll get it. One big thing, trees, we don't take trees. We have hazard trees. If they're hazard to our crew, we will take them down. I will call you and I'll say, do you want the oak cut up in 16 inch rounds? And if you do, where do you want them? If you don't want the oak tree, we'll take it away. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna kind of close it out with just one story so you kind of understand what we're willing to do. It's that I had a lady in Tahoe come to the D Rock, came in pretty upset and she talked about her rock roses and she was emotionally just tore up about the rock roses. And I said, I'm sorry that you lost the rock roses. She goes, no, you don't understand. Those sons of bitches actually made it. I've been trying to kill them for the past 20 years. She goes, can you remove them? I looked at her and I said, I'll remove them. So come talk to us. We have an operational center. That's where the questions get answered. You've got a good crew with us. It's a cal recycle crew. We've been doing this now. Some of my crew have been doing this for about four years straight. I've got crews right now in Trinity that are finishing up. I've got local crews that are working, actually a contractor from Butte. Richter Construction is in right there. We're gonna bring Richter back to Butte so he can actually go home to his family as well. So what I wanna do is I just wanna open it up to questions. So we'll just go one at a time and then we'll just go from here. Yes. I was in the Cherokee fire. Is that gonna be the last one? I don't think we're gonna be there first. So is the Cherokee fire going to be last? And the answer to that is no. I'm going to put crews in every fire. I'm just a fireman that if something's burning, I can't not send a fire engine there. So you will get one, maybe two, depending upon who signs up. That make sense? Yeah. Okay. No, there's gonna be crews everywhere. Red. A normal size house? Define normal. To give you an idea, we have some extreme contractors that in Lake County at the Clayton Fire did three in a day. The record is four, but he's kind of cheated cause it was a shed, but it was what it was. It was an ROE and it was a big shed, so it counted. Right, so the process though is weeks. I wanna let you know the process is weeks. There's no way I can fix the process. It is weeks. I clean up your house in a day. It's gonna take me seven days to get the soil samples back. I have to sit down and I have to look at the soil samples and I have to either approve it or I have to drop a re-scrape. If I have to drop a re-scrape, I have to then have a re-scrape crew show up on your lot, then re-scrape, take the soil away and then what do I gotta do? Re-sample. So I've got some sites that are a month. I have some sites that are seven days. Most of the time an average home is a day, day and a half. If you have a large shed with RVs, jet engines, airplanes, parts of trains where we have to bring in heavy lift equipment in order to get the metal out, sometimes it takes us a little longer. Or if I have to build a bridge, it takes me a little bit longer. Yes. Weather, great question. So here's what I need to tell you. Please let it rain. Yes, I need two to four to six inches of rain just to keep the ash down. So I, as an engineer, as somebody who has done this, we've chased it all the way last year when it was flooding. We were still removing homes. We'll bring in gravel. Let me take the gravel, we'll repair the driveway. If your driveway has this much asphalt on it, that asphalt's not gonna be there when I'm done. And I can't fix that. I can fix the gravel, but I can't fix this little thin piece of asphalt. Your driveways. I'm gonna tell you, they're gonna get damaged. Leave them there until you rebuild. The last thing you do is pull out your driveway, put a new driveway in. It's really important to do that. I'll get to you in just a second. Is it know that the driveways are going to get damaged? And if you really don't want your driveway damaged, opt out. Because we have big heavy trucks and big excavators we go back and forth. We are going to make mistakes. I'm gonna tell you right now, we will make mistakes. Skid stairs will find wells. The excavators will find things that they're not supposed to find. Water tenders will back into your gate. We'll fix those. We'll take care of those things. Let us know, we have a damage form. Just come in, let us know what we've made a mistake and we'll take a look at it. Yes. We'll take care of them. We'll take care of them. Take care of them. Fencing, great question. No. And here's why. We don't want to chase three miles of fencing. Let me just say this for the room. A certain agricultural crop that is grown. No, it's not corn. It's green, it's not corn. But we're not gonna play 50 questions. We're just gonna leave it at a certain agricultural crop. We're not gonna deal with that. That doesn't exist. So to me it's a pink unicorn. It's a pink unicorn that's gonna stay where the pink unicorn stays. And we're not gonna chase drip line for the next three miles. And we're not gonna chase fencing. Now we may have to take out a section of fencing in order to get there. And we'll take that out. Right. Now you as a homeowner if you have a bunch of burned, somewhat burned creosote and arsenic containing lumber, please wear some Tyvex. And please put it in a pile for me next to the rest of your debris. So I can take care of it for you. But I can't go out and chase miles of fencing. Well, it's a structural debris removal. And so that's fencing is really not structural debris. But we will take care of your burn debris if you put it in a pile for us in the burn pile. Yes. It's something we can use just to understand that a lot of times even DTSC when they do their hazmat testing, they have a policy where they spend hour, maybe two or three depending upon. If there's so much asbestos there, transite siding, roofing, they will mark it pink. They will tell me about it. And then I have to go back and get it because they have a timeline that they have to work on. Now, if you've done a hazmat testing, I will probably still send a CAC out to verify what somebody else has seen because not that I don't trust your CAC. Is it that we just have our own internal process? Because the whole goal is, I don't want equipment to go out there and crush up a bunch of transite siding and break free asbestos. So it's helpful, yes. Please put a copy of it on your ROE. Yes. Large. Okay. Yes. Yes. That's where the house was. Okay. Huge house, huge concrete pad. Yes, it comes out. Okay. Power line. Yeah, so we work from the basically the foundation up. So soil and up, so your septic tanks that are damaged, if we run into them, which if you can't tell us where they are and the county doesn't have information, you flag them, we'll try not to run them over, but usually an excavator finds them. I don't know how it does, but it's magnet and septic tanks and excavators. Right, so we'll cut it where we can cut it. We'll find it where we can find it, but we won't track out your leech fields. That process needs to go back to the county. Yes. Our address at the DRock is 4451 Highway 20. And do we have a phone at the DRock yet? We'll have a phone tomorrow. Okay. Sure, county. Yes. Okay, cool. If we can, if we go through the process and you can attach that, that would be very helpful. Flagging, perfect. Another thing I want you to mark, if you have personal items that you want saved, say it's a sentimental, whatever, set it aside and put some flagging around it. Okay, yes, pet cemetery. If you have a place where you've buried a pet, please let us know. The last thing we want to do is scrape up the rocks or move the rocks at something sentimental. Crews don't like to run over things that they're not supposed to be running over. Yes. I'll give you three. Plus the two weeks before I start. Five. That's your choice. Okay. No, I have no idea. Okay. Well, your insurance, just your debris limit. Question? Thank you. So, what if you're not going to rebuild? That's the benefit of this program, is that you're going to get a certification at the end from myself, personally, as a civil engineer, I'm going to say it's met the goals and it's ready to be rebuilt. That gives you the ability to sell. So, you're going to sell a lot that's clean and somebody else is going to want to buy versus trying to sell a lot with debris and a large foundation. So, I'm sorry. That's tough. More questions? Yes, in the back. I never got to you, did I? Okay, sorry. Yes, put some caution tape around it. So, one of the things you'll see is you'll see some things spray painted pink. That usually means asbestos. Sometimes you'll see things spray painted orange. That means it's a hazard. For you, if you spray paint it blue, they won't know what that means and that will, they'll ask questions. Caution tape, flagging tape, pink flagging tape, white flagging tape, make it painfully obvious. And are we? Yes, yes. I'm not going to take things you don't want me to take. Now, you cannot not sign up in the program for a house to burn down and then tell me you're not going to take the house. But the point is that if you have something, a backhoe that you're going to fix, tell us, leave it. Yes, place that aside. We'll take care of it. Just place it away far enough away from something that's burned. So, guys, remember, we're wearing a mask and respirators, hard hats, the phones and cell phones, everything. It's all craziness and sometimes people grab things they're not supposed to grab and we make mistakes. Oh, we'll move it. So, if we can work with you maybe that when we come out, basically you can be there that day. You can say, hey, can you take this? Leave this? So, a site, we have, I use a lot of terminology of the fire service. It's called the Task Force Leader which is a little different than most debris crews. My Task Force Leader's in charge. He's there every day documenting every load that goes out and he's there for you. You'll have a cell number. You can call him. You can walk. Usually what happens is my Task Force Leader and my superintendent or my foreman, they will walk with you, not in the ash, just around the area and you can point out certain things that they want saved. And we want that interaction. What we don't want you to do is sit there for every hour. Again, we don't want you in the exclusion zone. If you're in the exclusion zone, we have to shut down which is what we call the hot zone. So, we won't work. We won't generate material if you're there. So, we usually shut down while you're there or if we get you a safe way, distance away. We need to work with you. We don't want cattle out. We don't want to run over sheep or turkeys. Okay, great. So, let me address that concern. So, obviously we all talked about the ash being Donna Hazard's waste but being a concern, a toxic level of concern. So, when we come in, we use wet methodology. So, you're gonna see a water truck show up. We try to wet things down. I'm actually hopefully and it will rain. We try to wet things down 24 to 48 hours before we start. We come in and we take that material out. If you have lots of livestock or if there's a house next to you, or if there's a school by you, we'll also bring in air samplers, area array. So, we'll put a number of air samplers around that does a couple of things. One, it gives me a little bit of insurance my crew's not generating dust. We have a zero dust policy that once they're in the exclusion zone we don't want that dust to come out of the exclusion zone because sometimes when you break concrete, you see dust. But we try to give you that extra level of security. So, if there's some issues of your livestock, come talk to us. We can put up air samplers and we can see how we're doing. That also tells my crews, you'll see my crews wearing them. That also gives me, I have to do that per OSHA to make sure my crews are not being exposed to things and if they are, there's respiratory protection to protect them. So, I'll get results back and so that'll give me an idea that it's safe but we can work with you and schedule certain scenarios. No, you cannot be in the hot zone with us doing work right there. We will shut down. Okay, that distance varies. Depends on the wind. Right, no, you can still be on the property. Yeah, yeah, I would typically say 100 feet away is safe, upwind is even better. But there are certain circumstances we have to do things differently because again, if you go to Santa Rosa you're working next to a house and 10 feet away, there's kids in the backyard. So we work with that homeowner to try to say, hey, can you go into town while we finish and sometimes they won't. So sometimes we have to put air samplers along. We have to do what we have to do in order to protect the public. Yes, we're gonna chase hydraulic fluid if we have to, yes. Yes, I would like to absolutely have to do that. Yes, you're gonna lose a pocket of soil. If you had an old kerosene tank that leaked, we've ended up chasing kerosene five, six, seven, eight feet down. Now, do we leave a vertical hole? No, we slope it out. We turn it back over the county and county then goes through their process as far as sampling and those types of things. If you have, by the way, if you have a hand dug well, please let us know. You do? Okay, if you'd like it to be filled in, we can fill it in. If you wanna save it, please let me know. We've actually found a bedroom foundation over the top of one and we almost lost an excavator. There you go. Yes. Yeah, and some of them, we found them 30 feet down, eight feet across and at the bottom, they bellowed out and that was underneath the bedroom slab. Oh, we have a spec. We use a concrete slurry mix and we slurry it all the way to the top. Once we work with the county, let them know and we have a little bent night seal that we put in. The whole idea is that we don't want kids after we're gone disappearing or livestock disappearing at the bottom of the walls. Okay, any more questions? Yes, sir. If it was gathered in, you don't need to contaminate yourself in the pile, but if you had some burn fencing, please put it in a pile for us, close. So the question was, is this all our help or do we hire local help? We do hire local. Right now we have a hazmat class being put on by the local labor's union and the local operating union. Both of my primes are both union contractors. They have a one-time signed agreement. So there's a class going on right now to get a 40-hour class and then you have to go and get a medical monitoring so you can wear respiratory protection. But yeah, we do. We hire lots of locals. In Lake County alone, I think we're at 45% local. That was over 1,200 homes. So a lot of those locals, they're still in our program right now. And actually one of the contractors we use is Butte County, it's Richter Construction. And he's talking about going to 10 crews. I think we got him up to five before. Yes, yes, but here's what I want you to do. No kids. I need you to wear little booties. I want a little tie-backs, I want a little respirator. Please look for it. And if you can't find it, let us know. My crews will look. I will look, just tell me well. No, it depends on how hot the fire got. Yes, sir. So let me go back to the concrete. Say for instance, you had a 20 by 20 pad and you had firewood stacked on it. I'm not taking that concrete out. I'm not gonna take your patio out. I'm not gonna take your walkway out. Garage, yes, it's a structure. Because I wanna take soil samples. Now if your patio, the house ash fell all through it, we're gonna have to take out some of it. We try to save what we can save logically, but there are times where we go to pull one piece and the next piece cracks. So we try to give you something that's buildable back. It's not, it's, we play with very big toys and we make things go away. Yes, right. Certain temperature, yes, spaulding. Other than that, then there's that reach and equipment and certain stuff cracks and stairs crumble. Sometimes they have to climb up of a hill and they go through the stairs to do it. We try to get so the house, so you can have a three-year-old walk cross property, not fall, trip or disappear in a well. Yes, yeah, yes ma'am. Great question. So retaining walls, we leave because I don't want you to have all the slope, soil coming back down. You'll need to work with a structural engineer to redo that depending upon how far it is away. Sometimes the temperature affects the retaining wall. Sometimes it doesn't. Depending upon how that goes, we will make a saw cut where the raised foundation is. We'll make an actual saw cut and we'll take the foundation from where it is and we'll leave the concrete and the retaining wall. I said 4,000 of these. I got a couple of them done. Yes, we'll take care of it. We'll take care of it. It's a hazard to us as well. So we'll take care of it. Yes, yes. So the counties, they're gonna do the same process where we're gonna establish the background for you. We're gonna go through the county and do a bunch of soil background so we can establish the cleanup goals. Right, and so you're gonna use our goals. You're gonna have to then do sampling when you're done to make sure that it's clean. Is that correct? Yes, I know Nevada County is working. I think they just got theirs done and posted maybe. So they're very similar to Nevada County and Yuba County. We're asking our private contractors to clean up the same way we're cleaning it up to make sure it's wrapped, whetted down, tarped, that the crews are safe as well. So I need private contractors. There's no question about it. I just want them to clean it up at the same standard. They don't have to go through everything that I go through, but it's just a higher standard than they're normally used to. Yes, so the question is, you have a gate, you have a combination. How are you gonna let us know we need that key? So you need to come into the DRock, bring us a key with a little address on it, and when we're done, we'll return the key to you. Yes, perfect. You can staple it and the envelope to ROE. That's even a better idea. Okay, is there any other questions? General questions that can benefit anybody else? Yes, ma'am. Wait, one more. Go ahead, sir. You got a question? Okay, okay. Yes, you can. There's nothing here that prevents you from not doing it yourself. That's good. Can we pick and choose cleanup areas? Are we talking agricultural crops or is this something different? Oh, okay. We can work with you. That's fine. We just need to have a little bit more talk with this discussion thereof and we'll make it work. That's all on you. So we're looking at structural debris. So if it's a hay pile, something with the, for instance, well, well-housing. We're not gonna take the concrete pad around the well. We will go in there by hand and clean it out for you, but we're not gonna take that concrete pad with the well casing on it because, again, it opens up other issues. So the question is, is it a 3,000 gallon water tank? Is it plastic and melted? We will take it. Is it melted? I would recommend you check with some of your local contractors. They'll tell you whether it's good or not. And if it needs to go, we'll take care of it. Yes, ma'am? Yes, yes. Structural, yes. Are we good? No, you turn the ROEs in the back. The county's gonna collect them. So the whole process is, this all goes through the county and then the state supplements the... Okay, you still turn it into the county. So thank you for coming. I'm here for separate questions. Tom, we'll have it. All right, I can talk about a few of the finer points. For your right of entry agreements, we do have staff here that can help you film out tonight. You don't have to. You can either turn them in at Seven County Center Drive at the... Hey, the fire is... You could turn them in at the Fire Assistance Center at Seven County Center Drive. Seven County Center Drive. It's by the courthouse. Or you can also turn it into the Environmental Health Department at 202 Mira Loma Drive. So no, we need these right of entry agreements next week because we have DTSC, State Toxics, will start removing hazardous waste and doing asbestos clearances on the week of November 6th. And then the Cal Recycle Program is gonna start the week of the 13th after that. So it's happening pretty soon. Correct. Yeah, it'll be cleared before the first, very first step for any process with a cleanup, you have to take care of your hazardous waste. Your ash and debris cannot have hazardous waste before it goes to landfill. So it can have asbestos in it or hazardous waste. We'll first take the hazardous waste so Cal Recycle can get the ash and debris out of there and dispose of it legally. Correct, does that mean? If it's pink, scan, that means a lot of asbestos. Yeah, so if you have older asbestos, older home with asbestos, I would definitely recommend the Cal Recycle Program. Correct, seven county, seven drive, kind of center drive. DTSC comes in first, Cal Recycle second. Were you in the wall fire? Oh, okay. Okay, you had a private consultant. So we'll have staff at the back tables. We also have, like I said, we wanna keep your septic system safe. So we do have septic information and flags for those so you can get your septic information and mark those out. Does anybody have any questions for the county? Absolutely, yeah, I'll run back there. Hey, could I just have a minute, please? We do have Supervisor Conley here and he might wanna share a few minutes if you don't mind. Thanks, good job. Hey, if I could get your attention for just a minute, I wanna talk to you from the county's perspective. First off, we're all very sorry for your loss. There's nothing I can say to replace your personal things or the effect to your life, but we will waive every fee, every thing that you think you would have to pay to the county to rebuild to the same size. So I'll just make it simple. If you had a thousand square foot place and you wanna rebuild a stick frame or you had a mobile or you wanna put a mobile to a thousand feet, we're gonna waive those fees to try to help you out. That's how the county's gonna step up and help you. I think what you've heard here is we got private people that are licensed to do this. I wanna make sure that you look to license people to help you rebuild, check with the contractor's board and make sure they're legitimate. And of course, the program here is unbelievably a good deal. There's nothing the county can do to waive your cleanup and your hazardous waste cleanup. Believe me, I'm kind of anti-government. I looked into that the very first fire and found out that isn't the way it goes. You just have to do it. Again, we're here. There's nothing I can say or do to replace what you lost. Your memories or your pictures or your jewelry, but thank God we didn't lose any lives. But we don't want you to be out of pocket. The county is going to, again, I repeat, waive every fee if you build in kind. Any questions about that? Yes, man. If your insurance covers it, we expect you to bring that much. If the insurance doesn't cover it or partially covers it, we'll cover the gap. Same thing with what he said. That would only be fair, right? I mean, if your insurance says we'll pay all fees and building fees and we collect that for the taxpayer. But if your insurance doesn't, then you need to have Nancy. I think you had a question, man. Was there another question here? Was it you that had a question? As long as they were permitted, you can rebuild to the same square footage, including that, and you won't have fees. Then you'll owe the fees for the difference. Fair enough, right? You'll be inspected, trust me. Being a contractor, I can tell you. If there's no other questions, yes, sir, you'll owe the difference. The difference, which is fair. I think it's fair enough. Any other questions, yes? If they were permitted, right? Very hard, if they're unpermitted, can't give you a pass, sorry. That does happen. You know what happens is the widow comes to me, my old man built this without a permit, how it helped me, so think about that. Any other questions? Yes, sir. Only for the cost of anything bigger than what you originally had, then the game's off, right? Right, they do. Any other question? Yes, man. Property, the assessor's here, she's covered this before, if I might. Valerie Brown, as long as it's the same size house, we're gonna keep your property taxes the same. It's kind of a gift. Okay, it really is. Right, Valerie, we've covered any other questions? Well thank you very much, and I thank you for what you're doing, and I thank you for speaking up for the private side. Thank you.