 All right, well good after actually still good morning. Good morning. Mark Gilard itchy director of Cal OES here. We're appreciate you being here with us today. We're going to give a little bit of a update on the statewide fire activity and it's been very active since we last met and so I'm going to go through a few things and then I'll turn it over to cheese pours Gardena for the fire update. Let me start off today by a couple things. One is to express our condolences to the Earth's Forest Service. I know they had a couple of firefighters that have passed them and due to illnesses and so we're our thoughts are with them today and I know it's it's tough on organization particularly one that's in the middle of a big response operation to have something like that happen so since we're one team one fight you know we all feel that and we appreciate all of their their service. I also want to just highlight that really after a day after Labor Day you know I I want to mention just all of the incredible work that is being done throughout the state to fight these fires while many of us had a holiday over the weekend our state operations center nearly 15,000 state firefighters and emergency personnel were on the ground and in the air fighting these fires and committed to trying to mitigate this situation. We really do have the best emergency response personnel in the country and really a testament to all of their great work. That said response teams remained active over the past week since we last met and over the holiday weekend with fire activity we had more favorable weather conditions which helped the firefight but nevertheless the two big fires in the state the Caldor and the Dixie remained active and we broke a series of new fires prompting new evacuation orders. On balance on the Caldor fire given the work that has been done the South Lake Tahoe area was able to be repopulated as were other parts of El Dorado County. Even though these areas have been repopulated it is important to know that we still have active fire in the area. We are not yet completely out of the woods on this and the public should remain vigilant and attentive to new evacuation information should that become necessary. We will get more in depth update from the fire fights from Chief Porter and Scardina in a minute. We know that these are difficult times and we continue to use every resource available to mitigate these fires and to support California communities and throughout the state as well as out of state resources from our mutual aid system as well as from the Department of Defense are here to help and I want to thank them for all of their tremendous commitment to California particularly our out of state resources that have committed here for weeks at a time. I want to talk a little bit also about FEMA registration and the disaster declarations because there's been a little bit of questions about that. There are two kinds of federal disaster designations currently in place. One provides for additional resources to support response operations which is what the White House approved last week for the Caldor fire in El Dorado Amador Alpine and Placer counties. It is designed to bolster assets and resources needed to combat combat combat the fire excuse me. The other declaration which is what we have in place for the Dixie and River fires provides individual assistance as well as recovery resources to government entities. Following additional damage assessment we will determine if the Caldor fire will be eligible for the additional federal assistance and that additional damage assessment is ongoing and is beginning in further this week to get that information together and get it back up to Washington DC. In the meantime we encourage anyone who suffered a loss in the Caldor fire to reach out to their insurance company and to also visit a local assistance center to learn more about available state and local support programs. On the Dixie and River fires registration is underway for FEMA's individual wildfire assistance. Federal assistance may be available for uninsured or underinsured individuals affected by the Dixie and River fires in Lassen, Nevada, Placer and Plumas counties. Assistance may include grants for temporary housing and home repairs, low-cost loans to cover uninsured personnel property losses and other programs to help individuals and businesses business owners recover from the effects of the disaster. Survivors should contact their insurance carriers first before registering with FEMA. If you're underinsured or underinsured register for FEMA disaster assistance by visiting disasterassistance.gov and Andrew Grant the federal courting officer from FEMA is here and he'll get a little more in detail on this in a minute. I also want to talk a little bit about how we are moving forward with the plan for hazardous materials removal and debris clearance in these fires. Although the fires are still burning, the state's currently working with local governments and other state agencies to protect the public health and safety by removing beginning to remove the fire related debris. This is known as the state's Consolidated Debris Removal Program. It includes two phases. The first phase includes clearing household hazardous waste. This is things such as paints, cleaners, solvents, oils, batteries, fuel, pesticides, compressed cylinders and tanks and easy identifiable asbestos from homes impacted at the following fires. The Tamarack Fire, the Beckworth Fire, the Dixie Fire, the Lava Fire, the Cache Fire and the River Fire and we are gearing up to begin this operation in the Caldor Fire. We have already completed this this hazardous waste removal in several counties and are preparing to move to the larger debris removal program which is what we call our phase two. In this phase we ask property owners to sign a right of entry form which grants government contractors access to your property and to conduct debris removal at no cost to you. This is actually clearing your property of all the fire related debris. This will be coordinated with your respective county government who will facilitate the right of entry process. For those who have had their properties damaged in the 2021 wildfires, the current season that we're in, it's important that you remember that you should not begin your own cleanup operations in advance of the state program without checking with your county environmental service office first. Doing so may render the property ineligible for further debris removal assistance as the state cannot take over cleanup that has been started. To learn more about these resources I recommend that you visit the site dedicated for California wildfire survivors at wildfirerecovery.caloes.ca. That's wildfirerecovery.caloes.ca.gov. And by stating that a reminder that this month, September is national preparedness month and our current wildfire season should be a reminder of all of us to be prepared and vigilant. Have a go bag ready with essential items for you and your family including your pets, including medications and extra battery backup for your devices. Plus, sign up for alerts. Each county in California has an alerting program that residents can sign up for to receive emergency alerts. This is very important so that you can get up to date information from your county. Sign up for the county where you work, where you live or both and staying informed by signing up for these emergency alerts can be a simple life saving tool. Visit calalerts.org, calalerts.org for more information to be able to connect in with your respective county. Finally, as I've mentioned many, many times in the past, if you're told to evacuate during one of these fires, as we saw this weekend, there were new evacuation orders for fast moving fires. If you're told to evacuate, please do not wait. Evacuate. This is about your life and we want to maintain your safety at all times. So with that I will turn it over to Chief Porter, the Director of Cal Fire for a fire update. Thank you. Thank you, Director Gillarducci. And I want to reflect for a minute on where we are. This season is far from over. And while we are in a year round fire readiness in California and the West in particular, this year in particular, I want to reflect last year to date we had about 2 million acres burned. This year to date 2 million acres. We are on par with where we were last year. That sobering and that is the new reality. That's what we're looking at. For a 2 million acre year at this point, that puts us a right at about midpoint of the number of acres burned that burned in 2020. And we could be in the same boat. So while we did have the long weekend, some have turned to a looking forward as if this is now fall. Summer season is over. We're right smack in the middle of wildfire peak season. And so everybody needs to remain vigilant, needs to remain ready to call 911 if you see smoke in the air and evacuate if orders come. What I wanted to also reflect on is what's happened through the siege that we've been in. We've been talking about all these large fires throughout the northern part of the state. We've been having fires in the southern part of the state that we've been able to get a handle on quickly and protect lives and property and the environment. But just just and this is not exhaustive. But this is an indication of what we've been able to do this season thus far. Hey, fork, Willets, Chester, Lake Tahoe, sorry, Lake Almanor West, the peninsula. Westwood, Susanville, Janesville. All protected, all still intact. All economic. Centers of those communities have been protected during this this set of fires. Just come to the call door. Pollock pines, Sly Park. Myers, Southlake Tahoe. All protected. We've been able to herd these fires around and outside of the main community corridors. Unfortunately, that hasn't happened in every case, but these are some of the large communities that have been protected. I can't forget Kirkwood. Kirkwood is also on that list and this this story will remain and it is our main focus in protecting lives property. The communities that those lives and property are in and depend on and being able to set us up for resilience beyond these fires, the recovery. Yes, there's going to be some very tough activities happening for those who have lost homes and lost businesses. But by and large, we've been able to do a great job in protecting lives property and the communities that those lives and property are within. I mentioned that we're about halfway and nobody has a crystal ball with what's going to happen in the weather and fire activity going forward. But what I can assure you is that we're watching that very carefully. Our predictive services have put out their three month outlook for September through December and for September through December. The entire state shows drier, more wind events and large fire activity to continue for the next three months. So back to my main message, vigilance. We need everybody in California to keep their eyes open, see smoke, call it in. Don't expect somebody else already did. And if you get evacuation orders, get out so we can do our job of protecting lives property and the environment. With that, I'm going to pass the mic to Tony Scardina, Deputy Regional Forester US Forest Service, Region five. Good morning. Thanks, Chief Porter. Thank you, Director Gillard, Ducci for your thoughts. As mentioned, unfortunately, we have lost two of our firefighting heroes over the past week and grieve with the families and friends and coworkers. Those two people, Alan Johnson was a 40 year veteran of the Forest Service and performed on one of the incident command teams in Southern California. In the second, Marcus Pacheco, 30 years of service in the Forest Service, as well as 13 years with Cal Fire, you know, both amazing firefighters, you know, Marcus was an assistant engine captain and the work that Alan did on our incident command teams were just the type of service and leadership that we expect out of all of our folks. And so our thoughts are with them, with their families and with all the firefighters who continue to be in harm's way as they protect us and the communities out there. So where are we at currently? As Tom mentioned, we remained at preparedness level five across the country. We've seen active fire growth across Northern California over the weekend. We expect wind, hot, windy, hot conditions over the next 48 to 72 hours in Northern California. So we're expecting to see growth on the fires that are out there on the landscape. And the good news is that we've had some success on the Cal Fire 44% containment. It's a 216,000 acres. We're not out of the woods. But as Tom mentioned, a lot of good progress, a lot of resources were brought to bear to protect communities in the collaboration with Cal Fire, our local government partners was was commendable in a lot of ways. But again, we want to stay vigilant in that. And we're glad to see that some areas are repopulating. When you look at how significant we are right now, 40,000 fires to date in the United States, 7,000 of those in California in 2 million acres burned as Tom mentioned. Six of the seven largest fires in California have happened since 2020. So we talk about drought conditions, extreme weather, extreme fire behavior. That indicates that very clearly. 23,000 firefighters deployed nationally. 65% of them, 15,000 of them are in California, helping us protect communities every day. The Dixie fire is now the second largest fire in California history at 910,000 acres. It's perimeter to get from one point to the other around it is over 800 miles. That's driving the I five from the southern border of California to the northern border of California. As Tom mentioned, we we do not like having fires of this magnitude. The impact resources that impacts watersheds. And those are concerning to us, but we have to do the best with the resources we have. We will maintain our focus on initial attack, putting small small fires out as well as protecting life first and then property and then trying to get a handle on these larger fires. That will not be easy with that much fire line open with weather conditions frequently coming back in terms of hot, dry and windy. We're going to have to continue to do our best in the places that we can put a defense up and protect people and get them out of the way. As you are aware, our regional forester made a difficult decision to close all the national forest in California until September 17th. We will continue to evaluate that decision of whether we will need to extend it. It's not an easy one where people cannot access their public land. That is never a preference for us. That is a value that we have that we've always had as an agency and we will try to meet that mission. But with the fire activity we've had, we feel that there is a public safety risk and that we can't put every fire out. And any new start is untenable in terms of the resources that have been strained for over three months. As I say, three months in a row of firefighters on the ground, 16 hours a day digging line for 14 days in a row and stack that on top of what we did last year. It's a lot for our firefighters to go through and handle and we have to think of their health and fatigue as well. And then as Tom mentioned, just be ready when an evacuation order comes. That warning may come. That's the time to get your stuff ready to go. And then that ready set go process when an order is given. We've seen the public do a great job of that in some very difficult situations with a lot of people to get out of harm's way and really appreciate the public's compliance in that and how important it is to keep you all safe. Thank you. I'll now pass it on to Major General Baldwin with the California National Guard. Thanks, Tony. And good morning, everybody. The military has 1264 soldiers, sailors and airmen supporting firefighting efforts across the state. This is down a couple of hundred because we've been able to demobilize some assets as the firefighters continue to make progress on several of the major fires. So we're able to withdraw four Cal Guard firefighting helicopters to reset them for future operations. We're also being able to demobilize some fuel trucks that have been providing support to Cal Fire. And we're bringing the soldiers that were assigned to support the Plumas County Sheriff's Department and the Highway Patrol with traffic control points and area security in Plumas County. We're beginning the demobilization of that team also. But we still have a lot of troops that are hard in the fight. As a matter of fact, on Sunday, we had for the first time since 2012, all eight of the modular airborne firefighting aircraft from the Air National Guard and the Air Force Reserve were in the air simultaneously. That almost never happens. And they were out there hitting those higher fires hard, which helped quite a bit to help the firefighters get a handle on these things. We continue to have almost 40 military hand crews from the active army and the California National Guard out fighting the fire on the ground. And in El Dorado County, our soldiers that are providing security and support to Cal Fire and Correction to the El Dorado County Sheriff and to the California Highway Patrol are beginning to transition to assist in planning with repopulation efforts for the areas that are going to have evacuation orders lifted. So there is some good news compared to where we were last week, but we will be reset and ready for what comes next. And I'll be followed by Assistant Commissioner Ryan Okashima from the California Highway Patrol. Thank you, General Baldwin. Good morning, everyone. The safety of all those affected by the fires that have occurred is a primary concern of California Highway Patrol. We still work collaboratively with all of our partners to ensure the safety of our communities and of our roads. The CHP continues to have officers deployed and working all the fires affected in the impacted areas. Our personnel are on tactical alert and they are all working 12 hour shifts. And this is to really ensure that the communities and the public receive the highest level of safety, service and security from the California Highway Patrol. As evacuation orders are lifted. We really want to tell you all to please be careful. There's still a lot of activity in these areas is still very dangerous. It's hazardous there. Please be patient. Take your time as you're trying to get back to your homes. Please don't go to your homes until you're actually told that it's clear to go to your homes. That's a big concern for everybody for people trying to get back to their homes when they're the evacuation order actually isn't in place. So please be careful. Please continue to listen to all the public safety information that's coming out. If you live in an area that's still threatened by wildfires, please be prepared. Again, please be informed and when the order is given to evacuate, please be ready to go. Please listen to local law enforcement or the California Highway Patrol. They will point you in the correct direction to properly evacuate. We know this has been extremely difficult experience for many of you, especially those who have lost your houses, businesses had to evacuate. So on behalf of the women and men of the California Highway Patrol, we thank you all for your patience and your cooperation. With that, I'm going to turn the mic over to Andrew Grant from FEMA. Thank you, Commissioner. So just I want to reinforce a couple things that was already mentioned and then just add a couple pieces of information for the support that we're providing to really focusing on on the disaster survivors. So as the director mentioned, there are differences between the two declarations, emergency declaration 3571 and disaster, major disaster declaration 4610. An easy way to think about this is the emergency declaration 3571 support is to help in the fight, help in what's currently happening in response. And we're helping across the range of issues, sheltering, evacuation, firefighting, law enforcement, any of those needs that the state needs that they've asked for our assistance for for for the fight. The recovery goes from, of course, response to recovery and recovery is is focused not only a reconstituting what we used in response, so assisting those agencies that put everything into the fight for response. So helping them to recover for any future tragic as it sounds future fights that we might have for fires or other disasters, but also to emphasize recovery. Where do we take individuals that have been impacted by the activity in their homes at their homes in their communities across their counties? And so major declaration 4610 and I'm the federal coordinated officer for emergency. I'm sorry for major disaster declaration 4610 emphasizes that recovery piece. And one of the important additions to the assistance we provide is for the individual assistance. The individual assistance program has to date already provided over a million dollars to those individuals eligible for individual assistance. And regardless of whether individuals have received dollars or or other kinds of assistance, we are working across all agencies across all stakeholders to provide the level of recovery assistance that they need. One of the key things that we've emphasized in in this particular recovery operation is the importance of listening to what those needs are. Some of you I'm sure have seen what's happened in places like Greenville and other communities severely impacted by these fires. And so going to the individuals and asking what do you want for your future in terms of recovery? Because sometimes it doesn't look like what it happened and what was it what it was in the past. And so it's really important that we really understand what those needs are. We drill down to the individual level what those individuals want. Recovery as always is locally executed. It's state planned and it's federally federally supported. And so we have that construct here for the recovery and we're doing a lot of great work out there to provide assistance. It's really essential, however, as a director mentioned, and I'll just reemphasize this, that you continue your contact with your insurance companies with your agents to ensure that if you are eligible, that's your first line of recovery. If you're a primary residence owner in those impacted counties and those four counties again are Lassen and Lassen and Plumas for the Dixie fire and Placer and Nevada for the river fire. If you're either not fully insured or not insured and have a primary residence in those four counties to reach out to us and we might be able to provide you assistance based on eligibility. Another important piece to all of this about the individual assistance that providing for those disaster survivors is to if you change your location, let's say you've moved into a home with friends or family and that's your current residence and then you've moved from that residence and you provided us with that first original address to give us a call and let us know if your address has changed as well for phones. If you've again relocated and you're using a landline, a home phone and you're now using your cell phone, give us a call and update that contact information and we'll be able to provide eligibility status and if possible assistance faster than otherwise trying to track you down. All residents in the declared counties who think they might be eligible for assistance of course have ways to reach out to us. We want to emphasize those four ways. Call our toll free number at 1-800-621-3362 that's 1-800-621-FEMA or visit disasterassistance.gov. You can download our FEMA app and as always find someone in this shirt in the FEMA shirt, ask for assistance and they can guide you to those other locations. Thank you. With that are there any questions? Thank you very much.