 Okay, good morning everyone. I'm Mark Elarducci and the Governor Brown's Director of Emergency Services here at OES. Thank you for coming in. We're going to begin the briefing today on the update of the wildfire response. We'll provide you the latest efforts across the state to assist those that have been impacted by this very, very serious wildfire. I always want to start off by reiterating that we are constantly thinking about and praying about those that have been impacted by this event and those that have lost their homes. We know it's a extremely stressful and challenging time and we are all hands on deck and doing everything we can to continue to support our local authorities and the communities to get through this process. We're running a 24-7 operation here at the State Operations Center. We've got close to 5,000 people deployed in supporting our local authorities and the various fires and we are working and reaching out and have reached out to our neighboring states for additional support which we'll go over in the briefings in a minute here which outlines all the various agencies and departments that have contributed to the firefight. So what we'll do is, as we do in our typical fashion, we'll begin the briefing by having each of the various agencies that are leading certain parts of this give the brief. We'll start off with Chief Ken Pemla, the director of the Cal Fire, our California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Thank you, Mark. Yeah, and I just want to reiterate and this is what we've said every morning, all week since this began. We're not out of the woods and we're not going to be out of the woods for a number of days, for a great number of days to come. The weather conditions that surfaced Sunday evening continue to plague the state. While we yesterday had a brief respite from the winds, we have returned today to red flag conditions, very dry humidities, 8% in many locations, and winds that are surfacing out of the north in some places 40 miles an hour. But even yesterday without wind, these fires were driven by the critically dry fuel bed. We are still impacted by five years of drought with the significant rain that we had last winter. Those effects are gone of that moisture and we are literally looking at explosive vegetation. These fires are burning actively during the day and at night when one would expect a fire to subside. And make no mistake, this is a serious critical catastrophic event. We have over 22 fires, major fires, burning in California, primarily in eight counties here in northern California this morning. Over 170,000 acres has burned since the beginning of this event just a few days ago. And what's challenging about this is that these fires aren't just in the back woods or out in the wildlands or the forests in the state. These fires are burning in and around through developed communities. City of Santa Rosa, very classic example of the kinds of challenges we're facing in these firefights, developed areas a mile or two outside or within communities away from the wildlands, box stores, buildings, hotels, homes, all of it. These are the kinds of challenges because all of these areas not only have this infrastructure but have people, lots of people that we are dedicated to protect and that's our first priority is the protection of life and property. And that's what we have been focusing on every day and will continue to focus on as our priority from the beginning of this event. So here's where we're at this morning, very active fires all night. As I indicated, 170,000 acres. Unfortunately, just moments ago we updated the count of fatalities associated with these fires. It's now at 21. And again, this is continuing to evaluate and adjudicate the missing persons or unaccounted for individuals. We continue to work on that as we get into some of these fire areas. But I'm going to tell everybody straight up the potential continues to exist for peril if folks don't get out from in front of these fires. And so please pay very close attention to evacuation orders. It's very dynamic. These fires are changing by the minute in many areas. Information is going out via social media, via local Delta door contact. We literally had law enforcement officers and firefighters yesterday afternoon in Solano County going door to door, pulling people out of their homes ahead of the Atlas fire. So again, very serious. Just a quick update. And again, more information is available locally on these fires. But for example, this morning, the Atlas fire in Napa, now Solano County is over 42,000 acres. The Tubbs fire in Santa Rosa is about 25,000 acres. And these numbers are very fluid and they're going to change throughout the day as these fires grow. We initiated additional evacuation orders early this morning for portions of the community of Calistoga. Also looking at an evacuation advisory for the town of Middletown in Lake County to the north. We're concerned and anticipate that before the day is over, several of these fires will merge into one fire. Literally, if you looked at the Napa Valley, we have fire on the ridgeline to the east of town and to the west of town and to the north. So a great deal of fire across all of these landscapes. Fires are well organized. As I said yesterday, we have four incident management teams organized to bring all of these fires under an organization. We spent over an hour speaking to each one of those four incident commanders this morning to determine what were their critical challenges, what did they need, what do we as the state, local, and our federal partners need to do to support them to get what they need. I can tell you right now across all of these incidents, we have 73 helicopters committed to this firefight. We have over 30 air tankers. We have over 550 fire engines just deployed or immediately en route to these incidents. And all total close to 8,000 firefighters committed to the firefight. That's just what we're doing right now on the incidents. We are leaning very far forward. We're anticipating requests from the incidents. We're actually ordering additional resources beyond what the fires are asking for so get well ahead of this. I can tell you that yesterday ordered 170 fire engines from neighboring states. Oregon, Nevada, Washington, and Arizona have all stepped up to the plate and are sending resources upon our request. We are also working through our federal partners to get additional fire resources from around the country. That includes almost 60 additional firefighting hand crews, an additional 150, 154 fire engines, and an additional six bulldozers. We are also rapidly redeploying resources from fires within California that are being contained and moving them into these critical fires. The Canyon II fire in Orange County is 8,000 acres this morning but the containment is coming up very rapidly. We are rapidly releasing fire engines from that incident and moving them into Northern California. We are going very deep into our system and we're going very deep outside of the state to get these resources. Director Gallarducci will also talk later about some of the other coordination efforts, but I can tell you as well as General Baldwin about the assets that the military is providing that we're going very deep into the National Guard and federal military assets here in California. Again, I want to reiterate we are leaning very far forward to get all of the resources ahead of when the need, but understand we've got firefighters, law enforcement personnel, and others on the fire lines that have been out there for 72 hours. So our primary goal is to get these resources into the fires, get these folks relief, and get firefighters on the ground cutting perimeter line and containing these fires. We're going to keep folks very well updated throughout the course of changing events, but I also want to really directly address some of the concerns that have come up relative to aircraft and air tankers and aviation assets. I indicated we've got over 73 helicopters and over 30 air tankers, airplanes fighting this fire. We have access to every available asset in the country as it relates to aviation assets, and those are all in here or coming. They're all being used. The incidents are getting everything they need. The challenge yesterday is, as many saw, the smoke inversion literally pushed down across the ground, and the aircraft could not only see, not see what was on the ground, they could not see each other flying in the air. Ineffective couldn't work, and so they couldn't work in many areas. They still flew where they could. Today a very different picture. Every one of the incident commanders indicated to us aircraft were already up and flying when we were speaking to them early this morning, and so they continue a very aggressive aerial assault across all of the incidents based on the needs of those incidents today, and that will continue for as long as we can continue to fly and use them, and we will continue to do that. So with that, I will turn it over to Acting Commissioner of the California Highway Patrol, Warren Stanley. Thank you, Director Pimla. As far as that CHP personnel, we have 112 personnel assigned to this event right now, mainly with traffic control, some general law enforcement in the Santa Rosa area dealing with looters and also general law enforcement, and also have a small contingent helping out at shelters. Last night we assisted the National Guard and some people down in the Napa-Yantville area that needed to get to the Yantville veterans home. We gave them escort and got them taken care of. Also we assisted additional 80 other people that needed to get to the hospital. We have the assets we need. If we need more to assist with evacuations, we'll coordinate that with Director Gil Aducci and provide those services. And also the other assets we have is our rescue helicopters. I don't know if many of you know this, but on Sunday night into early Monday morning, two of our CHP helicopters, one based out of the Napa Airport and one based out of Redding, between those two helicopters and those crews, they rescued 44 people, five dogs, and two cats. And we were very helpful and thankful to get those people to safety. And we look forward to continuing to work with our partners here and address this very catastrophic fire. Thank you. I'm Major General Dave Baldwin with the California National Guard. We currently have 700 soldiers and airmen on duty supporting both firefighting efforts as well as consequence management that comes with the evacuation of the people and assisting their care and shelter. We're mobilizing an additional 1800 soldiers and airmen today that'll be available for duty later today and tomorrow. That includes the entire 49th Military Police Brigade, which is based in Northern California that is deploying military police and engineer assets to the affected area. We've mobilized 13 type one firefighting helicopters in addition to two medical evacuation helicopters and two light observation helicopters. We're in coordination with the Nevada and Oregon National Guard to bring in additional helicopters if necessary. And we've also begun coordination with the United States Navy and the United States Marine Corps to bring in any fire suppression capable aircraft and crews that they have either into Northern California or to fight fires in Southern California. We're also flying two MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial platforms that are providing fire mapping services to Cal Fire as well as damage assessments to the local jurisdictions and to FEMA. We've deployed four communication systems to be able to provide telephone services in areas where cell phone services out, including one system from the Nevada National Guard. We are also providing linguistic support to evacuated areas for those areas where evacuated personnel do not speak English or have difficulty with that language. We are continuing to work very closely with Cal Fire and the sheriffs in all of the effective counties and we're prepared to deploy more resources from either the National Guard of California, the surrounding states, or the federal military if necessary. And I'll be followed by Mr. Bob Vinton, who is the Regional Administrator for FEMA Region 9. Thank you, General. On Monday, Governor Brown requested a declaration from the President Tuesday morning. The President declared a major declaration for California. In addition to the 10 fire management grants we issued Sunday night through Monday morning. That declaration authorizes me to coordinate the federal government's activities in support of the state and local governments. As you heard from previous speakers to this point, it includes resources to help fight the fire. In addition to that, we are providing resources to help with the sheltering, such as commodities and other resources. Today, my focus is to further assessments to turn on additional programs from the federal government that will be able to help individuals with the recovery from these events. So that's our focus. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Director Gila Ducci from the State California Office of Emergency Services. Thanks, Bob. Okay, so you've got kind of an overview. Let me reiterate that all hands are on deck in this particular situation. We will continue 24-7 operations until the situation is mitigated. We are receiving huge amounts of resource support from our local governments and other mutual aid assets from the Mexican border to the Oregon border and beyond. We have over 330 law enforcement personnel committed in supporting our local authorities. And in the shelters, which the populations are currently about 4,400, in support of those shelters, we have already distributed over 40,000 meals, 60,000 liters of water. That's my list here. 60,000 liters of water, over almost 2,000 bariatric special COTS, ADA compliance, 12,000 blankets and sheets, and 100,000 N95 masks. These are commodities that are being distributed to point to distribution to support the counties and their operations. Administrator Fenton mentioned the support from the federal government, which has been outstanding and very appreciative. That's helping us move forward. In addition, cell sites have been a big question and a concern. At the height, there was roughly 77 major cell sites that were down, damaged or burnt. I'm happy to report this morning that 64 of those 77 have been restored, and we're beginning to get cell coverage back into some of the areas, particularly in downtown Napa and in some of the areas around the shelters in Sonoma County. As well, the fiber lines have been repaired enough that they could actually do some workarounds and be able to start moving data through those lines. Power, still roughly about 50,000 individuals without power throughout all of the complex fires. They are working on trying to restore that. Downtown Napa was restored and a number of parts of Sonoma as well, and they also are trying to get gas turned on back in the areas they can't today. I mean, the areas where gas was turned off, they have to go back in and reset pilot lights, and that is a major effort of PG&E and the other utilities that are going to be doing that today. Lastly, our private sector partners have been tremendous. We've had tremendous commodities, support, Rayleigh's, Walmart, Target, California Grocers Association, Google, Facebook. These have all come together and coordinated here through the State Operations Center to provide whether it's funding or personnel support or technical support or commodities. All of them have been very, very appreciated and are part of this overall effort. We will continue this pace. We will continue to support this until this situation is mitigated and we are getting those communities back up online again. So with that, at this point, I'll turn it over to our Governor, Governor Evan Brown. Well, you've heard heard the story here. A profoundly serious fire. We've had big fires in the past. This is one of the biggest, the most serious. It's not over. Just the recitation of all the manpower and resources. It's a lot. And it has to be a lot because we have people living in communities and cities in very developed situations that are connected to and very close to forests and brush and all the rest of it to becomes kindling. So that's the way it is with a warming climate and dry weather and reducing moisture. These kind of catastrophes have happened, though continue to happen and we have to be prepared to do everything we can to mitigate. It's going to cost a lot of money. The President has declared disaster, major disaster, and along with the other ones in Texas and Florida and elsewhere, this will be tens of billions. So we've got to get ready to deal with this situation and then prepare for others who will follow in the years to come. They can answer any of your questions about the details. I mentioned the whole country. I think there's a $30 billion appropriation that will probably grow. Who will have to grow? Does California have enough in the reserve fund to pay for this? I think we have enough. But the federal government's going to help us as they're helping the other states. It's just part of the facts of a highly developed society is that you have a lot of people and a lot of assets and in the face of floods and hurricanes and fires, this is what happens. So this is all part of the budget. We can pay our share, but we want to make sure the federal government is a good partner. And so far, I think they've been a very good partner. Do we have an estimate of what California's cost would be? I don't have an estimate. Maybe I doubt if you can get one quite this early. But it'll be a lot of money. What about the California economy? You know, this is the great growers. This is a huge part of the California economy. Are we prepared to handle that as well? Well, obviously, if fires destroy crops, that won't produce food. But I'd say the overall California economy is very large, about 2.5 trillion. And so it grows even through disasters and tragedies. The machinery of the market grinds on. So I don't think you're going to see a slowdown because of the fires. There may be other things going on in the world or the financial world that can affect us. But I think the effort we're putting in, that's stimulative. And then the repairs, the rebuilding, that will also help. Individually, there are great tragedies. People have died, people are injured, and their well-being and their homes and loved ones are deeply affected. So that can't be recovered. But on a material basis, we will. Well, actually, there are a number of systems that get utilized by counties, and they have the redundancy to use those systems when they want to notify the public. One is maybe reverse 911. One is emergency alert system. One is through programs like it's called NICCEL. These are alert and warning systems. Various counties use different ways to push information out to the public. And to my knowledge, they were used by the counties where they could be used. And as a part of their protocol, they were implemented in this particular. What would you, would they send out emergency alerts to folks who were saying they didn't get anything? They weren't. So these alerts come out in various forms. They come out over social media. They come out by not notifying your phone directly. If it's a reverse 911, they have that in a database. If you opt in, you could opt out of those. You would be able to get notifications from the dispatch centers of these communities. The idea is that there's multiple ways to be able to notify them. And I can't speak to who didn't get what they didn't get at the time. This fire came through the night, was rapidly moving. Some people were awakened while the fire was actually at their doorstep and in the middle of the night. So I think that the time will tell where we're at on who got the notifications in the areas that didn't. To my knowledge, they use all of the different modalities that they have within their protocols to use. Yeah, again, I think it's a little too premature to determine what actually worked and what didn't. I think right now it's been the focus of continuing to fight the fire and get the people out of harm's way. You mentioned out of state firefighting assets. Could you tell us what the status is? Are they on the road or are they preparing or are they going to get there when they're supposed to get there in terms of fighting fire and leaving? Absolutely, they're all in various stages of response. We already have some of those assets in the state and in route and actually assigned to incidents. We have others that are still on the road and we'll be coming in here today tomorrow in the next day, which is what we need because that allows us to plug them into these incidents at the right time and the right places. And so we're very comfortable with that. Every day the incidents are reevaluating what their needs are and that allows us to respond to that and get out in front and get them additional resources if they need it. We are at very low containment on most of these, but I do want to bring that up because I know I committed over the week to say we would get you some, you know, folks are working really hard, you know, and a day like yesterday, particularly on the Atlas fire, these fires are just literally burning faster than firefighters can run in some cases. And so imagine being out there in difficult terrain with miles and miles of fire line and to try to catch up to that and put in hand line or lay hoes, very challenging. And fires are spotting thousands of feet, miles in some cases ahead. So it's just very difficult to get any kind of containment. But I will tell you, as of this morning on the Atlas fire, we have, they're reporting 3% containment. So that's up from zero. Every other fire, the nuns are all at about 2% or 3%. Very happy to see what's going on on some of the fires in the Sierra, in Nevada, in Yuba and Butte County. For example, the Cascade fire in Yuba County at 12,000 acres is 20% contained this morning. The Laporte fire in Butte County is 15% contained. Fire that was in Calaveras County started at the same time as all of these near West Point is 70% contained. And I can tell you they released 15 fire engines off that fire this morning and are shipping them to these fires and putting them right on the fire line. The Lakeville fire off Highway 37 there in the Susun Marsh is 70% contained. The Ridge fire at Indian Valley Reservoir from earlier in the last week is at 75%. So we are catching up and I mentioned the Canyon too fire in Southern California is at 45% contained and that fire has essentially been stopped and we're quickly getting resources off. So we are making progress. Don't let our focus on obviously our priority fires, which are the Atlas, the Tubbs and those fire other fires in and around Napa, let you believe that we're not actively working on these others. What people don't see every day is we are initial attacking many, many new fires that start that we put out at a small acreage. So these resources are not only fighting the big fires, we are trying to keep every other fire in the state small so it doesn't consume other resources. And so all of this is actively going on and we're having success across the state. It's just obviously been very small and incremental on these large and challenging fires. Absolutely. So here's been our focus. We've anticipated this wind event coming yesterday. The winds shifted to a different direction, the more traditional onshore flow, which pushed them back to the north, back on themselves and on the north end of the fire. So while that was happening, we were focusing our efforts on the southern end of these fires, trying to get containment lines in anticipation of the wind change. So now what's happened is these fires are burning back to the south from the north. And so we can get in there now and anticipate what take advantage of what control lines are in. But again, 40 mile an hour winds, 8 percent humidity, extremely dry fuel beds. These are going to be very unpredictable fires for the next several days. That contributed all to the magnitude of what we're seeing now has had things diminished in recent years in a way that you think is why we're seeing such a large scale problem. So here's what's important to talk about on these fires. The majority of these fires, the acreage being burned here, all on state responsibility at area lands, almost entirely private landowners, private watersheds. I know that the question came up about the state budgeted for this. This state invested decades ago in wildland fire response. And we have never once been hindered by our ability to gain resources and access resources to fight these fires. The governor and the legislature have committed, and that is why the state has been so successful in getting resources and doing that. On the federal side, obviously we have been significant concerns nationally about the system by which the wildland fire response is funded in the country. When the federal agencies and particularly the Forest Service reaches its funding cap in its base budget, it no longer has the authority to spend outside of that, and they have to start dipping into their other programs like fire prevention. All the work that we do to prevent catastrophic fires like this, to reduce fuel loading gets impacted because they have to shift that money into fire protection. While that is not directly impacting these fires, because these are state responsibility fires, the challenge is that we really depend on the federal firefighting resources to come in and help us, just like we help them. As I indicated, 170 fire engines are coming from outside the state. Many of those are coming from the federal system. Actually, 154 are coming from the Forest Service from around the country. If they don't have adequate funding to ensure their wildland fire program is fully supported, we don't have the ability to reach out to them to get mutual aid and assistance at the same capacity. So yes, indirectly it is critical that we have a strong funding mechanism for our federal partners. Where are we in the cause of the fire that just broke up? Yeah, I know there's been lots of talk out there about what potential causes are. Understand that all of these fires are under investigation, and this is nothing new. We say this all the time. It's literally the truth. At this point, trying to speculate on any cause is premature and also impacts our ability to get to the bottom of the investigation. We want to know what the causes are so we can prevent those in the future. But at this point, it's way too early to talk about it. Our primary efforts focused on stopping this fire and protecting lives. We do, however, have investigators spread across all of these fires, actively working on the causes. And understanding it's earlier than anywhere. I'll be honest with you. At this time, I don't have any information on any potential of the causes. It's the end we talked about yesterday. In this state, people are related to over 95% of the fires that start. And so it can be really a number of any of those causes. Can I just take one more question? Question for the quiet warrior with the main topic, especially within the victims there, it's a little premature. But they were saying what resources are they going to obtain from the state level or federal level for those who lost their houses, loved ones, materialistic things, aside from the insurance and things of that nature? Sure. Right now we're out doing assessments to look at exactly what programs the federal government has that will assist individuals with the recovery area. Obviously getting into those areas has been a little bit problematic, but we're working with the National Guard to get some aircraft up to do some assessments for us with remote piloted vehicles. And with that information, we'll get a better idea of the requirements to understand exactly what can our programs do at FEMA, what other programs from the federal government will come to play, especially maybe programs from agricultural, maybe tribal programs for tribes that may be impacted from BIA, other programs such as Federal Highways and Mercy Road Program, and SBA for small and just small. So we're looking at all those today. We're primarily focused today on Sonoma and Napa, and we'll get out to other areas when situations warrant that we could do that. But in the meantime, what we're trying to do is help people that are sheltered by providing commodities to those shelters in the interim and making sure that they're safe right now where they're at and then focused on those programs. So those will come and those will come soon.