 Well, thanks. It's good to be out here, by the way. Thank you, John and the team. Don't worry about me, but I just want to I was thanking you for allowing us to be here in North Valley. The Animal Rescue Group that's been around since, what, 1999? You've been at this and it's a good reminder of how how integral an organization like this is to our disaster response efforts and disaster recovery efforts. John was just reminding me something most of us don't need to be reminded of and that is the people that are so attached and understandably so to their animals, their pets, oftentimes will put their lives at risk in order to preserve and protect the animals. And as a consequence, tragically, we've lost people's lives because they didn't feel that there was a home or an opportunity to take care of their animals in a time of emergency. This organization plays a profoundly important role in addressing that issue and ultimately advancing the effort of saving people's lives and organizing a construct where people can get back to some semblance of normalcy in their lives. Once the emergency is behind us, once people are out of their shelters, and once people are able to begin to rebuild their lives and bring their families and their animals and pets back. So I just was here at a respect and appreciation for your work and out of gratitude for the thousands of thousands of people have been benefited over the course of decades by their largesse and by their contribution. We also spent a little bit of time up in Paradise, been back relatively consistently over the last couple years going back to last time President Trump visited the state of California. We visited together Paradise just weeks after the fires. Of course, today we met with the President, talked about the status of over 28 large fire complexes here in the state of California, some 16,500 firefighters battling these blazes all throughout the state from the northern part of the state up in Siskew bleeding in to the Oregon border and of course down at the Mexican border almost a thousand miles separating some of these complexes. The good news is we've seen a lot of progress in the last week or so and in particular we are being blessed right now by Mother Nature a little bit with the winds calming down and the conditions becoming a little bit more favorable in terms of our suppression efforts. Still dressing needs of 44,000 people that have been evacuated here in the state and obviously concerned about the over 4,200 structures that we know have been destroyed so far and we say so far because when we get back in into these parts of the state where we haven't been able to actually assess the damage we anticipate that structure damage to go significantly up. I want to thank the leadership, the Paradise in particular for their efforts to try to get people back and rebuilding their homes. It was great to see a one-stop shop and that old Bank of America facility where people are getting over-the-counter support and are getting kind of quick response that's necessary in order to rebuild lives and rebuild this remarkable community of Paradise. And I said this a few years back and I'll say it again we want to be here in the long haul for Paradise and the community and the county. We recognize once the cameras go once the fires are suppressed that's when the real work begins of rebuilding lives not just removing debris but rebuilding homes and bringing families back together rebuilding schools, rebuilding a sense of community, a sense of place and purpose and so the state of California is committed to long haul and we're very grateful by all of those remarkable leaders that we spent a little time with today for their extraordinary contribution to rebuilding this community and being an example of resiliency for hundreds of other communities across this state that are struggling to get through this extraordinary moment in our state's history. We're dealing and closing with an unprecedented number of fire starts in the last 30 days. In fact it was 29 or so days ago that we started experiencing an unprecedented number of lightning strikes nearly 14,000 lightning strikes over a 72-hour period impacting the state. 1,100 fire starts that we've had to address in the last 30 days 2.8 million acres in the last 30 days that have been destroyed 3.2 close to 3.3 million acres so far this fire season and compare that to last fire season 277,000 acres through the entire calendar year we're already at 3.2 million acres so far in 2020 and in 2020 we've experienced world record breaking temperatures in this state and Death Valley 130 degrees the hottest recorded August in our history a heat dome the likes of which we've not seen at least I haven't seen in my lifetime throughout the entire west coast of the United States 114 degrees in Burbank 121 degrees and other parts of LA County temperatures 3 a.m. along the coast at 103 degrees I just stipulate it's not even to me debatable it's not a belief system it's about acknowledging science it's not about believing in facts or not believing in facts facts are facts science is science it's about acknowledging the science and acknowledging the facts that the hots are getting a lot hotter the drives are getting a lot drier we're still struggling through the last five six years where we have been in drought conditions in this state climate well climate change is real and so is our responsibility to do more on vegetation management and forest management I don't see those as mutually exclusive I see those as mutual responsibility of both the state federal government and private sector partners and we're committed to more than doubling our forest management in the state and are committed to advancing more partnerships with the federal government and that was part of the conversation we had today with the president that happy to take any questions Governor Newsom you mentioned climate change I'll use that as a segue into the briefing had down in Sacramento today with President Trump did you get a sense of what he gained and took away from your conversation today and what the implications might be for the state as it continues to fight fire I think it was important to remind the president of two points and I don't mean this pejoratively or even paternalistically or in any way dismissively but it was an opportunity to remind the president that 57% of the forested land in the state of california is under federal jurisdiction just 3% under the state's jurisdiction and while the president I believe is right we've long acknowledged my administration has substantially begun to address the need to focus more proactively on forest management vegetation management prescribed burns and we've fast tracked an historic number of projects just the last 18 months that we can't do this alone that we're going to need the federal government to step up in substantial ways and so that was number one very meaningful opportunity to directly make that case the president number two was important to also make the case that the president and his administration have entered into an unprecedented partnership with the state in the U.S. Forest Service just a few weeks ago this was lost with everything else we worked over the last year to develop a partnership to commit to mutually addressing over 1 million acres a year of forest management again it's a drop in the bucket still inadequate but it was a significant milestone so I wanted the president to know that we have established a baseline of engagement that I'd like to build off of so that was an opportunity and yes frankly to you know actually state in a way that wasn't trying to take a cheap shot I'm trying to score political points but to make the argument we believe in climate change out here and we don't believe it just because science says it we observe it we experience it and uh and that was an opportunity to remind him of a point he's very familiar with but to do so in an honest and forthright way and we did and you were in paradise earlier um where the campfire was in 2018 and now back here again with this current round of fires we're experiencing um just to be back here again and see this this happening I mean what was it like just kind of to you know go back there almost two years um to when that fire happened to get a sense from locals and and other people in the community what's changed since then I've been back a couple times in between uh and including opening a school year last year and I remember I was saying this in an event the other day I remember being there at the first day of school last year and the teacher was telling me uh that the kids were experiencing PTSD when they saw fog and they connected that fog with a fire and smoke and so it only expresses the obvious the PTSD those same kids must be suffering through all of the community up here suffering through yet again to deal with another historic fire season you look at the maps of these fire complexes and it's almost like a puzzle fitting exactly into where the burn scar was a few years ago with those 153,000 acres that that were part and parcel of the campfire the the narrative that is paradise and now of course all the surrounding impacts of this year's fire season so look we have more to do uh we are world-class suppression operation cal fire second to none office of mercy services second to none our mutual aid second to none 83 fire engines are have come from all over the united states that mutual aid system is expressed beyond our borders but a suppression mentality can't be a permanent mindset meaning we have to focus on prevention we cannot allow the conditions to fester and that's why the issue to me the twin issues of forest management and addressing the root cause of why the huts are getting so much higher and the drives are getting so much drier is foundational to the fate and future of this community you were in butte county i believe on friday sometime last week why did you want to come back so quickly and should residents uh expect i guess more visits during yeah i have a responsibility this community a responsibility of people that are in need to be more supportive and to be more helpful and i look i i'm not naive good enough never is it's pretty obvious you know 1200 building permits is not 12 000 300 plus housing developments is not 3000 i mean we've got a lot of work to do up here and and i as a look i i try to hold to my commitments you know we can agree on certain issues we can agree situationally but sustainably i'm here for the long haul to try to help support the rebuilding recovery in this county and i want to be here not just to address issues related to fires but also more broadly the issues related to this health crisis covid and the economic recovery that's part and parcel of the future of this part of the state look i'm a fifth generation californian i grew up in very furrow part half time with my dad in placer county in a small community called dutch flat literally mainstream dutch flat where the golden scoop was the only thing that mattered to me in my life little ice cream store and it's pretty much the only business that's still operating there uh and so i have deep respect and the sensibilities of rural california and and uh respect uh our diverse communities even if folks weren't there in my election i real responsibility to represent people uh even if they're out there trying to support an effort to kick me out of office i still have responsibility to those families in this community that's fun and also with action news now um so what you talked a lot about force management what is kind of the plan for force management heading forward so let's talk about where we are and may specifically answer the question moving forward california more than doubled its active force management in the last calendar year it was a modest 390 000 acres the federal government was even more modest they actively managed 200 000 acres that's inadequate to the needs of the state and so the commitment we made going forward we marked a significant partnership what we call stewardship agreement with the us forest service to get to a million acres a year uh that's going to be a baseline commitment between the state and the federal government it's the first time though we're collaborating and coordinating sharing map sharing technologies and sharing resources so it's a significant step in the symbolism and the substance but it's a first step because we have to manage millions of acres a year not just a million acres a year i got one more question for you um so what was kind of the thinking behind going up to berry creek and signing the bill before kind of addressing the the victims along with devastation and kind of pushing the climate change thing first what was kind of the thought process well it's not a first i've been up here six or seven times focusing on suppression focusing on rebuilding focusing on our recovery focusing on making sure that this community has the resources including by the way getting a number of what we refer to as f mags signed by the president of the united states doing statewide emergency proclamations which i had previously done for this community so all of those things were foundationally done and also to express not a close fist but an open hand to support the community we did all of that and we expressed the obvious that when you are experiencing world record breaking heat in your state and you're experiencing declining your snowpack during your lifetime when you're experiencing five years of record drought and you're experiencing the reality of 163 million trees that have died because of that drought you're experiencing climate change and for me not to state that as self-evident obvious i think would be a dereliction of my responsibility my role as governor of california thank you for that answer one final question could we have been better prepared for this fire there are some people saying that it took a lot a little while for resources to kind of get to this fire do you think that we could have been better prepared in any way it's the answer is always yes right i mean look here's here's the challenge we had and it's absolutely true i i don't think this i've experienced it as a lieutenant governor and governor i've been on so many fires of the last seven years throughout the state we've never been more stretched in our resources than over the last month so anyone that wants to observe that they're absolutely accurate in that observation and that reality and while it's true we have 14600 folks roughly 15 000 firefighters out on the lines today we need a lot more than that and that's why we've asked for support was on phone with prime minister of canada who's sending resources down here justin trudeau i was thanking bb netanyahu for sending fire fire personnel from israel i wanted to express publicly if i haven't done it enough i'll say it again to greg abbott at texas who just sent 50 engines from texas which is a huge help to help us up with fire near the creek fire we have been blessed by folks as far away as new jersey governor murphy just sent three engines out here that came off this airplane just two days ago and so we've been stretched by this unprecedented number of new strikes and and while it's true that i put an historic amount of money into our cow fire budget this year including by the way supplementing after the budget was signed just a few months ago an additional 72 million dollars to hire 863 seasonal firefighters thank god we did that had we not done that we'd have been even worse shaped so look this is all an experience that is novel for all of us because we've never experienced this many acres burning in one calendar year in our lifetime it clearly is requiring us to do even more next year i also have a question out of mendicino county where the august complex is part of now the the largest ever wildfire and you mentioned that a lot of that forest that land is federal land so i'm wondering is there anything that can be done to get more local control or other measures that can be taken at the state or even county level to i guess have more control over some of that land yeah i mean you know the august complex is now and and it's officially largest it was by the way downsized with new mapping yesterday by about 100 000 acres interestingly but still nonetheless just shy of 800 000 acres it's the largest uh we've ever experienced in the state the bottom line of the stewardship agreement between the federal government and the state was to do just that to begin to overlay and map our priorities working with counties working with cities but more importantly perhaps the 40 percent of forested land in the state that's owned by private sector to make sure we're all on the same page working more collaborative prioritize and execute much more quickly and efficiently our vegetation management efforts let me be specific last year i signed an emergency proclamation not after an emergency but before there was any major emergencies in order to fast track through some sequel waivers high priority vegetation management projects that were impacting 200 vulnerable communities we took the example of paradise and we looked at the issues of social economics we looked at ingress we looked at egress we looked at people that did not have access to vehicles we looked at people that were mobile home parks we looked at all the surrounding communities and we prioritize those projects inefficiently and effectively moved projects that were 15 years in the queue and we got them all done within 15 months we also have now directed 20 million additional acres be reviewed to fast track the environmental process on that land as well so those two things are happening concurrent now with the new federal partnerships concurrent with a deeper recognition that we have a lot more work to do in an era of human impacted climate change