 We're live. You'll be the judge of that. Well, the phone says we're live. We're working on seeing if we can get better air in here. We're checking to see if there might be some more chairs. If anybody is having a real difficulty standing out, you can have my chair. It's one of these ones up here. Oh, and we also... We also have translations available. If there's anyone who needs the translation, please come. We have what is needed to help you. Thank you, Teresa. So, again, welcome to our first meeting that's focused on debris removal. So, we're going to have a lot of meetings over the coming months. Once we get to other subjects, we'll have meetings about those. But tonight, the intent of this meeting is to answer your questions about debris removal. We know you've gotten a lot of questions. We're going to answer as many as we can. I'm going to tell you right up front, we're not going to be able to answer every question that you have tonight. There are more than 5,000 individual structures that have been lost in these fires and probably 5,000 individual questions that people have. We're going to get as many answered as we can. The ones that we can't answer tonight will get the information and we'll bring it back to the next meeting we have on this. So, we're in process. What I'm going to tell you right now is that I'm in it with you. The City of Santa Rosa is in it with you. The County of Sonoma is in it with you. The State of California is in it with you. And the government of the United States is in it with you. Now, whether that's comforting or bothersome, I do say that. But we're here together and we'll get through this if we stick together. So, tonight we're going to hear from the Governor's Office of Emergency Services, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the County Department of Health Services, Environmental Health Division, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA. These are the folks who are here helping us. Almost all these agencies are not based in Santa Rosa. Their employees don't live in Santa Rosa, but they're here to help us. They're spending time away from home. They deserve our respect. They're public servants and they're the next responders. Not the first responders, the next responders. So, each of the individual managers of these agencies will talk about their role in the debris removal process. So, what we're going to do is answer some of the most frequently asked questions first. The City and County have been collecting these questions over the past several days through a survey, through social media, through calls that come in through our call centers. Myself and Chairwoman Shirley Zane from the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors are going to be asking the frequently asked questions to the subject matter experts up here. And they'll provide answers. And Chairwoman Zane is going to talk about how the rest of the meeting will go after that. There are people here who have real questions and we're going to pay attention to you to make sure you get us through it early. First of all, I'm really sorry it's hot in here. You know, it's not like you guys haven't gone through it. You have to sit in this really hot, awful gym. So, really sorry about that. It's a hot two days, but maybe we can find a better venue if we need more air. So, I get that. It's awful. So, we know that in addition to these frequently asked questions, and by the way, we're passing them out right now. If you don't get one, there'll be some in the back where you can also get them on the Sonoma County Recovers.org. And that is something that everybody should write down if you don't already have it. That's going to be the key website for the city of the county, SonomaCountyRecovers.org. And so, to help you get the right answers that you have, after we ask some of the questions that you guys have given us, there's going to be tables in the back. And at the end, we want you to go up, write your questions, ask people if you get a chance to get your questions answered better, even yet. But if not, I promise you, this is only going to, this is not the last town hall we're at, and I'm degree removal. There'll be more to come. As many as we need to do, we will do to make sure that your needs get met. So, with that, I would like to introduce and thank the congressman who has been here throughout the last three weeks, and has stood beside us. We need FEMA, we need the federal government, and we're very blessed to have congressmen who are really here with us. So, thank you, Mike Thompson. Thank you so much. First, let me say I'm very, very sorry that you have to be here. I'm sorry for the conditions that brought you here. I just want you to know that I will do everything in my power to make sure that the federal government does everything in its power to try and get things right, and to make sure that we can be strong and move forward together and get this all behind us. I can tell you from past experience, given different disasters throughout our different districts, that I have never seen FEMA work as swiftly as they're working on this particular disaster. They're doing a great job. They're working closely with the office of emergency services at the state level. I've never seen them work so well together. If you take over the dictionary to hand in glove, it's FEMA and OES, and they're working with every level of government, the county, the city, and not just in Snowman County, but in Napa County and in Lake County. I'm very, very pleased with the work that they're doing, and I just ask you to please be patient. We have never seen a disaster in the magnitude of this. This is unprecedented, and we're going to get through this together. And as Chris and Shirley both said, the more meetings we have, the more questions we'll have, but we'll get the answers to those questions, and we'll all stay on your side. So thank you very, very much. I'll tell you that we were sitting at a table yesterday working on some of these plans with the Director of Office of Emergency Services, Mark Yerlin, I think I said his name right, and he said, you guys are two to three weeks ahead of every other disaster going on in the United States right now, and so I don't know if that's very comforting right now, but it does mean that we're doing something right, and we need to keep doing it because this is going to be a long haul. So we're going to hear a little bit from each one of our speakers tonight, and then I'm going to ask them those questions that you've all been asking, and we'll see if we can get as many answers as possible. So I'm going to start off by introducing from the CAB OES office the Acting Chief Statewide Operations Branch, Eric Lamarou. Good evening, everybody. It's a pleasure to be here. I know there's a lot of frustration in this room. I know there's a lot of passions running high. As I said to you last week, I can't begin to appreciate for those of you that have lost loved ones and lost homes, you can't begin to appreciate what you're going through. But what we promised you last week was that we would start the dialogue on this free program. We didn't have all the questions. I stood out back for an hour after meeting last week and tried to address as many questions with my colleagues as we could. There's been a tremendous amount of work that has taken place. Not only to mobilize the actual resources into your community to begin it, but a lot of people behind the scenes that have been working on getting your questions answered. And that's what our objective is tonight. We've got answers to more questions than we had last week. We don't have answers to all the questions and those new questions that come up will continue to work on those to continue to keep you informed. But all I would ask, and all everybody else I think in this room would ask is that we are not in your shoes. We can't begin to think we're in your shoes. But we are doing everything we can to help you and to answer your questions and to bring forward options. Some options you may not want to take advantage of and you have a right to that. We are trying, and there are people sitting here and there are people throughout this room that won't get recognized tonight that have been busting their butts over the last week to try to do a better job of keeping you informed. So that's really what tonight is about. So I would just ask if we can all be respectful of one another in the room. We will do everything we can through this program and through the program that will come after this to try to get to each and every person's questions. So I first want to acknowledge our partners from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers who has environmental protection agencies that are here on the ground beginning to do tremendous work and are beginning to continue to mobilize. So I'm pleased to have them with us here tonight and with that we'll go ahead and start the questions. The first question that a lot of people have asked us is what is the Sonoma County Consolidated Fire Debris Removal Program? So your issue was... I understand. We wanted to address some of the most... the questions we're getting the most and then there will be opportunities for more questions to be asked and there will be opportunities for one-on-one questions that are taken. Okay? So the question is what is the program? For anybody that's not familiar with it, it's a two-phase program. The first phase is mandatory cleanup from all the household hazardous waste and toxic materials on each and every home site. And that's a program that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is actually going to begin those collection efforts tomorrow. Okay? The second phase is going to be run by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. And that's a full cleanup for those of you that authorized us to do that on your particular parcel. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and its contractors will be mobilizing to do a full and complete cleanup and viral testing of your soil and returning to you a safe clean site if you can in your rebuild. I apologize if any of these seem redundant for what we've passed out, but this is being videotaped. So the people that couldn't be here could see it as well. So that's why there's some redundancy. The second question is, my house was destroyed in the fire. Can I go back onto my property to see if I can find valuables for memorandum? Our number one priority is to give you the chance. Some of you have already had that opportunity and are continuing to, but for you to have the chance to be back on your property to sip through the ash and collect those precious heirlooms or other items that may have fortunately been left behind. You're going to have that opportunity now if you've been allowed to return. You'll have that opportunity after EPA comes through and does household hazardous waste sweeps and you'll probably continue to have some time before the Army Corps of Engineers mobilizes onto your property to do the full cleanup. So you will have plenty of opportunity to sip through the debris on your home site and collect what you can collect. So then that, speaking of how safe is that, can I start cleaning and burn debris from my property? We don't want anybody to remove any ash or debris from your property. We'll talk later about if you choose to do it yourself. The county's adopting standards to guide that operation. But we don't want you to be removing any ash or debris. In terms of the safety of sifting through the material at the reentry points, I know the city and the county is providing gloves and masks and cifters to help you with that. We would encourage you to take advantage of those items if they're giving you so that you can safely go through that ash. Hang on. Is participation in this program mandatory? Do I have to participate in this program and then how much will the program cost? So the phase one, the household hazardous waste sweep is mandatory. There's a public health emergency here in Sonoma County with all the homes that have been lost. The governor issued an executive order last Saturday that authorized the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to come in and remove all of those toxic materials from your home site. So that is mandatory. I'm sorry, what was the question? The government's made for phase one. Phase two is where you have the option. You can move forward with our program where the only cost to you will be those insurance proceeds that are set aside for debris. State and federal government will cover the rest of the costs. If some people have asked about an opt-out program, so the county board of supervisors this Tuesday will be voting on or will accept a chance for the opt-out program. What we're trying to do with the city is the county and the city have the same opt-out standards that that will be passed on this Tuesday's board meeting. So if you don't want to go to this program, you have a chance to opt out under certain standards. So I think, is there anything else that you wanted to say? Phase one, the household hazardous waste sweep is beginning tomorrow. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will begin clearing home sites tomorrow. We're going to have an opportunity for more questions that we're not addressing. Let's move on to the second part of our program. So we are going to introduce, and the mayor is going to ask some questions now from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Tom Duffelman, who is the federal policy coordinator, he's going to give a brief overview and then there'll be some questions. So again, my name is Tom Duffelman. I work for the Environmental Protection Agency. I'm leading EPA's efforts here in Sonoma County. As you've already heard, EPA's mission here is very specific. Our job is to come in and remove household hazardous waste standards from all burn parcels in the counties. That includes residential, commercial, and public structures. It's our understanding that there are more than 5,000 of these parcels, and so our job is to come on every one of these parcels and remove the household hazardous waste. Just so we're clear about household hazardous waste, when we talk about this, you know, we're referring to the types of chemicals and chemical containers that all of us have in our garages and our backyards. It's things like batteries, propane cylinders, paints, solvents, any type of toxic material that you might have had in your house. And you know, yes, many of these materials may have burned up in the fire, but we're already seeing that many of these materials did survive in the fire, so we'll be collecting all of these containers. As was already mentioned, we've begun. We're going to begin our household hazardous waste collection cleanup tomorrow. We've spent a good part of this week building out our staging area where we'll bring all the materials back to. So that staging area is constructed and it's ready to go. So our teams will be in the field tomorrow collecting the household hazardous waste materials. We'll be starting it in Coffee Park tomorrow. The question was, I believe, why can't a private... Okay, I think everybody heard the question. Okay, sorry, I'll repeat the question. Why can't a private contractor who has appropriate certifications come in and complete the household hazardous waste removal in advance in order to expedite the process? So that may be a better question for the county. The county has declared a public health emergency requirement in the UK to come in and perform this task. So that's my understanding. Further than that, I think I would defer your question.