 disaster seen here in our state it's been a remarkable year close just shy of four million acres now burned year to date in the state of California 3.95 million acres you contrast that this time last year 158,000 acres were burned 158,000 this time last year just shy of four million acres have already been burned in this historic wildfire season five of the six biggest wildfires and our state's history have occurred just since August August 15th just consider August 15th where we had an unprecedented number of lightning strikes 11,000 or so lightning strikes over a 72-hour period that precipitated in a number of these larger fires and what we now refer to as fire complexes as many of these individual fires begin to come together in these larger complexes the August complex continuing to burn very soon will be over a million acres again simply without precedence something we could never have imagined even a few years ago here in the state of California the LNU SCU not just the August complex but the Creek fire northern complex being now the largest five out of six fires that we've ever experienced in our state's history we're here at an elementary school victim of one of our two recent fires Zog fire the glass fire these fires continue to rage the fire complex that we are in and around here just 5% contained some 57,000 acres have already burned in this complex it's a site familiar to many folks here in the Napa region and it's a scene that's also very familiar with people in the Napa and Sonoma regions that have been torn asunder by wildfires seemingly every single year this drumbeat where people are exhausted concerned anxious about their fate and their future not just their safety and so clearly we have our work cut out for us to deal with not only suppression but prevention strategies deal with the immediate as well as strategies to address the long term as it relates to the immediate we continue to be immediately focused on suppression strategies particularly here at the glass fire 2100 firefighters are working this fire exclusively we have firefighters from all across the country not just across the state of California working these fires we have mutual aid system that includes now six states that are providing resources firefighting resources other mutual aid resources including aircraft supporting our National Guard men and women will continue to request and have continued our pursuit of more assets out of state to help us with these fires in addition to continuing our mutual aid from all over the state which will amplify as we pull away from other complexes and begin to resource even more fully the focus of our energies here in northern part of the state good progress has been made on the vast majority of the 23 active fire complexes in the state real progress is taking place in some of the larger complexes the Zog fire this complex and around Napa Sonoma we're putting all we have in terms of our resources particularly over the next 36 or so hours as the winds begin to shift directions and as the winds begin to increase we were just up the hill already at the higher elevations one thousand two thousand feet those wind bursts already 10 15 miles an hour we expect them size 25 to 30 miles an hour overnight and into the morning and so we are maintaining our vigilance evacuation orders are in place and around Angwin where we are stones throw away and we encourage people to take very very seriously the evacuation orders coming from our shares our mutual aid California highway patrol don't risk your life you can replace your property you can't replace a loved one or a life lost including your own and that's why it's incumbent upon us to take very seriously this moment and i say that as someone that's been up here last few days that saw the aftermath of those 50 60 mile an hour winds on sunday monday where you saw these spotting incidences where fires were coming up all over the place in a nanosecond the ability of speed for these fires to move where you may think it's over the ridge and you're okay within a moment there could be spotting related to these embers that are flying and in these conditions these hot dry conditions with these winds the vast majority of those embers actually will ignite fires it's not the exception it's almost the rule and that's why it's absolutely incumbent upon people to take these mandatory and recommended evacuations very very seriously we continue in our pursuit to support proactive forest management and vegetation management we completed 35 high profile projects here in the state of california to focus on prevention we have put an historic amount of money into suppression including getting 858 seasonal firefighters a full complement and force just in the last 90 days out working these fires i'm working on next year's budget already uh we'll release it in january but i can assure folks that we'll put even more resources in this space on suppression prepositioning assets more technology from infrared cameras to the ability to use lidar and radar and satellite technologies getting more fire engines and personnel not just temporary on seasonal but full-time personnel we'll continue our aggressive without precedent historic forest and vegetation management efforts we have substantially increased those efforts in the last two years and we will increase them more into the coming years including the requisite partnership with the federal government we signed a memorandum of understanding just six or so weeks ago with the u.s. forest service the first time in states history that we have now developed a partnership with the forest service to double the amount of acreage that we are actively managing with prescribed burns with vegetation management forest thinning that is judiciously considered targeted to vulnerable communities and done always with an environmental lens and so that is going to be a big part of our effort moving forward in addition to prepositioning assets and continuing our suppression efforts i want to thank again the men and women of local law enforcement for supporting a wildfire suppression efforts keeping people safe our sheriffs our men and women uniform all stripes including our police officers i want to thank the california highway patrol and of course our extraordinary workforce at cal fire and the mutual aid system of their colleagues that have come in from all over the country as well as from other parts of the globe we just had israeli firefighters fly back to israel we've had canadian firefighters that have helped us in this state in the last few weeks that are back now in canada gives you a sense of the scale and scope of the support systems that we have in place here in the state of california so with that of course we're here happy take any questions what we've been doing just that we utilized cap and trade money 200 million dollars a year for our vegetation management and that's happened over the last three years that investment and that includes private landowners includes public lands that are managed by the federal government including the state lands three percent that are managed formally by the state what we do is we don't look at those jurisdictions we look at priority we look at vulnerable communities we look at ingress egress we look at historic patterns and that's when we put out our portfolio priorities that include private lands not just those federal and state lands we did 35 high profile projects that impacted 200 vulnerable communities got those projects done within 15 months some of those projects quite literally not figuratively were designed to be done in 15 years so we were able to pull those projects forward do them much more expeditiously and you'll be hearing over the course of the next number of weeks dozens of more projects including on private land that we will prioritize for the same kind of active forest management that's required of this moment well we have 17,000 active firefighters working the fires as i speak on these 23 complexes throughout the state we peaked just shy about 20,000 active firefighters supporting our mutual aid system from states as far as new jersey and with substantial resources from states like texas including our neighboring states up in the pacific northwest notably oregon and washington we have extraordinary mutual aid system with local governments not just other state entities as well as our voluntary firefighting force which is second to none and to the extent people contract that support you've seen it actively here in napa region i seen a number of wineries with private firefighters or fire force that are working those fires i'm committed to continuing to increase the total number of not just seasonal firefighters here in the state but we did this year an 80 million additional commitment to increase the number of firefighters that are full-time equivalent firefighters so we are at ranks we haven't been in decades i want to continue to bolster those ranks here in the state and we are always looking for efficiencies we're always looking for mutual strategies and mutual support and to the extent that our mutual aid system is insufficient we would always consider other strategies in order to supplement resources but right now the strategies we have in place we think are adequate even in the extreme and we are dealing with extreme that we've never dealt with in our history with these lightning strikes and we hope to never experience something like this again though based upon some of these larger global trends we're certainly not assuming that going forward well it's not just my private life before i got in politics in fact that we're involved in four wineries here in napa but a lot of family up here just left my cousin a moment ago works for congressman mike thompson i've got a lot of very close friends and i've got a lot of employees up here that have been torn asunder in the last few years lost their homes we have folks right now that don't know if their homes have homes to come back to we have people employees that don't know that they have a place to come back to work and so look i have all these things in a blind trust i don't actively manage these things and i'm very cautious about that and i think it's an important thing that people in elected office that that maintain that firewall forgive me but as it relates to having a deep empathy and understanding for what's going on up here i can assure you i do yeah we're not going to give up we're going to deal with the immediate which is suppression we're going to deal with the immediate moving in the next fire season which is prevention and we're going to deal with the medium and long term which is bolstering our resources both equipment and suppression technology personnel human resources but also look at the long-term issue which is a trend line hottest august in history hottest recorded temperature on planet earth at least since 1931 in death valley just a number of weeks ago we're seeing the hot's getting much hotter the dry is getting much drier we're seeing what traditionally have been smaller containable fires become unprecedented mega fires we have 163 million dead trees because of unprecedented drought between 2011 and 2017 we're dealing with extremes that scientists had predicted we're dealing with temperatures that objectively not subjectively a hotter than they've ever been in modern recorded history in the state of california so many of the things we projected projected and predicted would occur in 20 30 40 years are taking place today and that's why we need to decarbonize our economy uh that creates opportunity that creates a strategy that's inclusive where we're not leaving communities behind and that we future proof the state of california which is my commitment and resolve well there's no state in the country that's more unpaid sick leave workers comp addressing the pandemic and health supports worker supports eviction protections moratorium on a series of other issues that create compounding stress on families we've tried to provide unprecedented supports for working folks and earn income tax credit over a billion dollars distributed in the last number of months we're trying to address the immediate needs of people that have been evacuated from their homes and taking our covid protocols and getting people out of congregate shelters to the extent possible into individualized hotel rooms where they are health and their safety are considered based upon the covid protocols we have learned a lot through our evacuation and communication strategies because of incidences that have occurred in the last number of years and around this region of the state and those are being utilized in real time the relationships that we form with county sheriffs local health officers local emergency operators is second to none there's a familiarity including our protocols on psps these power shutoffs 50 million dollars we're distributing today to cities and counties to help support their local efforts on resiliency and protocols for evacuation and supporting communications infrastructure even during those psps protocols so we're we're putting everything we can in the immediate and again never giving up situationally on getting these fires suppressed getting back into a framework where we are managing more actively our forest and preparing for next year's wildfire season with urgency i'm glad i mean climate change won't even brought up in the 2016 presidential campaign at least in the debates was wonderful to see it in the first debate unfortunately we don't have kind of support that i think we deserve as californians as americans 40 million americans as it relates to support from the federal government to actively manage their roughly 60 percent of the forest we've been doing that for the federal government the majority of the work that's been done on federal forest has been done by the taxpayers of the state of california we want to see more support in that area our president clearly has a different point of view than 98 percent of world scientists and i encouraged him a few weeks back when he was here if he wasn't interested in scientific knowledge he certainly should be aware of his own eyes and the observed evidence what's going on here in the state of california reminding him what happened at the campfire just a few years ago when i first had the opportunity to spend time with the president talking through these issues and so we're hopeful that we're making a dent and i thought it was encouraging that it came up with presidential debate to continue to raise consciousness not just for the president but for others across this country that climate change is real it's severe and enclosing that mother nature has joined the conversation she bats last she bats a thousand she's chemistry she's biology she's physics she is present in this debate and in this conversation answers unequivocally no and that's demonstrable by the guidelines that we put out last night and i'd encourage the the questioner to take a look at the guidelines we put out and the the tear that we placed the reopening of those theme parks as an example a proof point of my assertion that we are not putting the health and safety of of people visiting the state or recreating the state at theme parks at risk now we're we're actively engaged working with your local health officers working to offset impacts not only on contact tracing related to wildfires but substantial impacts related to testing uh because the wildfires you saw our total daily average of tests in the state of california dropped from about 150 thousand to below 100 thousand because of all of these active wildfires over 8200 wildfires year to date in the state of california 3.4 million of the 3.95 million acres that have burned in the state have burned just since august 15 and that's impacted our entire health care delivery system the economy of the state and certainly impacted our ability to meet the demands and expectations of 40 million people so we'll continue to actively work to support and supplement efforts at the local level the distribution of the psps money today is again a proof point example 13 million to cities 13 million to counties 20 million to special districts two and a half million dollars to tribal governments we put those dollars out earlier and we prioritized those dollars in a way to help support more broadly the health and safety of communities impacted by bad air quality associated with these fires as well as impacting the ability to provide quality health care in a system that's impacted by power outages and evacuations and the like so with that thank you all very much for opportunity and privilege of being here and let me just say this i've got four young kids in elementary school and i can't imagine for the children and parents the families that may be seeing these images what's going through your mind all that anxiety that you already had coming in through this year and into the school season to see your pressure school burned down my heart goes out to every single one of you and all i can say is the state we're in it for the long haul we're not just here for a moment we're here to rebuild and to reimagine your school and all the kids out there we're gonna get through this you're gonna get through this and you hear those sirens out there you got a lot of people that have your backs we have your backs and god bless you we're very sorry you're going through all this