 Good afternoon, Mark Ellarducci, Director of the Governor's Office of Emergency Services. We're here in Lincoln Heights in the town of Weed and in Siskiou County at the Mill Fire. Joining me today is the Mayor and the Sheriff as well as our Cal Fire partners. And we're here today doing an assessment of the impacts of this particular fire into the here into the community. We've been working with the Mayor and the county officials to ensure that resources that are necessary have brought to bear. And yesterday, of course, the governor did proclaim a state of emergency and with that state of emergency came specific capabilities to support the county and the city with disaster aid and funding. Right now, the key thing is to really assess what the needs are. We're going to focus on lifelines, which is power and water and communications. We're going to focus on what the needs of the community members are. Obviously, that's going to be dealing with their sheltering situation, housing situation with the long term. And we're going to talk about debris clearance and getting the community cleaned up to begin the rebuild. This is a fast effort that we're moving for, but it's important to understand that while we're moving fast, this is also going to take some time to work through. So it's more of a marathon, not necessarily a sprint, but we are all united in our efforts to be able to address this in real time. And so I really appreciate the Sheriff, the Mayor and our Cal Fire partners to working together. It is the whole of government. And soon we will be having a local assistance center set up. We're having some town hall meetings. We'll be able to provide different agencies and departments, both governmental, non-governmental faith-based organizations that will come together to align what resources are being made available and help people on their road to recovery. We understand that this is a extremely challenging time. Really, our deepest thoughts and condolences and really sorrow for the loss that has happened here. It's unfortunate. We're seeing these kinds of events time and time again in the state. But I want to really want to, I can't thank the Fire Service, our law enforcement partners enough for their immediate response to this, trying to keep this as contained as possible under very, very difficult circumstances. The work that they did was phenomenal and we can't thank them enough for all of their efforts. For the public, just know that we are leaning forward on this and more will come in the coming days with more information on how we'll be able to help you through this process. So with that, I think that Chief Anthony from Cal Fire is going to say a few words. Good afternoon. My name is Chris Anthony, Chief Deputy Director with Cal Fire. I would also like to just really thank you for the partnership with the city and the county. You can really see that the local relationships here are very strong and those partnerships take time to develop and they need to be developed before the emergency starts, not during the emergency. So, you know, Cal Fire in partnership with Cal OES, as well as our federal and local government counterparts, we knew that coming into this weekend with the extreme heat and how dry the fuels are throughout the state that this was going to be a challenging weekend for us. And unfortunately, there has been a really significant impact to this community as a result of the mill fire. And while the mill fire may not be a large fire in terms of acres burned, it is a significant fire in terms of the impact to the community and the number of structures that were destroyed and the impact that's going to have on people's lives and we absolutely recognize that. Before I turn it over to Chief Anzo, who's our local unit chief here, I really do want to thank all of the first responders, the firefighters and the law enforcement officers for the evacuations that did occur as well as getting this fire barely well contained in a very short amount of time given the challenges that they faced as well as within just a couple hours of this fire igniting a second fire, not far from here, the mountain fire starting as well. So, Cal Fire, we have a lot of resources in the system. Cal OES has worked with the local government fire service agencies throughout the state to pre-position a number of local resources as well. Our federal counterparts are also bringing in more resources into the state, so we're going to ensure from a Cal Fire standpoint that the resources that you need to be able to not only put this fire to bed but also to handle the mountain fire will be dealt with, but then just so you know we have, you know, plenty of resources still in the system for any new fires that may arise as well. Thank you. Yeah, good afternoon. My name is Phil Anzo, I'm the unit chief here in Siskew. Just to give you a little bit of background when the fire started on September 2nd, there's a red flag warning in effect for low humidities and strong winds. In the afternoon the fire started not too far from this location and it gave very little time, spread very quickly, gave very little time for this area of the community of weed to get out of the way. Our resources responded very quickly, got into this vicinity and they started focusing on life safety. They evacuated as many people as they possibly could out of the before this fire hit this area, but you can see by the images behind me that there was some very significant devastation that occurred in this area. That fire quickly moved across the highway into more homes and then eventually went out into the wildland area. We sent a significant resource order down into the mutual aid system and successfully received a lot of resources in a short period of time to help us mitigate this incident. Lots of aircraft, lots of ground resources were brought in to mitigate this fire. We did have the fire extend into another community which is further north east of us, the community of Lake Chastena and we did suffer some damage to structures there and some structured loss from the fire. During that same time period we started another incident, another vegetation fire in the county that we needed to send some additional resources to and that spread us very thin at that point in time. But we had a lot of resources that were coming to the area so we were able to divide and do the best we could with both incidents. I really want to thank the mutual aid system for working so well and work with our cooperators that we accomplished with our law enforcement agencies and unfortunately the county of Siskiou is well versed in wildland fires and so we have done this before and this particular area was just missed by the bulls fire in 2014 unfortunately so it's something that we've dealt with in the past and hopefully we can help mitigate for the future. Thank you. Oh yes, thank you. Chairman LaRue, Siskiou County Sheriff and I'd like to kind of echo what Chief Anzo just talked about. There are so many people that are behind the scenes at a disaster like this and between local resources, state and even the federal government we partnership very well and I think the cool thing is that we're all unified like we talked about and I know that Siskiou County is strong and resilient and I know that we will get through this it is very devastating and when we hurt when one of us hurts we all hurt we all feel it and there's there is a time that it's going to take for us to grieve and move on but we will get there so for the people that have lost their homes property and maybe are just confused about what the future store is in store just know that there's a huge support group standing behind you and with you that's going to walk alongside you and get you through this whether it's at the city level or the county or moving on to the the state and beyond we had an amazing mutual aid response for law enforcement and we work well with fire we are unfortunately well versed in the response to these but we did have a great response with over 40 to 60 law enforcement officers that came to Siskiou County just from a simple phone call asking for help so the mutual aid system works and encourage people to utilize that and don't go at it alone no matter who's listening if you have something that's affecting your community reach out that's why Cal OES is there and that's why there's other state resources and of course the county level so I appreciate everyone's support and understanding and and just so the public knows you know we we do hear you and we do feel what you're going through and so we do talk a lot about things that are occurring there's a lot of unknowns but that information will be forthcoming as soon as we can but we're there with you just so you know I'm Kim Green and I'm the mayor for the city of weed I was born and raised in the city and in this community many of my friends that I grew up with went to school with when I look at this area I see their houses that used to be here and know where they lived and it's it was harder enough the first time at now our little city's going through this again um and the as Jeremiah said we just have to be patient and let things kind of spread out and then see what we have and who needs what we have and we will get all those resources to them we've always had a really good relationship with Cal Fire and the other agencies that are here helping us and we're just we're just appreciative that they're here for us so thank you all and so now with this process of wild you know the fire is still being addressed and it will be a while this area will remain closed until further notice as you can see you know with all this devastation this is there's a lot of hazardous materials that are associated with a lot of this debris and so we'll be working with the city and the county in the debris clearance process but there will be an opportunity when the time is right for you to come and look at your properties and be able to look through them and and and look for any heirlooms or other kinds of things but right now it's not that particular time so we'll keep you informed Cal OES what we do and our recovery operations will be with the city and the county through the duration all the way through the rebuilding process so we're going to leverage as many resources as possible to help you and as I said in the coming days you'll learn more about what services are available how we can help particularly with those those key areas the lifeline restoration what your immediate needs are the needs of your children to get back to school and and if you need any other specific kinds of assistance