 The energy was palpable when the emergency management Victoria delegation arrived at Cal OES headquarters and was greeted by state, federal and military officials as well as local news media. California's longtime friends and partners traveled literally halfway around the world from Melbourne in Australia's state of Victoria, shake hands and solidify their ongoing partnership. At this time I would like to introduce the director of the governor's office of emergency services, Mark Gilmour-Hugheson. Well good morning everyone, happy to be here with you this morning and on this really auspicious occasion where we are going to today sign a historic agreement. I'm very excited about our partnership with Victoria. California's partnership with Victoria isn't new but it is about to be formalized for the first time. You know there's some great collaboration that can take place between our two states and be able to help each other learn from each other as we move forward. Both our states deal with very similar challenges of fire and drought and we need to be sharing all of our approaches to those issues to ensure we're doing best practice and looking after our people. California is enduring its fourth consecutive year of drought. Australia suffered through 13 years and each year the Golden State fights devastating wildfires. Australia calls them bushfires but the effects are the same, even worse at times as it's documented in an ABC1 special called Inside the Firestorm. It was a wall of flying that came up that mountain. Known as Black Saturday was February 7th, 2009. One of Australia's most destructive bushfires killed 173 people in Victoria, left more than 7,000 homeless and burned more than one and a quarter million acres of land. It's interesting though, California is one of those states that's got a high risk of earthquake. We in Victoria don't but yet there's so much we can learn from earthquake planning about how communities are warned, how communities cluster together and work together. So to ensure their strong relationship continues, these emergency manager top guns from their state's respective agencies put pen to paper in the ceremonial signing of a Memorandum of Understanding. One of the things though that's really important at this agreement is to actually grow our people. To actually have the Victorians come to California and Kalampholans come to Victoria and experience the way in which we manage. So it's not just about a system, it's not just about training, it's about our leaders growing and being better at what they do. So working with the way we build capacity, engage our private sector, engage the academic sector, bringing all those together with the public to be able to build capacity in our communities. Those are the kind of things that we can share. Kalawia's fire trucks made for a great photo opportunity before the Victorians make the long flight home and until they meet again, possibly on a wildfire here or a bushfire there.