 Good afternoon. Thank you all for being here today. My name is Mark Lorenzen. I am the County Fire Chief of the Ventura County Fire Department. A quick message, even though we are increasingly gaining on the containment of this fire, it continues to grow, especially to the north. And my one message to everybody out there is just one of preparation. Always be ready. We have a statewide ready-set-go program, so my message is one of preparedness. And with that, I'd like to introduce the Director of the Governor's Office of Emergency Services, Mark Dillarducci. All right. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for coming. So, from a statewide perspective, we've been coordinating the overall response to all the fires that have been taking place here in the southern basin. Certainly, the Thomas Fire here in Ventura remains the priority and continues to be of great concern. Let me say, first of all, that we are extremely, our thoughts and our prayers go out to those who have suffered loss and we will work closely with the city and the county to work on programs that can help to individuals to get some recovery. Early on from these fires, the Governor did declare a state of emergency and that did open the door to ensure that all state assets and resources that could be made available were made available. In fact, there is no resource that the county or the city is needing at this point to fight the fire that they haven't been able to get. And if there are, we'll make sure that they have all the resources they need. Currently, we have actually moved over 600 fire departments, fire engines from throughout the state of California. And if you think about, that is a phenomenal effort by every jurisdiction almost in California that has provided engines from the Oregon-California border down to San Diego, given the fact that there are a number of other fires that are going on at the same time. There's a big commitment of that over that 613 mutual aid fire engines, 435 are located here and that's not accounting all of the Cal Fire assets and U.S. Forest Service assets that have been made available. In addition, the Governor authorized the deployment of the National Guard and we have have over 1,200 National Guard men and women who have been deployed throughout the southern region and over 120 or so that are committed here on this fire that are supporting local law enforcement with regards to traffic stops and perimeter control and whatever else is necessary, as well as a number of aircraft, including the two C-130 MAF aircrafts that have been based out of Channel Islands that have been working this fire each and every day and some great technology that the military brings to help us do fire perimeter mapping, et cetera. As well, the Governor has provided the California Highway Patrol and they have been working with also local law enforcement, not only helping with evacuations and aircraft, but in support of the sheriff and the police departments as necessary. Early on, we understood that this was going to be a siege that was going to be significant throughout the southern basin. The winds, as you know, continue to be a concern and we have been working closely to try to push out preparedness information to the public just to be aware that these winds do exist and that means fire danger remains high. But in anticipation and the fact that we have utilized so much of the resources in California, we've also reached out to our neighboring states and in fact have received fire engines and other assets from Montana, Utah, New Mexico, Idaho, Arizona, Oregon and Nevada. And in fact, there are a number of those strike teams that are on this fire right now here in Ventura County. We will continue to work closely with the county. We have also received what's called the Fire Management Assistance Grant from FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. It's been a great partner with us right from the beginning. They're based in the State Operations Center and they're also here in the field. And that Fire Management Assistance Grant provides funding to the fire agencies to ensure that they have all the resources that they need, helps offset the cost. And just yesterday the governor did request of the president what's called the Federal Emergency Declaration. That's a declaration that provides direct federal assistance. That means technical assistance like equipment or technical assets that we can call on the federal government on to support us, clarifies through the bureaucracy and ensures we get it when we need it. So the point is everything is being done that needs to be done in the firefight and we are also now beginning the process of working on the recovery and working with the cities and the counties to begin the process of how we are going to deal with the losses that have taken place. Not only individual losses but infrastructure losses on the part of of local government. So with that I will now turn it over to Chief Ken Pemelot from CAL FIRE. Thank you Director Gelder-Ducci. Ken Pemelot Chief, Director of CAL FIRE. So we're in day six of this wind event and this fire siege that has impacted Southern California from Santa Barbara to San Diego. As Director Gelder-Ducci indicated you know this was a forecasted wind event and you know Southern California is no stranger to sundowners or Santa Ana wind offshore wind events. Certainly I think we're all looking at this and we know what separates this from others in the past and I think you know we can all say it's this duration how long the winds have been here sustained as well as the dry conditions that continue throughout the Southland and just the intensity of the winds. Some cases very localized but absolutely strong intense winds in all of the seven counties that have been impacted you know throughout the throughout the Southland. So as of this morning we have 8,500 firefighters on the fire line across the six large fires that have occurred as a result of this wind event and we burned over 175,000 acres and over 793 structures have been destroyed across these fires. We continue to make real good progress on all of these fires but we're far you know from being out of the woods on on any of them and certainly here on the Thomas FIRE. This was the first fire you know it started Monday evening at about 6 30 and you know continues to be a very large fire. As of this morning the Thomas FIRE is 148,000 acres and 15 percent contained and we continue to work very closely with all of the partners so that you know there's an incident management team continuing to manage this incident in both Santa Barbara and Ventura County. It's a very seamless unified effort between both counties the U.S. Forest Service, Cal Fire, local law enforcement and cooperation from across the board as you heard from director Gilarducci. There's almost a thousand fire departments in California and all of them are engaged somehow either here on these fires or covering fire stations across the state to attack those new fires that start but we continue to make progress. The Lilac FIRE in San Diego that also started this week this morning is 4,100 acres and 20 percent contained. The Creek FIRE in Los Angeles County by Silmar is 15,619 acres 80 percent contained. The Rye FIRE thereby Magic Mountain 6,049 acres and 65 percent contained. And the Liberty FIRE in Riverside County 300 acres 90 contained and the Skirball FIRE in Los Angeles and the city of Los Angeles near Brentwood is 475 acres and 50 percent contained. So we're very pleased to start seeing these numbers come up firefighters are taking advantages of breaks in the wind and the weather to aggressively put in control lines use aircraft and put in retardant and drop water in support of the firefighters on the ground but what we need to make clear is the winds are variable they will continue to be strong and dry well through tomorrow and even in the next week we will have dry conditions across the Southland so we need to continue to keep our guard up. It's December and it's amazing to be able to say that we aren't out of fire season and this is the challenge that we face in California and certainly here in Southern California that it is a year-round challenge that we are all in. So with that I would like to introduce the Governor of California our Governor Governor Brown. Thank you and first of all I'm going to thank all the firefighters from nearby and from from further away doing a great job I want to thank the National Guard the public safety people that are here as well as the conservation corps and the firefighters from the Department of Corrections. This is truly a a joint effort on the part of a lot of people and of course everybody here that lives in this part of California you're doing a good job too and it's been a terrible tragedy for so many people so this is kind of the new normal. This kind of I was just looking at my cell phone before I talked looking at the humidity it's 8% in Los Angeles I don't suppose it's much different right here that's very very low and so we're gonna we're facing a new reality in the state where fires threaten people's lives their property their neighborhoods and of course billions and billions of dollars so we have to have the resources to combat the fires and we also have to also invest in managing vegetation and forests and all the way we dwell in this very wonderful place but a place that's getting hotter and we know from the changing in the climate that it's going to exacerbate everything else from history going back a long long way there have been very long droughts in California we are getting some of those returning very bad and we're going to get them returning more often and then with climate change some scientists are saying Southern California is literally burning up and burning up as a maybe a metaphor or a description not just to the fire right here but what we can expect over the next years and decades and that's why we have to respond but we have to plan what we can do in the in the forest in the neighborhoods and we also have to do the larger challenge which is climate change itself and I know that's maybe a little remote but it's real and we're experiencing what it's going to look like on a very regular basis so I'm also doing everything I can there and of course that requires not just the people in in Ventura or Santa Barbara Los Angeles or San Diego it requires people everywhere in the whole world so we have to pull together in the largest sense possible and take the heroic action that we need to make our communities livable now and into the distant future thank you I think we can take some questions if you have any well one obvious theme is that some houses are burnt and right next door they're not burnt so the vagaries of the wind perhaps the vegetation or the construction all this combines together to make fires unpredictable even though we're learning more and more about them and that's why the loss of life is so limited but what can you say when you lose your house and your belongings and people lose their animals it is a horror and it's a horror we want to minimize and when we can't minimize it we want to recover from it as quickly as possible what's that well that's you've heard our fire chief tell you these winds are still here the humidity is very low and who knows so you have to listen to what people are saying get the alerts on your cell phone and be ready to go that's what it is and also a longer term I think we have to really think through how are we going to adjust ourselves to nature as it changes we can't expect nature to adjust to to our needs well I think we ought to have a lot of information to every homeowner and potential homeowner on the best way to build or remodel secondly yes we need good building standards I would just caution though I have in my office in Sacramento a box containing the current building code and it's gotten bigger and bigger since the first time I was governor it's good we're getting more efficient but when you say more building standards I always want to say let's do this very carefully because it is complex that does raise costs so we have to we have to protect but I want to do it in the wisest way possible well the they're putting a lot of carbon pollution into the environment in the air and that will offset a lot of hard one reductions that we're making in California but remember this is a global problem we're talking about the entire planet and the atmospheric chemistry and its composition and we're trying to do everything possible to make the atmosphere not absorb all these heat trapping gases so we have to do what we can and that's one of the reasons why I've taken an international role here to join with other states and provinces to cut their greenhouse gases yes it's it's a big problem and that's why I want to see are there ways that we can manage forests better are there ways that the US government can manage its forests better I think there are and that's something I'm going to be looking at in the next few months because I think there's more there and we need to do it well this is cut this is is the new normal and this could be something that happens every year or every few years it happens to some degree it's just more intense more widespread and we're about ready to have firefighting at Christmas this is very odd and unusual but it is the way the world is with the kind of carbon pollution that we're not only living with but we're generating still it's still increasing we have to make that turn it's going to take a rock efforts there are many places in this country that don't get it yet there are several countries in the world that don't quite get it so we're going to have to be good stewards of our own neighborhoods and state but also missionaries to spread the word that we do need to make a change in the way we bolster our economy not with fossil fuel but with renewable energy well so far so good we have been getting response but you know when you look at it Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico now California this is tens and tens of billions of dollars we were talking last year about infrastructure and you know all the money we're going to spend on roads and bridges in America well now we just have to clean up the mess that nature is causing so I hope the folks in Washington realize that as they're spending money or helping others spend it by giving them various tax breaks we need to invest in our firefighting capacity we need to invest in our in our whole infrastructure as well as our energy and means of storage so we got a big agenda it's not a time to do less it's a time to do more and unfortunately the politics is so divided that we have a lot of other things we're thinking about but this is a topic fires floods earthquakes don't go away so we got to handle the basics while we take care of other things that politicians like to deal with and that's it thank you thanks all right