Jerome R. Waldie, Congressman from State of California, written state- Telegram from Mayor of Oakland, Calif., to President Nixon_-_. Article, "State, Feds, Fiddle While Bay Eucalyptus Burns". Outline of plan of action. Letter to, commending initiative on meeting fire threat, from California Native Plant Society-- Interdepartmental correspondence to: Richard Trudeau, April 17, 1973, from Gary Tate___. Richard Trudeau, and members of board of directors, April 17, Declaration of Local Emergency. City of El Cerrito, fire department: Letter listing chronological actions taken to eliminate fire hazard to 83 -------- Circular, "Property Owner's Guide for Fire Safety". City of Berkeley, interim report-"Eucalyptus Trees and Related Hazards" 84 84 Office of Emergency Services (Contra Costa County) letter to William Statement to congressional delegation from California from mayor of El University of California, Berkeley, plan for relieving wild fire hazards_- City of Oakland, progress report on fire hazard plan.... Northcutt Ely, letter to John S. Harnett, response to request for opinion on financial assistance from Federal administration to local agencies__ Summary statement of citizen's fire hazard committee_-_. 107 114 PREDISASTER ASSISTANCE FOR EUCALYPTUS TREES IN CALIFORNIA WEDNESDAY, MAY 9, 1973 U.S. SENATE, COMMITTEE ON BANKING, HOUSING, AND URBAN AFFAIRS, SUBCOMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS, Washington, D.O. The subcommittee was convened at 2:15 p.m., in room 5302, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Senator Alan Cranston, chairman of the subcommittee, presiding. Senator CRANSTON. The hearing will please come to order. I have a brief opening statement, and then we will proceed with the witnesses. I want to make a correction. Through some inadvertence, the name of our principal witness, whose availability determined the time when we would have this hearing, fell off the printed list of witnesses, so our first witness will be Darrell Trent, Acting Director, Office of Emergency Preparedness. He will be followed with a change in the order by Mr. Edwin Meese, representative of Governor Reagan, who has to leave at 3:30. OPENING REMARKS OF SENATOR ALAN CRANSTON In April 1970, as Senate hearings were about to begin on a new comprehensive disaster program, which was to become the Disaster Relief Act of 1970, President Richard Nixon sent a special message to Congress outlining his views on what a national disaster program should include. Under the special heading of "Disaster Prevention," the President relayed the following thoughts to the Congress: In March and April 1969 this Administration conducted a massive flood prevention program in the upper Midwest and New England. This program-Operation Foresight-was immensely successful; it prevented widespread human suffering and an estimated $200 million in damages, at a cost of $20 million. The success of this disaster prevention effort suggests that we can do a great deal to avoid or limit the effects of expected disasters. Accordingly, I am proposing legislation which would extend the Federal Government's authority to assist State and local governments in disaster prevention and damage reduction activities. That concept, predisaster assistance, became law several months later. Section 221 of the Disaster Relief Act of 1970 authorized the President to make the resources of the Federal Government available in order to avert or lessen the effects of a disaster considered to be imminent. (1) The purpose of this special hearing is to consider a special bill which would require the same President to carry out his own proposal; to make predisaster assistance available in a situation when a major disaster is about as predictable as any natural disaster could be. We will be exploring the question of whether this request for disaster prevention aid was decided on its merits or whether perhaps the obsession with cutting the domestic budget so distorted the perspective of this administration that it cannot see a disaster when one may be coming. In December 1972, a severe 10-day freeze struck large sections of northern and central California, killing or severely damaging citrus and vegetable crops, crippling the cut flower industry and damaging or destroying countless species of plants and other vegetation. But the worst of the damage did not become known right away. Throughout the east San Francisco Bay area, spread over an area of 2,500 acres, are millions of eucalyptus trees. A kind of trademark of the San Francisco area, these are tall, graceful shade trees, which give off an aroma of eucalyptus oil. The trees were imported from Australia about 80 years ago as a commercial venture and spread quickly throughout the area. The prolonged December freeze-unprecedented in that part of California-killed about 1 million eucalyptus. The dead and dying trees are spread throughout parkland and densely populated residential areas. The hills across San Francisco Bay, once green and lush now are brown, dry, and extremely hazardous. Even when they are alive, eucalyptus trees are highly combustible. The oil contained in the leaves and bark enhances combustibility. In a dry state, combustion potential is greatly increased. Eucalyptus trees characteristically shed leaves and strips of bark. In dead and dying trees, this process is quickened. The resulting ground cover debris is in itself a serious fire hazard. Members of my staff, whom I sent to survey the area with local officials, tell me that in some areas this ground cover is already waist-deep. These hill areas of Alameda and Contra Costa counties have a grim history of fire. Late summer and early fall are periods of particularly high fire hazard. During these months a combination of factors come together producing situation known and feared in some areas of southern California also, called the "Santana effect." It is marked by extreme dryness, high temperatures, low humidity and winds from a northeasterly direction. During this period in 1923, fire in the East Bay hills destroyed 624 homes. During the same period in 1970 another fire destroyed 39 homes and the Federal Government paid out $5 million in disaster relief. Highly skilled and experienced firefighters in the East Bay say of the Santana phenomenon, "If it's a small fire, anyone can put it out. If its a northeaster, no one can." Agricultural experts, firefighters, civil defense and other authorities have been joining forces for the past 3 months to develop short- and long-range plans for fire suppression and prevention, tree removal and clearing of debris. It is a monumental job. The trees are very large and must be felled by skilled tree experts, at costs up to several hundred dollars per tree where they are near homes and utility lines. The debris to be cleared includes not only the tons of wood from the felled trees, but as much as 100,000 pounds per acre of branches, bark, leaves and other decaying material which the dead trees are shedding. Authorities warn of a terrifying firestorm if the dreaded blaze occurs before much of this flammable debris is removed. In eucalyptus forests in Australia, burning material has been known to travel up to 24 miles ahead of the main fire front, setting new fires along the way. Authorities in California warn that if fire breaks out on a windy day, burning bits of bark may rain down on a dozen cities in the East Bay metropolitan area, causing an unimaginable holocaust. The Governor of California has declared a state of emergency and pledged manpower and money to lessen the immediate danger. A 12-mile-wide firebreak is being built in the hope of containing a large fire. The cities, counties, parks district and utilities district in the affected areas, have drawn up a master plan for tree cutting and removal of the most dangerous debris in the highest risk areas. Work has begun and massive commitments of money have been made by these agencies, in some cases forcing cutbacks or cancellation of many of the programs which are the routine responsibility of the agencies, such as providing park and recreational facilities for tens of thousands of area residents. Emergency fire fighting and evacuation plans have been put into effect. New reservoirs and water mains are being constructed in time for the fire season. To read in the local press about the preparations which are being made, one would think he was reading a science fiction novel or an elaborate doomsday plan. I would like to enter into the record at this point articles from the Oakland Tribune dated March 9, 1973, and the Los Angeles Times dated April 8, 1973, detailing some of the activities, plans and precautions now underway by local authorities. If the worst fears of many of us come to pass sometime in the dangerous months ahead, and fires burn out of control throughout the metropolitan East Bay area, I want the record to show that officials of the cities, counties and agencies involved will have done everything humanly possible to avert or lessen the catastrophy. But they are not miracle workers. A million trees on 2,500 acres need to be cut down and removed, at costs ranging up to $15,000 per acre. Commercial value of eucalyptus wood is virtually nil. The total cost is estimated at $25 to $32 million and the master plan for clearing and reforesting the area will take about 5 years to complete. Federal aid is essential if the job is to be done. Even if the financial resources were available without Federal aid, there is a constitutional prohibition on the use of public funds to clear the dead trees on private lands. Thousands of homeowners face the task of removing dead trees from their property at very high costs, with no possibility of financial aid from the State or local governments. For some, the cost represents more than the total value of their property. For many it will mean the loss of their homes, because they cannot afford to pay to have the trees removed. So the city will be forced to declare the property a threat to public safety, come in and clear the trees out, add the cost to the homeowner's property tax bill, and end up owning the property because the homeowner cannot pay his tax bill. Recognizing that the job cannot be done with the resources available, Governor Reagan, called for a Presidential disaster declaration, under section 221 of the Disaster Relief Act, to make available the formidable resources of the Federal Establishment to help prevent the disaster from occurring. Without the disaster declaration, it appears, the Departments of Government which have the personnel, equipment, and expertise to help out, have no authority to do so. On April 6, I sent a telegram to the President requesting that he invoke section 221 of the disaster law and release Federal aid. On April 27 the Office of Emergency Preparedness announced that its Acting Director had made a negative recommendation to the President on the need for Federal aid to avert a disaster. There would be no help from the Federal Government. In the days which followed, a delegation of East Bay officials came to Washington to protest the administration's decision. Members of my staff accompanied them to a meeting with officials of the Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Forest Service, and the Office of Emergency Preparedness. At that meeting there was general agreement that if a fire did occur in the area dense with frozen eucalyptus trees, a major disaster would indeed result. The death toll among the hundreds of thousands of residents living along narrow, winding roads in the hill areas, would be incalculable. Property damage could be $150 million. The Office of Emergency Preparedness' decision against a disaster declaration, evidently, was due to their belief that the "imminence" of disaster could not be proven. The OEP representative at the meeting agreed that if the request for Federal disaster aid were to come in July, or August, or September, when the Santana winds were blowing, the humidity low and the temperature high, the fire threat would be more imminent, and a request for a disaster declaration under section 221 might get a different response. The recklessness and absurdity of this conclusion astounded me. It is inconceivable that such a decision can be made in such apparent ignorance of the facts. All experts on the problem agree that it will take months of hard work to lessen the fire hazard, sufficiently to get through the most critical months ahead. If a Federal disaster declaration were to be made after the critical period arrived, it would be months too late to avert catastrophe. We cannot risk lives and property because of a capricious and arbitrary definition by the Office of Emergency Preparedness of the work "imminent." Senator Jennings Randolph, chairman of the Public Works Committee which molded the Disaster Relief Act of 1970 into the form in which it became law, and Senator Quentin Burdick, chairman of the Disaster Relief Subcommittee of Public Works, and I, sent a letter last week to the Acting Director of the Office of Emergency Preparedness. Our letter, the text of which will be entered into the record of this hearing, protested the agency's definition of "imminent," as the word is used in the Disaster Relief Act. The letter urged the administration to reconsider its decision based on the facts of the situation and the intent of Congress to provide Federal aid to avert or lessen the effects of a disaster. We have not yet received a response to our letter. |