This is the Senate State Affairs Committee meeting.
I'd like to say it is Tuesday,
February 3rd, time I was 3.30 PM.
We're in the belts committee room
in June of Alaska, the state capital.
We have members present today, Senator Wilakowski,
Senator Great Jackson,
Senator Tilton, myself, Chair Kawasaki.
We do have a quorum to conduct business.
I'd like to thank Kerry Tippo from Senate Records and Renzo Moises as the moderator
with the Legislative Information Office. On today's agenda we have three items,
the first of which we're going to take slightly out of order. We do have a presentation on disaster
preparedness with director of the Alaska Division of Homeland Security Brian Fisher.
protection on the 20-25 fire suppression updates and then we will have first hearing on Senate Bill
188 regarding the town on Valley State Forest. It is a bill by the rules committee by request
of the governor and since we have changed that order we're going to go ahead and hear from
First, Mr. Brian Fisher who joins us on teams
And if you would state your name and for the record we have
My staff staff to the committee is going to forward the slides as you let him know
Thank you chair Kawasaki and good afternoon members of the Committee for The record
My name is Brian Fischer. I am the director of The Alaska Division of Homeland Security and emergency management
was asked to come brief the committee today on preparedness. The prepared
ness activities that my division is responsible for. If we can go to the next slide, please.
Just an overview real quick. My division falls within the Department of Military
and Veterans Affairs. So Major General Torrance Sacks, the Agidant General, is my boss on one of
That also includes the Alaska Army and Air National Guards, the State Defense Force
enabled militia, our State Office of Veterans Affairs,
the Military Youth Academy, and our admin services division.
So I am a purely state employee division,
none of the military members work in my agency.
We're about 64 employees,
and we are 64
employees that somebody full-time permanent positions we have.
And my division is made up of an operation section that runs the state emergency operation center
in our field response operations, a disaster assistance section, that does all of our recovery
work on all the disasters we have to recover from. But I'm going to focus today's presentation on
my other two primary operating sections, my preparedness and my planning units. They really
Next slide, please.
So this is an overview of my planning section.
There are three units within that section, all hazards, resiliency, community planning, and then our mitigation section
a large majority of our community and agency preparedness operations are conducted within this particular section
I'll talk a little bit more about all hazards resiliency in a moment, but I would do one
to highlight from an agency preparedness perspective, we assist state agencies, municipal travel
governments and other entities in continuity of operations planning and preparedeness.
What does it take to make sure that our state agency functions can remain in place in operating?
In the event of a disruption, whether it be from a man-made or a natural hazard
to things as simple as, you know, a building fire or flood within a
building. So we provide a lot of support out to community planning organizations and
and the state interagency on how to develop continuity of operations plans and also assist
with some training and exercise on those plans itself.
There are a bunch of acronyms and I apologize to the committee and the chair on these slides.
My agency is very acronym heavy in the emergency management world.
So the community planning section there, you can see, there's a couple of terms there.
EOPs are emergency operations plans, scurps, and we'll talk a little bit more about those
You can imagine that as an emergency operations plan, but for a small population community.
This section also supports the efforts of all of our local emergency planning committees.
The acronym L.E.P.C. is for that, and those are our planning organizations at the local
level that look at both oil and hazardous substance response planning, as well as all
hazards, disaster planning at community level.
We'll go if we could to the next slide, please.
So I want to talk a little bit about this process.
We're pretty proud of this.
We created this initiative back about 14 years ago, 2012.
I think it was.
And what we saw was a pretty big disconnect between federal
and state-level emergency response plans and disaster management
plans.
with what was being developed at the local level.
Original federal emergency management agency FEMA doctrine
was to build these voluminous plans,
you know, hundreds of pages of statutory
and regulatory reference, and outline how a community
should respond to an emergency in their area.
And they were large, they are unwieldy,
they're expensive and complicated to create.
So, understanding the size and scale of our communities in Alaska, we developed this program
for a small community emergency response plan.
It is not limited to this, but in general we encourage communities with a population
of less than 2,000 to utilize a document like this.
It's simply a flip chart.
I'll give credit to the Bristol Bay Area Health Corporation who had a similar emergency
in Dillingham that was in this format and we decided it would be useful to help do this
community planning for emergency response and disaster response in the same format.
It's completely customizable and specific to each individual community. We have some very,
we have templates that we offer for folks to use. You can't see it on the slides there very well,
but if you ever visit us at the State Emergency Operations Center, I'm happy to show you a couple
part copy examples of what these plans look like. They really cover things like,
if there is warning, how do you take precautionary measures for your community,
what should a community expect to deal with in the event of any type of hazard, whether it's
a wildfire or a flood or an earthquake tsunami. In the first few hours, the 1st, 12, 24, 48,
up to 72 hours. We do focus very largely on the sheltering and evacuation process.
no matter what the the catastrophe or incident is kind of the primary efforts
that we see need to be dealt with at the local level or sheltering and a lot of
times that shelter in place in in local schools or the potential to evacuate
folks to places of safety in the community or in some instances like we
saw with typhoon along evacuation out of
the Community and out the region. We talk about damage assessment.
And, really, the document is intended to take the language of emergency management that
we use at the federal and state level and boil it down to actionable information that
a community could use to be ready to respond as the flood waters arising, as fires approaching
We work very, very closely with Village Public Safety Officers around the state, with our regional tribal health organizations, like Tenonac Chief's Conference and
Association of Village Council Presidents and others around
the State to have these documents completed. We'll go out and provide technical assistance with
our partners in the community to talk through what emergency response is, to fill out some
kind of organization charts, you know, really who's in charge in a community when the bad thing happens.
really boiled it down to who is going to open the school, who has the keys to the
school if it's in the summer,
who's going open that to make a shelter ready,
who typically responsible to makes sure folks are
pulling out their boats and ATVs and all getting them out of the potential flood
area if we're in this spring breakup flood process.
So we spend a lot of time with this as a foundational document
to have those discussions on preparing a community to be able to take care
opening hours and days of a disaster.
We have upwards of 200 of these plans developed
in partnership with our local communities around the state,
and we spend a lot of time throughout the year updating them.
As you know, community leaders and agency leaders
change pretty frequently in our community.
So as soon as we get one of
these completed, we start the maintenance process
to make sure that they're updated and relevant on an annual basis,
if you will. Next slide, please.
The other significant plan outside of the emergency response and initial recovery plan
that we work on is hazard mitigation plans.
The statewide hazard medication plan that is contributed to by our science folks and
agencies that deal with the floodplain and with earthquakes and geologic hazards and
all of that.
A complicated process, I will say, hazard mitigation plans are guided by guidance documents from
the federal emergency management agency. They're pretty complex.
They take real community participation to get developed.
At the end of the day, what these documents do is identify the threats and hazards in a community
and in conversation as we're developing these plans with the community themselves.
to mitigate the effects of any of the hazards and threats they face and come up with some
strategies and some potential projects that, if there were funding available, that a community
would want to look at.
So, for example, whether it was fuels reduction, and I know Deputy Director McDonald will talk
about this on the wildfire side, those are potential project elevating homes and hardening
reduce the impact of floods or earthquakes, seismic retrofitting, all of those types of mitigation
opportunities to address all those threats and hazards a community has, are included in this
development process. We use this particular slide to discuss in depth with some communities that
the way this goes. It's a long process to develop these, the funding that's necessary to bring in
and have our agencies be able to provide that technical assistance in developing them.
It's kind of a long and arduous process. Most of the funding that comes to develop these plans
comes through FEMA itself, either funding happens after a disaster has occurred,
or funding before a disasters happens because of pre-disaster mitigation funding.
And for the committee's value, I'll just share there has been a pretty substantial change in
And from the federal government when it comes to mitigation, many of you are aware that the pre disaster mitigation program that FEMA has called building and resilient infrastructure and communities.
Those grants that had been previously awarded were all suspended last spring.
There is some action with the Federal District courts across the country on getting those re implemented.
from the federal interagency so that funding stream is not available to the
state right now to continue these efforts. Director on that point can you just sort
of tell me because again like the president and the administration said
that they wanted to sort of like I guess overall shrink the size of the FEMA and
responsibilities to the state.
I'm curious how the administration has looked at that.
This state administration's looked
at potential.
That for the record Brian Fisher to Chair Kawasaki.
Yes, that certainly has been projected from
both the executive and the congressional side,
the legislative at the federal level.
The conversation is about transferring
some of the responsibility and authority.
from the federal government for emergency management activities to the states and localities.
And I think at the end of the day what that really means is transferring some of
the financial risk and responsibility to us at this state level and then on through to our local
jurisdictions for these activities. President Trump issued an executive order at
the beginning of his administration last year that is doing a comprehensive look specifically
with the intent to provide him advice on what a new FEMA would look like moving forward
in the future, solely focused on very specific emergency management functions and federal
interagency response, and to put some recommendations to him for his consideration on
what should be more on the onus of the state and local jurisdictions to respond to.
I've had plenty of conversations with our administration at the
state with a congressional delegation. I can tell you kind of nationwide, all of
the states continue to have conversations
with the administration and the FEMA Review Council established by that executive order.
to demonstrate that we do manage the majority of disasters and emergencies in our states and
localities without help from the federal government. So we're pushing back pretty hard
to say, you know, we definitely have skin in the game. We do our part, our communities
build resilience and respond to incidents every single day. And there are many of those that
Unfortunately, I don't have a good answer.
The review report for FEMA was supposed to come out in December.
It's been delayed.
The council has been extended through March, but the conversation certainly has
been turning, you know, fewer federally declared disasters, potentially less funding support
for response and recovery and preparedness and planning and mitigation.
So I think the writing is on the wall that we do need to be looking at a future where
contribute more resources at the state and local level to some of these activities.
We just don't know any of the specific shit. On the congressional side, they're looking at
the same thing. There is a bill called HR 4669, the Fixing Emergency Management for America Act.
That's just recently passed out of house transportation and infrastructure.
should be the responsibility of state and local government and what should
be a responsibility
of the federal government in terms of both pre and post
disaster financing and then federal response to disasters with
search and rescue teams and that kind of thing. So
the future is definitely unclear but the conversation is leaning towards
more responsibility at the state local level.
Thank you for that, Director.
I guess that leaves right into the next question about what DHS is preparing for if we were
to assume more of those either costs from emergency responses or has the department or agency
thought about different ways to prevent or make facilities more resilient.
You know, we've talked about flood zones in the Fairbanks area and people that
still want to build in pretty active flood
zones, in
the Saltia area. And so, of course, and then of
course the coastal, the west coastal areas, where buildings have been made.
Is there a discussion at the level, at your level anyways,
of trying to
build-in resilience to these communities so that the costs will...
emergency side. Yeah, to the chair, I appreciate that question. The answer is yes. I mean,
just recently, you know, when the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act came out,
my agency along with all of our partners, state agencies in the Alaska Municipal League and the
Alaska Federation of Natives, spoke very, very directly to those potential grantees for that
And my message to them was, as you are looking at building new infrastructure or repairing aging infrastructure,
you have to consider those things with resilience in mind, and our state hazard mitigation plan, our local flood mapping,
all of that data that is available to us now can help us inform how high to build a road, if you will, how strong to
build new power plant or water treatment plant.
So, that's fairly recent, you know, the last half a decade where we have been working
with the folks that build infrastructure in the state and with home builders to make
sure that they are using the data we had to inform building stronger, building more resilient,
because we know the disasters are going to continue whether or not there is funding support.
the post-disaster recovery process. We always include projects and funding to make a damaged
facility more resilient. The next time something happens, that's a part of our recovery programs.
So everywhere we can, we continue to preach the message of resilience, if you will. And
some of these mitigation and resilience projects
just to make our infrastructure and our communities
more resistant, more survivable,
and easier to bounce back from the disasters.
That's great.
Thank you very much, Director.
Are there any other questions?
I did want to note for the record
that Senator Bjorkman joined us
at the very beginning of the meeting.
Thank You.
Senator Joork.
Senator Biorke.
Yeah, maybe, Mr. Fisher, I have a question.
If you could walk the committee and the public listening through,
we'll kind of, in this recovery mode after Typhoon Halong has happened.
There's been disaster declaration and then recent news about
federal reimbursement to the state for disaster funds.
Could you just walk us through how that process works and how the federal government decides
how much it will reimburse the State for those disaster costs?
Through the chair, Senator Bjorkman, thank you for that question.
So I will say right up front that the recent media, I'm unsure why it's out there right
now.
This is a kind of older news.
When we receive a federal disaster declaration authorized by the president of the United
States, every state and locality included in those disasters receives no less than or
federal reimbursement for eligible activities and eligible damage repair, and that is exactly
what we received.
What was different in this disaster, the Halong request and response, was that the governor
asked the president knowing that this might be more significant than our kind of our normal
disasters, if you will, I say that in quotations.
That was denied. We didn't hear about that until December.
That decision on adjusting the federal assistance that comes solely resides with the president.
So it's not FEMA making that decision.
It's it is not the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
It is from the White House, from The President directly.
So our first request was for 100 percent federal funding for the first 90 days of the disaster for all of
the work we had.
An adjusted cost year of 90% federal, 10% state or local, for the first 90 days for
the emergency response work that we did in debris removal, those are kind of the categories
of emergency work.
So there's nothing unusual about how this transpired, our request and our appeal process
is fairly standard.
We've gotten the same amount of funding from the federal government that every state typically
There were some unusual disasters where that was adjusted automatically by the president.
I think COVID for every state, he adjusted the federal share to 100% for COVID response
activities.
But typically it is 7525, the U.S. Stafford Act, which is the Federal Law that governs
disasters, says that and the implementing regulations say not less than 75% of federal
reimbursement.
And that's where we are today.
Considered positively, but we're waiting to hear on that. So we were getting the funding we normally get for every federal disaster that we
We we see in the state
Thank you
Great. Thank You director Fisher. We might have more questions about the typhoon,
but oh, Senator Willakowski has a question after no other questions. I do have a questions on at that point
Mr. Chairman when
the governor put out a
a statement, actually, where he said thank President Trump.
He said President of Trump was deeply concerned
with the well-being of Alaskans.
I want to thank him and his administration
for approving disaster declaration.
Then he goes on and says, the federal disaster
declaration authorizes a 100% federal cost
share for all categories of relief assistance.
And I'm just curious.
Was the governor wrong in that statement or did the president change his mind? What what happened?
Through the chair senator Wieckowski
As I just mentioned in the Governor's request for a federal disaster. He requested 100% for all categories for 90 days
We did not hear back directly from the President until I believe it was December 19th
What you know well after his original declaration was made
I would say that the way we receive the notifications of federal disasters is through the federal
register. And in this case, the declaration that was issued, I know there was a post on
a social media site from the president about assistance coming to us in the tune of $25 million.
We're unsure what that really meant because I can tell you, as of today, FEMA has already
And we're at the very, very beginning of this disaster.
So, because we didn't, we hadn't heard in the federal register notice, typically as
the cost share listed in that document itself, when that actually came, which was after the
verbal declaration, if you will, from the president saying, help is on the way.
It didn�t include a statement about the, the costs share.
So we, didnít know until December that that was changed or that, that it was not approved.
that's just where we are here. It was the way it was declared and the federal
register was kind of not typical of what we had seen in the past. And I couldn't
speak the lie. That's a federal agency or a or federal government thing.
General Lukowski.
Still not sure where the air took place because the governor
In his October 22nd, 2025 press release, where he says Trump administration approves disaster
declaration for West Coast storm, says the federal disaster declaration authorizes a 100% federal
cost share. And in this, in the very first sentence, President Donald J. Trump has approved a federal
disaster declarations. So in that disaster, declaration, did it say that there was a
Through the chair, Senator Wilakowski, the original press release that came out once we were notified that the president declared
Was verbal we did not get anything in writing for a couple of days following that as it got posted to the register
So that's where that information came from the press released from when the President
Communicated verbally to The Governor about approving his request for the declaration
Why did the governor say it was 100 percent?
Did he, I mean, somebody must have said it
was a 100% since it's normally, you said in federal law,
normally 75%, somebody has said
it 100%, or did we just get it wrong or what happened?
Who said was it a hundred percent.
For the chair of Senator Wilakowski,
I cannot say what I said is that the Governor requested 100%.
In his documentation, when he submitted the federal request, we received a verbal approval of that declaration request from the president, follow on information as late as December 19th that the costier adjustment was denied on December, 19, and we have appealed that.
Thank you, Director. Not to belabor the point, but.
None of us on this panel are actually from rural Alaska or remote Alaska even and definitely not Western Alaska
But I'm just curious are the folks that are
needing federal aid able to obtain that aid currently under the existing structure or
Is there other people that were just waiting for a check in the mail?
To the chair, no, they are getting all of the available assistance that is authorized in the declaration
just for the committee's
information
This year when when there's a federal disaster declared and it includes a to individuals and families the statutory the federal statutory maximum
assistance is
for a loss of essential purpose personal property is forty four thousand eight hundred dollars
And then there is additional $44,800 available through FEMA for housing repair replacement.
All of that funding is available now.
FEMA has already issued, I believe it's somewhere to the tune of a couple of hundred maximum
grants for essential personal property to a tune that's $32 million already in Alaskans
bank accounts.
That's kind of the first tranche of assistance that's coming. So the money is flowing just like it's supposed to just
Like every disaster that we we deal with when when the federal government comes in and partners with us
Thank you director senator Wielikowski. Thank You and again not to belabor the point, but we're talking millions of dollars here
in a very very tight fiscal year and and was was
The governor told told by the president that. We would get 100% or is there something in writing?
that the governor has, did somebody else say that we would get 100%, is there anything in writing
that said we'd get a 100%? Through the Chair of Senator Wailakowski, we didn't receive any
information about that cost share until December 19th from the White House.
Thank you director. I guess one more question on that is that I know that there were at least
Several hundred
maybe a couple hundred families who were
Moved are they have they've all been relocated to I?
guess warmer places or
So are there are the currently being housed or they I knew a lot of them went to Anchorage
I knows some of him did go to Fairbanks and a lotta folks went too
sort of like family uh to their families that might have been located in larger cities
are I mean I guess there's nobody left there in that area is that correct and then
how has um how those kids been integrated into fan or into schools what's happened on that and
to the chair immediately following the impacts of the storm.
There was an evacuation of approximately 2,000 individuals
from their communities.
Some evacuated to neighboring communities
many initially to Bethel and then a number,
particularly from the communities of Kipnuck
and Quigollingook were evacuated
to Anchorage, the two tribal councils for those communities,
past resolution saying it was not safe to go home. This disaster is truly catastrophic.
We have upwards a little more than 200 homes in the region that have been assessed as being
completely destroyed. So those displaced survivors, Alaskans, are still largely residing in
the Anchorage area. Some in Matsu, some in Fairbanks, and some still. They're just not back home
We have about 80 households,
about 400 individuals that are still in hotels in Anchorage,
and we are working with FEMA every day to transition those folks from
hotels into long-term rentals using FEMA rental assistance while we're
planning for what will be a pretty substantial and
You know at the peak we had almost 700 individuals in hotels every day we're transitioning households
out of hotels and into the long-term you know apartment style living. That is available for
now up to 18 months as we we look at what we need to do to clean up and rebuild and and bring
Lifeline infrastructure back on in the communities and start looking at housing missions on repairing
Yeah, thank you. That's it's just devastating from what I've heard from some folks, but appreciate appreciate that director. You can continue
Go quick jump to the next slide, please
Just a little bit more about these hazard mitigation programs and the funding that's out there
And I will state for the record that these are only the programs that my agency administers
I previously mentioned that the brick
building resilient infrastructure and communities program has been temporarily suspended. We don't
know when we're going to see a new version of that program. Congress and the administration are
talking about a pre-disaster mitigation program 2.0. we don t know it will be named and we do not
know anything about what that will look like yet. The hazard mitigation grant program is post
disaster funding. When there is a federally declared disaster we receive a percentage of
repair cost on top of that to do mitigation and resilience activities. For the long disaster
specifically, the governor's request for that program was denied as well by the president.
I can tell you that every federal disaster in the previous year,
the request, for the particular program, has been denied for every state as
well. And the administration and FEMA were looking at both of those pre and post-disaster
to retool that I guess if you will but we do not have further information
on that. In the interim though we continue our preparedness activities
and building local hazard mitigation plans and keeping the state plan updated
to make sure we're identifying those opportunities to
make communities more resilient and to do mitigation activities where we can.
When we are recovering from disaster still we
do have some programs available through FEMA to repair a power plant
If we get permission and approval to do new housing construction through FEMA,
we are already planning to make sure that those homes are elevated and secured appropriately
in these communities to prevent additional damages from future flooding events like we saw in Halong,
where a number of homes floated away. So both on the infrastructure and the housing side,
we're still working every mitigation program and funding source that's available.
There are a myriad of others through other agencies like Housing and Urban Development
and some wildfire mitigation programs that are out there that aren't administered by our
agency, but these are the ones that my team focus on.
Go to the next and final slide I think for time for the committee.
In addition to my planning section, I have an entire section devoted specifically to preparedness.
And that team does all of our training.
We are the administrator and the manager of all FEMA,
federal emergency management agency training in the state.
So for the incident command system, for mitigation activities,
for emergency planning training,
for folks that leave the State to go to the emergency
management institute in Maryland or to Aniston,
which is one of the other training centers for FEMA.
My team manages all of that. We also deliver a lot of classes ourselves locally where we teach
local responders, emergency management principles, incident command principles those kind of things.
Our exercise team exercises state agencies, exercises the state emergency operations center,
and spends the majority of their time providing technical assistance and controller and evaluation
support for local disaster exercises that are developed and prepared and conducted around the
And finally our outreach section or outreach unit does all of our community level outreach
if you will.
So every time there's a health and safety fair or other types of public fairs that are
happening where emergency preparedness materials are provided, our team goes out and does that.
If you haven't seen it, we have an earthquake simulator on a trailer, it simulates an 8.0
do non-structural mitigation, things like securing your pictures to the wall,
appropriately securing, your bookcases,
things, like that. And the outreach team also works directly with local
government organizations to share the message of
individual and family preparedness. Everything starts and ends in your home
and with your neighbors and all disasters starting and locally.
spend a lot of time working and sharing preparedness materials and providing classes on community
emergency response teams to really get at the individual and family prepared-ness that's
necessary for all Alaskans, you know, considering all the threats and hazards that we face.
So that for purposes today, it was my last slide just to talk about our prepared
initiatives. They are continuing.
Despite the myriad of disasters that we're responding to and recovering from, our preparedness
is kind of a year-round business for us, regardless of all the disasters
that were responding too.
Great. Thank you very much for the presentation today, Director. I know there are more specific
questions to about Western Alaska and then the folks that live out there and
then what's sort of like next steps. As you mentioned being sort at the
beginning of this situation that we've got, but I do appreciate the information.
Is there any question for Director Fisher?
Seeing and hearing none, thank you very much.
Once again, Director Fisher, Mr. Fisher
from the Division of Homeland Security.
We will take a brief brief at ease
to queue up the next presentation.
Okay, I'd like to call the Senate State Affairs Committee meeting back to order.
We appreciate it hearing about the what's going on in our emergency and homeland security.
And now we're going to talk a little bit about fire suppression and give us a seasonal update today.
We have with us Deputy Director of Forestry and Fire Prevention with the Alaska Department of Natural Resources, Norm McDonald.
You can go ahead and start.
All right, good morning.
And for the record, my name is Norm McDonald.
I'm the Deputy Director for
the Division of Forestry and Fire Protection.
And I oversee the fire program for this state.
I know I've never prayed it under this committee.
I have met some of you in person
and presented to you on different committees.
But before we get into the 2025 fire season,
I thought it'd be worthwhile
just taking a real high level overview
of how we...
operate in Alaska how we develop our program and build our
program to support the wildland fire mission in
Alaska. I think that will tie directly into the 2025 fire
season and how that that rolled out. But we we build
our programs around a complex problem. Fires are not
getting any easier in alaska nationally or globally.
I thank you you've all watched the news and and seen the fires in
California last January devastated those communities.
fires on the east coast in areas they've never had fire before right outside of New York City
and Maui two years ago to have a state of Lahaina. You look at nationally or globally
Canada's head to back-to-back of the worst fire seasons on records, Australia, the same thing,
and Alaska were lined up for that as well.
So it's a complex problem.
There's not a single solution.
So we build our program around our four foundational pillars
and those are preparedness, which is the well-trained workforce,
whether those or our employees are a way to import those folks
into Alaska when we need them.
Prevention,
which was reducing human-caused fires.
60% of our fires are human caused and preventable.
The mitigation.
pillar is our fuels reduction and that's building resilient landscapes and fire-adapted communities
and of course the suppression piece of our foundation and the right resources, right place,
right time. So we build on those foundations, everything we do, we invest into that,
whether it's our personnel time, our resources or our funding and those four pillars to meet our
And just really quickly, Alaska, as I've got a very unique interagency cooperation model
that's unique to Alaska.
I'd like to point on the graphic on a left, the blue is state protection.
And by statute, we have state private municipal lands.
But through our agreements,
we also protect federal lands and in return,
Alaska Fire Service, which is under DOI,
protects all federal land through their direction,
but also through the agreement they protect.
state private missile lands for us and that's a reimbursable billing we we do
that every year for each other we build each
other at the end of the fire season and it works really well for Alaska and I
will point out in the green is the US Forest Service a relatively small
player in Alaska but big nationally and they have the Tongas and Chew
Again Alaska is a huge state. We don't have the resources to put every fire out so we break that
into four different categories critical being the highest priority. That's our immediate action
around communities and life safety. The second priority is full which is still a high priority
this is more of our recreational cabins, our dispersed residents and then the high value natural
I'll skip down to limited that's for the most part that is a fire that will play
its natural role in the landscape and will monitor and we need to take point
protection and then modified lands are classified as full until the conversion
date of July 10th and they classified to limit it after that date and again
that how we establish our initial attack how prioritize where we're going to
send our limited resources and this is something that all agencies in Alaska
I think, you know, we talked about the challenges globally in nationally and in Alaska, and
this is just a great, um,
just a glimpse of the challenges that we do face.
The top left with the state is the 20 year time period
between 1984 and 2003 with a graphic on the right
being the same time frame of 2004 to 2023.
You can just see by the amount of fires
and the acreage we've got a growing challenge.
It's a problem that were all adapting to
and working towards
being prepared for, but it is a challenge.
And then the graphic on the left is just another indicator.
Two million acre seasons are what we consider a large season
for Alaska.
And you can see from the earlier mid-'90s to current date
and the number of two million acres seasons
has increased from their previous 30 years.
So challenges that we're all facing
and we are working towards the best solution possible.
And on top of the growing fire challenges and that emerging issue is our growing wild
under urban interface problem, 75% of Alaskans live in the urban
85% of the new homes being developed are being built into the wildland urban interface.
So it's a problem that we've got with more fire on the landscape and then people living
in these fire prone environments.
So when we talk about our four pillars, that's how we build around is how do we best protect
Alaskans knowing they're going to be in the situations and knowing we have a growing problem.
One of the things we talked about was our mitigation.
I do want to point this out in the 2025 season.
We use some of
the fuel breaks we've constructed over the last 10 years.
The fuel break on the top right,
the sunset fuel brake is in
the Matsuy Valley.
It's a seven-mile fuel
break that stretches between metal lakes and Houston.
The billers reach fire 96,
McKinley fire, Sakai fire.
ahead of time fuel breaks we can get in place is is a better way. It's the best way we feel
possible to protect our communities. Old Murphy Dome is in Fairbanks. This is
a fuel break that was established in the early 2000s. We refreshed it up with a retreatment.
about five years ago, and we've used this fuel break
on two different occasions on the Fairbanks,
protecting the Murphy Dome subdivisions.
And I do want to point out the graphic on a left,
the Funny River, this is from 2014,
and when we got several really good examples,
similar to this, but that orange color
is the funny river fire scar on north end,
you'll see the yellow or the greenish,
that's the fuel brake we constructed,
it was a 13 mile fuel brick interagency effort
between the Fish and Wildlife Service and the state.
And we use that fuel break on the Funny River Fire
to protect that community.
If you look at that bottom left hand graphic,
that's a pretty telling tale of the importance
of these fuel breaks.
One, we protected it's the life safety,
but that $1.7 billion worth of state homes,
subdivisions, and assets that were protected.
So we feel this is a real, you know, moving forward.
This is where we really need to lean into as an agency, as in us, and as a state.
And we've have a proven record of using those fuel breaks to protect our communities.
And part of the preparedness piece and circling back to those four pillars is just having the right resources right place, right time.
We do that with our own people that we do the training for, but also having their ability to import.
And we did that through three different mechanisms.
We have state to state agreements where we can call in other states to send resources when we need them.
We have a Northwest compact which includes five western Canadian providences and seven western
states. California is now part of that and that's the compact that we use the most to get a
resources to Alaska timely and support our effort and in return when those states are in their
fire season and they need our assistance we used this compact to send our resource to the lower 48
And then the Stafford Act master agreement is how we import our federal resources and
states that aren't part of an agreement or a compact.
So those are the three mechanisms that we have in place when we need resources.
We go to all three of those and we important those resources
And then in-state and timely that we had director Fisher right before us, but we worked very closely with the state EOC and his shop.
And that's with a preparedness and training for the National Guard to help support our disaster response or a fire response.
We also work closely with the Department of Transportation.
They support us with ruin.
We do the road closures and evacuations.
State troopers and public safety, again,
with evacuations and traffic control.
And then the Alaska National Guard.
And they provide a couple different services for us.
When we call on them, one is the Black Hawk helicopters
with a bucket.
They provide the suppression effort,
but also a lot of logistical support that we use.
And we help free up the state troopers
and DOT to do their day jobs.
and come in and fill that niche
for the evacuation management and traffic control.
And then coming around to the 2025 fire season
and about this time within the next couple of weeks,
we'll see one for 2026.
But for those of you who are here last year,
you probably remember seeing this.
We had a
prediction of a very busy early spring season in South Central. There was very
little snow, a lot of concern for the Anchorage Hillside, the Kenai Peninsula,
and much of the Southwest. So we geared up early and we talked about our
prevention piece. We called for an early start to fire season. That started that
instead of April 1st date, early March, and that allowed us to manage open
And so that was the glimpse that we looked, we had is a warm, dry early spring and then
transitioning to what was considered a more normal June and July.
And then we really ended up seeing, and this is where people often ask what's our fire
season going to look like, I always say I'll tell you in October because it is one of the
But, you know, even with that lack of snow, we really had a really cool and fairly damp
spring.
That May period where it's usually our driest period was fairly wet and cool.
And we only had 38 fires in the first half of June and that's a record low, at least going
back to 1993.
And, um, and we had significant shift in our fire weather and, that was, starts right
And we ended up with about a week of warmer dryer weather that was primarily in the interior
North of the Alaska range
And then from June 15 the June 21st
We had a significant lightning event and these are something we're seeing more and more frequent when we see that map
With all the fires and large fire scars part of that is the more frequently lightning that we are experiencing Alaska
But we had 100 over 50
There's about 55,000 lightning strikes, ground strikes.
It started 173 fires over that time period.
So right away we were stretched very, very thin.
We had our resources out in the highest priority fires.
And what followed that was a three day what we call a red flag condition red
flag event that's warm dry and windy or hot dry wind conditions where we
experience extreme fire spread and for those of you in Fairbanks and some of
you are those that what causes the large fires around the Fairbank's area and
that stretch on the park's highway from the Nally all the way up into the Brooks
So the impacts or that last season, we ended up evacuating 400 Alaska residents from their homes.
That was in Fairbanks, Healy, and Toc primarily.
many of you who tried to drive the Parks Highway were familiar with the traffic delays that we had
and closures that was over about a 14-day period of time from the Bear Creek fire and the Nana Ridge
fire. We lost 45 primary residents. Most of those were in the Healy area on the bear Creek Fire
and then multiple outbuildings destroyed from those fires as well.
So we work closely with the utilities to manage that.
And during that time period we constructed 176 miles of fire line.
So when we talk about being prepared with mitigation and have those field breaks
in place, the more we can pre-do,
the better we're off, 276 miles is a huge workload, a
huge lift, and very expensive to do time of emergency.
And what we ended up with for the season was 467 fires for right around a million acres, and that's about our 20-year average.
So when that million acre is some place remote, that is not very, we can deal with that.
This million-acre, or at least a lot of it, was right along the road system impacting our communities.
So we were definitely had our hands full and we're challenged last year.
And I'll just point that graphic on the right.
That dark black line just shows where the 25-fire season.
sits compared to some of the previous years and you can see 2004 was the
biggest season on record and we are well below that but still extremely busy
for for our fire season as short as it was. I'll just run through a few of our
the priority fires or those critical fires that had the most impact on our on
our Alaska residents. The Bear Creek fire reference we did lose 44 primary
residences in that. It started off the road difficult access
but the outcome of that is it shut down the park's highway corridor.
for parts of two weeks.
We did traffic control to try to keep that traffic going,
but impacts to tourism and Denali for people traveling
that highway back and forth, impacts the commerce,
and impacts just the residents who rely on that
highway to get to the Anchorage and Fairbanks
and the folks going up to North Slope.
So, significant impacts there.
We had an aggressive initial attack, but again, we had a red flag warning that pushed
that fire into just under 40,000 acres, and we managed that for about four weeks with
The next fire I'll review is the Nineana Ridge Fire.
This is actually two fires on both sides of the Parks Highway.
Both of them were well off the road system
when they first started.
We had a modified initial attack.
We have higher priority fires or fair banks area
with structures immediately threatened
where we sent our resources.
We did have a small group from Georgia
that helped manage that incident for the first several days.
As we experienced that red flag event, these fires both grew with extreme fire behavior
over the matter of three days.
And again, so between the Bear Creek fire and the Nana Ridge fire, we had two fires
that impacted the park's highway and again just really made it complicated for people
to get back and forth on the parks.
And to compound the problem, and for those of you again from Fairbanks,
there's a major construction project going on.
So we had traffic delays with the construction,
traffic release from the fire and that coordinating,
getting traffic through between those two significant projects was a challenge.
But we worked closely with DOT to manage that and, you know,
figure out a fairly good way to get that traffic
through, although.
I think when you talk to the residents up there,
they were very frustrated with the delays of that highway.
And really, those are put in place
for firefighter safety and public safety.
It's a fire on both sides of the road,
high smoke, low visibility,
and we've got a lot of fire traffic.
So for safety of both the public and our firefighters,
that restricted traffic was needed.
The Himalaya fire was just outside of Fairbanks
to north in an area we had.
fire almost every year. This is an area that experiences fire quite frequently.
This was impacting primary residences.
This one of the fires where we did have a previously established fuels break that we used
and we're continuing to use that fuels brake and expand on that for that area knowing its
the impact of the Trans-Alaska pipeline, utility corridors, and the LA highway,
which wasn't quite as impacted as the Parks Highway was, but still we had delays in traffic through that area.
And then the last fire I'll hit on is the Nelchina Glacier Fire,
and this is, I think, a really good example of
making decisions time of instant on where we prioritize our resources and where
we put them for the best value. This fire was again a lightning fire several
miles off the Glen Highway near the Nelchina Glacier area of known high wind.
The first in hell.
attack sized that fire up and it was not catchable.
So we made a decision instead of trying to go direct
and put that Fire out, we backed up
and in direct line around the communities
and the values at risk along the highway.
We did utilize the National Guard Black Hawks
to continue to cool the head of that
fire where it's pushing towards the Highway.
And you can see those yellow lines in the map,
those are what we call management action points.
If the fire were to reach that management
establish more people in there, establish evacuations, and take different actions on that fire.
We were able to keep that on the north end with the Black Hawks and eventually some
of our firefighters and keep it south of those management action points.
But the result of that is we now have a really well-established fuel break around those communities
And so the end state of the season, we ended up importing 3,500 firefighters into Alaska,
which included 43 crews, 20 aircraft, and then 2,600 overhead orders.
And those came from about 40 different states, all the federal agencies,
and to support that effort.
That we have where we needed those resources to be available in Alaska
So tying that back into the preparedness piece and those agreements and how we count on those and share resources not just
Nationally but with Canada as well
Just the importance of having those agreement in place and that process in-place
So we can get resources here quickly during time of need
And then I'll close it out with this and I know this is a primarily a
for the fire season but with Brian Fisher talked a little bit about the all-hazard response.
We helped support three all all hazard incidents this year the largest being the typhoon.
We worked with director Fisher and his staff and the EOC and we mobilized 162 of our primary
firefighters and overhead team.
out of Bethel in support of that mission with the recovery and evacuations.
We used our ordering process to get boats and heavy equipment in place to help support
that recovery effort.
We sent two of our mobile shower units to Anchorage in the support the evacuees when
they were delivered to the Anchorage and then multiple aircraft to support logistics operations.
on the Stadia OC during fire season to support us
with National Guard and their assets.
And it's really nice in return to be able to help out
in that event.
And we had one of our longest tenured firefighters
that said this is the biggest humanitarian effort
that he's been part of.
So when Brian talks about that,
I can tell you from the people who responded for us,
they felt the same and terrible event,
but very glad we could be part
of that recovery and help those folks out.
I think that's the end Chair Kawasaki and lesser questions for me. I'll call that in a report. Great. Thank you
Director, thanks for being here. Certainly appreciate to hear about
Not the fire season we were expecting but the Fire season nonetheless, especially for Fairbanks
I had a question dealing with the FHIR that was at Nana Ridge and there was a Report of
cars being vandalized during that time.
Do you know anything that's happened since then?
We did.
I believe that was in the Himalayas fire.
And if you're referencing, there was some engines we had
that were vandalised.
There was an investigation done by the state troopers
and state parks.
It was on state park land.
I don't think they ever found out who did that.
And it was a very unfortunate event.
And yeah, something will.
We'll we'll track for the future, but yes, I was aware of that. Yeah, the firefighters
The firefighters bring their rigs out there their own personal vehicles and park them and then be gone for a week at a time
So anyway, anyways, that was a
Necessary situation had a question about the way that fires
When fires, you know, when are the what's the decision tree about when you let just fires burn?
And we've had sort of this nonstop discussion about, well, that fire is not as important and we'll just let that one burn.
And then of course the Kenai Peninsula had a recent fire they sorta let burn and then got out of control burn, lots of different reasons.
But can you tell me what the thoughts are on that?
can make that decision in conjunction with the protection agencies so we will
work together and look at what the values are, what
the threats are what, the risk is and then there's times where fire on the
landscape is beneficial as part of the
you know, part of Alaska's boreal forest.
So that's all looked at.
The one thing I will say with the limited
or the take no action fires is even if it's classified
as limited, we still have the ability
to suppress that fire and that is a decision we make
for every fire that does start including limited.
There are times where we'll look at time of year or current conditions or wind or maybe
there's values at risk that were closer than anticipated and we can take action on those
fires.
So the pre-planning is our, with the information we have, the best thought at that time, of
what action will be taken.
But a time-of-ignition, that could be changed and then we could do a full protection on
any of those fires?
I think we will have a conversation about timber
and forestry here with our State Forester and Commissioner.
Questions?
Senator Wielikowski.
Thank you.
So last year towards the end of the session,
the legislature passed a resolution
expressing concern about the upcoming wildfire season,
expressing that we'd like to see early warning systems
improved response time, situation awareness, et cetera.
Kind of an unusual resolution.
And then you had also issued your slide 10,
where you talked about, because of the blow normal snowpack,
expressing concern about how early fire season can walk us
through the thought process then with all this concern
the governor vetoed $27 million for fire suppression.
Through the chair, Senator Wilakowski,
I think the fires are expensive, and we are working in a time
where budgets are tight.
But what I will tell you is when we need to have funding to suppress fires we have a process that we followed and we did last year which is an emergency declaration and that gives us the funds to continue our mission.
So I can't speak to the veto of the 27 million last
year. But when
we needed funding
to
continue the fire suppression mission and protect Alaskans assets and values and infrastructure we we had what we
needed.
Follow-up Senator Lukaski.
The, let's see, I think, so there was a $27 million veto
and how much did fire suppression,
how how was your budget last year for fighting fires
and fire suppression?
Last year we started, and I believe it was,
I guess it's this fiscal year.
Yeah, this fiscal year, we are still working on what we'll have for our fire fund to start the season.
And we have a supplemental that's been put in place to request to have that ready for the start-up of the fire season,
that is usually based on either the tenure or five-year average,
and we've just provided those numbers on that looks like,
and I believe it's right around 63 million is our tenure average.
That's what we base our initial start up for the fire fund to have in place for
this coming fire season.
So, so with the $27 million cut, did you have enough, or did
you, have to dip into your piggy bank somewhere to get your money?
We had enough to start the fires season and provide that service and as that.
As we got down to where we knew we were not going to have enough,
we submitted emergency declaration, which was signed and approved.
And that got us to the rest of the fire season.
And how much over did you go?
I'll have to follow up with you on exactly what our last declaration was.
And we're still some of bills and again, it's interagency we have.
You know, every state that came out is still sending their final bill so we don't have a final number yet.
That's usually by, you know soon we should have that.
But we did go over that last year's 10 year average.
And again, it was just a fire season that was right around the road system that required a lot of suppression efforts.
Through the chair senator while the cost guy did not recommend that we
We worked with the governor's staff and through the the commissioner's office
We felt like what we started the season with
Even knowing it was going to be potentially a busy spring. We were in a good place to get through that that season
Also knowing that if we needed to go above what was budgeted we have that declaration project that process which we follow
and which we did last year.
Yep.
So the governor's now asking for 63 million
in a supplemental budget.
Do you remember what the?
Through the chair, this is Deputy Commissioner Goodrum
for the record.
I think in the supplemental,
there's an additional 2 million
in statutory designated program receipts
500,000 in interagency receipts that's being requested for the fire fund.
I thought I heard a number of 60 million fire suppression.
What are you asking for in the supplemental for fire suppression or to pay last year's bill?
For the record Deputy Commissioner Gudrem, I think that the subliminal identifies the 55 million,
which was a $30 million declaration and
Followed by a $25 million decoration both of those are identified within the supplemental so there were
55 million dollars
identified in that document
And so so how quickly do you need this money? Do you?
Need this because we sometimes don't pass our budget until May or June
Would it benefit you to get it sooner rather than later?
through the chair
Senator Wieckowski, our fire season normally starts by statute is April 1st and we start accruing costs, you know, April and May.
So by that time we would need what we consider our startup funding for fire suppression and the preparedness and
the pre-positioning of resources and that's usually the time frame where we get our first increment is to be in place for the spring fire
And you understand that at this point in time it will very likely require us to go into the constitutional budget reserve to get these funds
That's my understanding and
Through the chair
Senator Wilkoski part of the fire fund and that's a fairly new that a new fund that we've changed that two years ago is we have
when we recover funds, whether through FEMA or our federal protection, that funding rolls back
into the fire fund and helps refill that. So this will be the first year where some other
recovered funds will start going back into that fire funds and reduce that state need for
the budget, you know, like we have in the past two years. Okay. And so you're advocating that
go into the constitutional budget reserve to pay for it so that we can be prepared for
the upcoming fire suppression season fire season.
For the record deputy commissioner goodroom will we'll let the legislature figure out the best way to do that.
You understand how the budget process works and that
we're going to need the help of the governor to get a three-quarter vote.
You do understand that are you saying you just want hands-off?
We understand the senator's point. Thank you.
Thank you deputy commissioner earlier. Yep. Oh senator gray Jackson
Thank You mr. Chairman. Thanks for the presentation. I had no idea that
Letting fires burn was an option
So a couple of questions
I have how was the decision how is the decisions made to let a fire burn and then on average?
How long does it take for for a fighter die?
Thank your senator great Jackson
for the fire plan is made previously.
That's something that is as the land management agency
and the suppression agency do a joint decision on
if they can tolerate fire on that landscape.
So that's nothing done before the fires season.
But time of a start when that fire is detected
or identified, there's a follow up
and that decision is Made.
Do we want to follow the.
plan and let this fire play its natural role or do we want to take early action and suppress it?
I will say often when fires start in that limited category we also have fires going in the fold
and critical so we don't have enough resources for every fire, suppress every
fire so it's prioritized based on what fires are going to impact our primary values and
primary residence number two and then the natural resources and some of the recreational type project, you know processes after that
So if I can follow up again a third second question, so how long does it take for a fire to burn out?
I'm asking cuz cus I have no idea
Yeah, through the chair
Senator great Jackson. That's a great question and really depends on the year we've
There's a usually our fires stop spreading
By the end of July, we live in Alaska,
you know, when the state fair rolls around,
we get rain.
That's usually when those fires are starting
to go out naturally.
We have had fire seasons where it's been drier later
into the fall and those fire will burn into October
or November and then we've had fires where
it is a dry winter where they will burned year
around and rekindle in the next spring and come back.
So I don't think there's like a certain date
But it's based on the depth that they've burned and the amount of precipitation they receive in a short amount
of time is what puts those fires out. But often they will smolder around until we get the heavy snow,
which is November and December, and we monitor them throughout the life of that fire.
Sounds like a lot of pollution and environment, but anyway, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
There's, you know, because of the smoke it always impacts the residents, it
always impact the visitors, even travel sometimes and it is, but it's also a
natural part of, natural, part, of area to have fires and I don't know what the
right answer is but I appreciate that there are folks like you to do that.
Are there further questions Senator?
Yorkman, thank you Senator Kawasaki. Mr. McDonald, Mr Goodroom,
thank for being here. I wondered if you could just talk a little bit about
the fire fuel brake program. Great slide on slide number 7.
I can't express enough. So for folks unfamiliar with the funny river fire, that
fire-fuel brake there around Pollard Lupo is completed like the year before.
This fire season and if Chief Chief Browning were sitting in the back there earlier
He could have told you firsthand what that fire fuel brink meant to that part of Kaciloff as well as
Soldotna it was essential in controlling that Fire
You can see a little bit of the fire Fuel Break there on the north side of Sterling on that slide at three John Street
And then wrapping around the northern part
of Stirling
Extending that fire fuel break immensely important and protecting that community from this one like fire five years after that in 2019
Is there a state program by which we are building out fire a few breaks more every winter
And do we need a more robust plan to do that so that we can protect
Communities like ours and also also anchorage
Yeah through the chairs that are borkman we
over the last five years we've built what we call our fuels program. It's part of the fire
protection side of our division with the entire intent of building strategic fuel breaks around
our communities. We've got 16 fuel brakes in progress right now that we have in 2025.
We have another 20 fuel freaks on the books in the planning process for the future.
So I 100% aligned with you, it is very important, I think, to our mission.
As the fire season's increase, this is one of the tools we will have to help reduce those impacts to
our communities. So we've leaned in heavily to that program,
this administration, for the first time in Alaska history, actually funded over $17 million through
We've got a team in our grants department that works with the federal government to get fuels reduction grants
So we will continue that effort using whatever means necessary
Whether it's state state funds or federal to reduce that risk to our communities
Excellent. Thank you
Wonder if you could talk about the all lands all hands process and those meetings that happen around the state and how
your folks engage with local folks as well as land managers to be fire adaptive and be
ready for fires.
It would be nice if we lived in a world where the forest never caught on fire.
But that's not our reality.
Fires happen.
And then many times we can't stop them because fire fuels have built up so much that these
fires rage and burn out of control as happened in the Funny River fire
What does all-hands-all hands process look like and how can people engage in that if they want to?
You think the chair senator bill come in and now a keen eyes and exit an excellent example of
What right looks like with all hands-on lands? I know you've probably been to some of their their meetings. I have as well
But that is an opportunity for all the land managers and management agencies
To work together and on the fire problem
part of that, is identifying
values, like what needs to be protected, looking at opportunities, each agency brings something
to the table in those meetings, whether it's a local government, the state, or the federal
agencies, and where they can work together and partner. And I think this the Funny River
The land that that fuel break was built on included state.
There was native corporation land.
There were fish and wildlife refuge land,
so those agencies working together with other partners,
including the Forest Service, the Burroughs,
the developed that project to get the permits,
whatever that was needed to make sure we had the approval
and the public process of people when they saw excavators
and equipment working on these grants were aware of it.
Just an excellent of that Alaska partnership to start a project from grassroots and end up with a
fuels break that protected a big part of their community.
Though that type of all hands all lands group is really started in the keen eye of the mattes who burrow has got something similar
Fairbanks is starting that so it's a it is a model that is working across Alaska where multiple agencies
Involve the public in decision-making and identifying
Not just fuels breaks, but how we want to mitigate the fire risk to our communities. Very good. Thank you
Nope, no, go ahead. Yeah, thank you mr. Chairman
There was a lot of attention in my community about restructuring of wildland fire dispatch at the state level
Concerns persist about the effectiveness of that
Taking those dispatchers out of local communities and moving them somewhere else
How are things going with that process? It's largely complete now. How how did drills go?
How are we doing after we have no longer have any
dispatchers in Solbana?
You know, through the chair, Senator Bjorkman,
I would say last year was a success as I.
met with you and I said there will be challenges and there were but we worked through those every
every incident we responded to or our dispatchers dispatch from Palmer instead of Kenai.
We did our after action review on how we can improve what worked well what didn't work well
and we made adjustments throughout the season. I feel very confident that it was the right decision
We've got an excellent dispatch team in Palmer that is familiar with that process.
And the staff in Kenai at a time, I mean, are seeing the benefits of that as well now.
I think there's always going to be people, they want to walk into a dispatch and see
a person there.
With with where we are with our
Challenges to hire and keep staff
This is the right model moving forward and it's and has been successful and as I mentioned in for the for The Committee
This Is not new to Alaska
This, is something every state and geographic region in the country has gone to is a centralized dispatch
To provide that service that that you used to take five dispatch centers now you do out of one and reduces a lot of the complexity of having
or should. Last question. Yes. During the process of discussing whether or not there
would be a Department of Agriculture positions were identified in your department to be
chloroformed and then transformed into a department of agriculture staff. Do those positions
remain vacant? If so, what do you do with those dollars? How is that situation working
I'll probably take that question, Deputy Commissioner Goodrum, for the record.
The two positions that were identified last year from within the wildlife fire section
that had been vacant for greater than two years have essentially been locked down for
the purpose of the discussion of department of agriculture through the summer special
Court decision is decided, or unless the legislature itself
makes a decision on what it wants to do with it.
And so there hasn't been any money expended against either of those positions.
And that hasn t been wasted or gone for not, but that's what the department has done with those two positions
Great. Thank you. Um, thanks very much for presenting today. And I we are going to hear just an initial brief update on Senate bill 188. It's a first presentation first hearing. We will hear the remainder of it on Thursday of this week and open it up to public testimony, but I wanted to make sure that state forester and director of the division of forestry and fire protection.
who's come all the way from Fairbanks came, can come up and introduce himself the committee and
open up Senate Bill 188 for us. Well, thanks, Chair Kawasaki and for the record, my name is
Jeremy Dallas and the State Forester and Director of the Division of Forestry and Fire Protection.
And like was mentioned, I'm going to just introduce Senate bill 188, which is a bill that would
So just real quick just to touch on what state forests are and specifically what the Tanana Valley State Forest is state
Forests under AS41-17.200 are land that the legislature designates for the management of timber
But also allowing for other beneficial uses
More specifically the Tana valley state forest is one of three state Forest
It was established in 1983 and it also falls under 41- 17. So it's primarily for timber
But it also has a wildlife objective in the statute, under 4117.400.
So because of that wildlife objectives, we work closely with ADF and G to retain habitat features on the landscape and that when we do timber sales or management activities that we're taking into account.
wildlife habitat as well.
Additionally, the Tanaw Valley State Forest
has a Citizens Advisory Committee
that helps the division kind of direct
to the management activities.
And there's seats on that committee
that represent various stakeholder groups.
So then getting into the other beneficial uses,
You know, that can be a lot of things.
There are mining is allowed on state forest material site
development, public recreation, and even commercial
recreation.
And so some of these activities that you see in this last
bullet,
that's a pretty significant use of the state
forest hunting, trapping, snow machining,
that sort of thing.
So what this bill does, it's a bill that would propose to expand the state forest by about 600,000 acres.
So this map here, the green polygons are the existing state forests.
The yellowish polygonds are proposed areas that will be covered in this Bill.
I do have a map at the end that we can talk about that kind of blows up the areas in two different East and West so we
can get into some more detail if needed.
with some of these areas we are currently actively managing so we have timber
sales in some these proposed areas currently we're so are building
infrastructure into it the all of this lands are designated for forestry in the
area plan so that's the DNR area planned and in that area plant also they are
There's management intent language that explains that they make the recommendation that
they should be added to the state forest.
So why increase the state for the size of the State Forests like I mentioned before we are doing management activities in some of these areas
Which means that we're building road to them. We're planting in
Some of those areas building infrastructure
We are planning for a future crop of timber so that you know one or two generations down the road
They also have timber that's there that would be available. These sites are productive sites
and I can get more into this later but they have a resource that is available for managing
and then it also communicates to the industry that there will be opportunities for them in the
future to be able to do timber sales and if they want to expand their business or grow their
business that they will have those opportunities. So the state forest expansion process, I'm going to
kind of just touched on how this happened,
how has worked through with the Tannenol Valley itself.
So years ago, the foresters within the division
have identified these areas through remote sensing
and looking at soils data and identified
that they are productive sites.
They have a resource and they could be managed
for forestry purposes.
So then, in the DNR area planning process that is done through the resource assessment
and development section, when they decide that they're going to make an update to an
area plan, they work with the division and we can make recommendations in that process
on areas that should be designated for forestry.
during the area plan update for the eastern Tananaw area
plan and the Yukon Tanana area
plan, which the state forest covers.
Additionally, we can also, in that process,
make recommendations that some of these areas
be added to the State Forest.
And that might be because they are adjacent to existing
State forest or connected to State
Forest, that it just makes sense to include them.
And given the resource, the best use of that state land.
So once that process has happened, that was a public process.
Once the administration feels that it makes sense to consider what it might look like
to expand the state force, do we issue a Public Notice and hold public hearings on
the proposed expansion, and we did that,
and I can show you some dates on when that occurred.
So held public meetings in different communities
within the Tananaw Valley to explain that this is,
you know, this an idea and to get their feedback
on what their thoughts are.
If the public is supportive of the idea,
if we feel that they're supportive,
and the administration can then
put the legislative proposal together for the legislature to
To consider and with that includes a a summary of the testimony offered at the public hearings a preliminary forest inventory and a cost estimate of
The operational inventory enforce management plan
And so I do want to mention, so we have the summary of the testimony offered at the public hearings.
In terms of preliminary forest inventory, in 2014, we did a full blown forest
inventory of Tanana Valley and the forest classified lands around it.
So that covers the requirements of a preliminary inventory.
And also in about a four-year process we finished the Forest Management Plan.
If there were additions to the state forest we would have to do a new management plan
But we could just focus on the areas that would be added the the plan is so new that we
Would still be just carrying that plan forward
Like I mentioned
These areas are recommended in the area plans the eastern tana area plan and the ucontana
Area plan, and additionally we made that the recommendation in
in the state forest management plan.
So these are three separate and individual public processes
where the public has seen these recommendations.
I did mention we did various public meetings.
These are the dates.
This last summer between, well, May 5th and May 28th,
we had various meetings in Fairbanks, in Antitoke,
dealt the junction, and then we
had two virtual meetings as well.
So, generally, to summarize public comments, and we can provide this if needed, but generally
support for the idea of additions to the state forest.
Most of the questions and comments that we had were technical in nature, such as why
a request that we, when we do management, we emphasize just the local market versus export
market. There are questions that, you know, is this an effort to interact with carbon projects
and then just general questions on land management processes.
And I think a lot of the support comes from the fact that the state forces existed since 1983
So, I did mention non-timber uses are very, very prevalent on the Tananaw Valley, you
know, obviously, personal use recreation exists in a lot of forms, but these, the rest of
these bullets are kind of recreation-focused organizations in the interior that provide
services and recreation programs, and they all use the state forest, this is just a list
that I could think of, it's not all inclusive,
but the various groups that are using it for recreation,
and that's what state forests are.
We maintain access for the public.
We're not closing off access.
And...
Okay, that is where we're gonna stop for today.
I did wanna allow the commissioners say,
do you have any comments you'd like to make
on the bill itself?
Before we are going to hear this bill again on Thursday and open it up to public testimony as well
But if you wanted to make any sense sure just real quick in recognition of the time
deputy commissioner Brent goodroom
very much in favor of
increased use of our forests and management of these resources they do create great access and
opportunities for Alaskans to use these resources.
Additionally, as we had just discussed where you have a forest road,
you've have access in should there be fire or disease that you need to
better care for the resource. And so these lands have all been identified as
forestry as their primary purpose and inclusion within the state forest would be
really good for future investment for for
Great. Thank you.
Commissioner and thank you Director.
Thank You Deputy Director also for presenting today.
That concludes the meeting for today this bill will be held over to the next meeting.
which will be held on Thursday at 1, sorry, 3.30 p.m.,
where we will also take public testimony
and then any other invited testimony
that you'd like to present at that point in time.
We'll also give over a brief sectional
and maybe answer some of the questions
that were pitched by yourself about
why some the areas were not included
or why they were included and just generalized
if we could get that information on the record.
Is there any other business to come before the committee?
All right, hearing and seeing none,
we're gonna go ahead and adjourn the meeting
of the Senate State Affairs Committee.
The next meeting will be on Thursday, February 5th,
and we will hear this bill once again.
With that, the meaning is adjourned at 5.04 p.m.