2022-11-15 00:00:00 - Joint Committee on Covid-19 and Emergency Preparedness and Management

So I'm gonna get started here. Good afternoon everybody. I'm Chair Bill Driscoll JR The House Chair of the Joint Committee on COVID-19 and emergency preparedness and management, I want to thank everyone for joining us today for this informational hearing on wildfire management were eager to hear from several emergency management professionals and responders as well. The other professionals that we've invited to testify here today in an effort to gain their perspective on where the Commonwealth stands and regards to wildfire management capabilities and our preparedness. Our goal is to get an overview on some of the recent fires in massachusetts and their responses to those events. And we also hope as a result of today's hearing, the committee will come away with a firm understanding of massachusetts planning and readiness for future while firefighting events before we begin with testimony and our invited guests today and presentations, I'd like to thank the committee members for joining us as well as my co chair Senator Comerford and the hardworking staff members that we each have working behind us on these, on these hearings that we hold.

So thank you all for your efforts. Um Again, we're going to hear from several of these experts in a row. We're going to try82 and hold questions until the end. There will be an opportunity for committee members to ask questions following the presentation and just a couple of quick housekeeping points um when we do get to those questions. If there are other House and Senate members on today, we will alternate99 between House and Senate for the question and answer portion of the agenda. And if you'd like to ask a question, please indicate so by raising your hand or in the chat function so we can see that and make sure that we recognize you when the time comes, we ask116 everyone as always to mute unless you're presenting or or asking a question. And with that I would welcome my co chair Senator Comerford to make some opening remarks. Thank you so much. Mr Chair for organizing this important hearing and your hardworking staff. As you say for all the behind the scenes work really, the committee staff has done extraordinary work.

You know, I'm mindful, you know, when you brought this idea forward, Mr Chair, I am mindful that as our climate continues to turn up the148 heat as droughts become more intense and longer as forests and fields get drier and152 more brittle as development encroaches on more and more forest and wild lands and working157 lands. You know, we just continue to see the increased risk of more frequent and more catastrophic fires. The numbers that our team did to help prepare me for this. We're pretty staggering if I'm right and perhaps the undersecretary and the wonderful speakers will correct me. But something like 100 wildfires in the commonwealth last august alone, although again that number just maybe what I'm reading in the182 news and perhaps there were even more incidents. So I'm very, very grateful to join you today. Mr Chair again, I thank you for your leadership. Uh and I'm grateful for this opportunity for legislators and the public to learn more about what state and our allies and the utilities and elsewhere are doing about this growing threat and what we can do in the legislature to be increasing allies to their very, very important work.

So again, Mr. Chair, thank you and I'll turn it back over. Thank you Senator. Now I'd like to welcome in Under Secretary Gene bending cots thorpe, who is the undersecretary for Homeland Security here in the commonwealth uh and has over 20 years of executive leadership and public policy experience in Homeland Security, Public Safety Emergency management and public health preparedness. The undersecretary currently heads massachusetts public safety system, response to the covid 19 Pandemic and overseas Fire Services Emergency Management. Homeland Security grants, the Fusion center National Guard agencies and Operations. Previously undersecretary was the Director of public health emergency preparedness and planning for Plymouth County public Health emergency preparedness coalition. Formerly the President of the commonwealth Management services and Executive Director of the International Association of VMS Chiefs. So under secretary, thank you for being here and bringing uh your colleagues today's hearing.

JEANNE BENINCASA - MASSACHUSETTS UNDERSECRETARY FOR HOMELAND SECURITY - Thank you so much and good afternoon, Chair Driscoll and Chair Comerford and the members of the Joint Committee of Covid 19 and Emergency preparedness management. First of all, I want to say thank you to my staff, to everybody on this call from EOPs, from DFS, MIMA, the guard and and Chief Herbert that they put this together for you and for your team and for your for your understanding of all the hard work that they've done and they continue to do to keep Massachusetts safe. I believe that throughout this testimony, you will learn a lot of our resources but most important of the resources will will be able to tell you about today is the coordinating of those resources. So it is an incredible team of experts and it's incredible team of folks that I've enjoyed over the last four years and that have really made Massachusetts safe. So I'm pleased to be part of this team.

You will hear324 from testimonies from these colleagues today that I bring and as you know, their experiences is widespread throughout their332 career. So it's an honor to be here. I think I'll start with the very first Dave Cellino, the Chief forest fire warden, which is quite a difficult title to speak about but representing the Department of Conservation Recreation, the Bureau of Forest Fire Control and Forestry. The bureau plays an instrumental role in aiding and assisting the cities and towns with prevention, detection, suppression of wildfires within Massachusetts. From March to November, DCR provides detection from 42 of their fire towers, provides specialized wild land firefighting equipment that you'll hear about later and brings a highly qualified staff who are uniquely trained to various national standards of wild line fire management, which they will go into with his presentation.

Chief Cellino represents the Northeast states on several regional and national committees where he collaborates with the local, state and federal fire agencies392 on wildland fire management, policy response and mitigation and you will see later in his presentation how important that is for Massachusetts. Secondly, we're going to hear from our David Herbert Fire Chief of sterling Massachusetts, thank you for being here, Chief. He also serves as the statewide coordinator of Massachusetts Fire mobilization committee, which I've had the pleasure to start back in 2004 and it is an418 incredible opportunity for you all to learn about420 what this committee actually does. They provide coordinated third level of mutual aid to all Massachusetts communities. After these communities capitalize on their existing capabilities. If we didn't have the mobilization, we'd have difficulty supporting our neighbors.

So this is a very good thing that the Chief will go into later in his presentation. Third, I'd like to talk that State Fire Marshal Peter Ostrowski, will be representing the Department of Fire Services. As you know, DFS plays a critical role in the commonwealth ability to prepare for and respond to major fire incident, including wildfires, wild land fires. This role involves high level planning, inter agency coordination and communications, direct operational support to the commonwealth fire services departments in the urban, suburban and rural areas. Fourth, on our docket to speak is acting director Dawn Brantley representing the emergency management agency for Massachusetts. During an incident, MIMA is the coordinating agency for all of the commonwealth response and also supports and assists with the local responses. For today, her focus will be the support to the state and local wildfire response. Interesting, it would be a great conversation.

Finally, we're going to wrap up with our Lieutenant Colonel Donald Hamilton from the Massachusetts National Guard. Lieutenant Donald Hamilton serves as the deputy director of the military support from Massachusetts National Guard. The directorial of the Military support plans, Military response to the state and local emergencies, coordinates the activated resources to aid communities when required exceeds existing capabilities. You'll hear about what his role in the bucket drops in the Blackhawk will happen during these wildland fires. So this is an exciting opportunity for all of us to come together, share our resources and our551 coordination to have combat all the fires that554 you've heard about, read about and seen over the last six months. I'm happy to turn the testimony over to our David Cellino, where he will go into detail on what he does his capabilities and the resources he provides to the state of Massachusetts.

SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE

DAVID CELINO - CHIEF FOREST FIRE WARDEN MASSACHUSETTS - Thank you, Under Secretary first of all for the introduction and good afternoon to you, Mr. Chairman and Chairwoman Comerford, and other honorable members of the committee. I am honored to be here and asked to contribute to the testimony today. As the Undersecretary mentioned, David Celino, I am the Chief forest fire warden for the Massachusetts DCR, the Bureau of Forest Fire Control and Forestry, and again, it's an honor to be here. What I would start out with will before we advance is just a quick hit on some history of wildfire in Massachusetts. It's an interesting subject, we are only two generations removed from some really unprecedented history that people don't realize happen in our state.

As a matter of fact, I'm down here in North Carolina with a national group and700 they700 often ask me, do we really get fires in Massachusetts? When I give them the numbers, they're surprised to hear those numbers and especially going back711 in history. So Massachusetts in the entire Northeast corner of the United States is no stranger believe it or not to wildfires including some historic, catastrophic events which destroyed entire communities. One of the most famous fires in Massachusetts was the Plymouth Fire in 1957, that fire burned over 15,000 acres in about 12 hours. The height of that fire consumed about 18 acres per minute. That fire burned to the sands of the beaches just south of the village of Plymouth and that's what stopped it in its tracks at 15,000 acres. In 1947 was an unprecedented year and fires burned from Maine all the way to Southeast Massachusetts in drought conditions, in the the second half of October of that year.

There were 200 main fires over a two week period of time, they burned nine towns to the ground in that two week period. It burned over a quarter of a million acres and destroyed 851 homes and 397 seasonal cottages. It's really known as the year that Maine burned but we always emphasize that those fires and that run of fire activity ran from Bar Harbor all the way to Plymouth Massachusetts. So, it's important798 that we800 sort of start out with that historic context. We've seen large fire activity throughout the Commonwealth and it really actually extended through the 1970s before we've seen this lull in these large fire events. However, in the last few years, we've seen reminders and a little bit of links back to history.

So with that, what I'll do is, we just have a slide up in front of us here, we'll start the slide deck for us and first just give you a snapshot of the DCR Bureau of Forest838 Fire Control. We were established in 1911 to aid and assist the cities and towns with wildfire prevention, detection and suppression and we'll show you a number of slides that sort of depict that and exemplify what those services are about. There's a number of other services that we provide since the establishment of the bureau and you'll see a slide with that. We are made up of 13 DCR fire districts, which just so happened to align by design with the statewide fire mobilization system in those districts. I believe that Chief Herbert will show you a map of878 those districts.

From March to November, as the Undersecretary mentioned, we provide the height of our staffing level. We have 65 highly qualified staff who are who are trained in the national standards of all areas of wildland fire management. Those are made up by the way that staffing levels made up of 48 seasonal and906 we bring them on starting March 15th around that time and910 just this past year, we were able, to and hopefully into the future have their end dates be the first week of November for a number of different reasons. So the other important tool that we bring, which is sort of unique now to Massachusetts because the technology really started here and we're one of the last bastions of the old fire towers that exist in the Northeast.

So we have 42 fire towers still in existence. Pennsylvania recently followed suit because they had a number of large fires and they re instituted their program, and so Massachusetts has been a model of that old technology which really truly works and the local fire Chiefs955 rely on that technology. What I do want to emphasize even before we start talking about wildfire responses that in Massachusetts by law, the local fire Chief has jurisdiction over all fires including on state lands and that's really important to establish that jurisdictional responsibility. So as I mentioned, with the inception of the bureau in 1911, you know, our mission is all about prevention, detection and suppression assistance but there are a lot of other services that we have grown into and994 a994 lot of that is our relationship996 with our partners across the country and regionally and with other state agencies.

So we provide that suppression assistance. We are responsible for the state wildfire occurrence, reporting of wildfires in the state forester database and so across the country, wildfires are reported by federal, lands and by non federal lands and on those non federal lands, the state forester of each state is responsible for capturing that data set and you'll see some maps and we do a pretty good job. This will be my first kudos out here and that is because in Massachusetts we really have the luxury and we of having a really close working relationship with all the fire departments across the state. So as I mentioned, we provide that fire detection through our fire tower network. We do prescribe fire now on state lands and assist on partnership lands and that's all about fuel mitigation and ecosystem restoration.

That's really ramped up in the last 10 years. We become a MIMA state response resource, especially during natural events like storms, hurricanes, flooding issues. We provide Socceroo's and we coordinate really well with MIMA on those events.1082 We provide a strong federal access property program in a volunteer fire assistance program which supports those communities in fire fighting equipment and grant funds to rural fire departments to boost their rural fire response capabilities and that is actually through the US Forest Service and then through the State Forester to the towns. We provide a wildfire crew since 1985. We've been exporting wildfire crew resources on national mobilizations and we've hit just about every Western state and many of our friends in the South, in Canada as well, Eastern Canada.

We provide a lot of wild land fire training, especially in the offseason across the state mostly directed to local resources. Local fire departments on average, we will find our numbers at between 300-550 to 600 firefighters trained annually in some level of wildland fire management. We're also now, especially after last year and with the recent funding that has come out across the country for a while and1158 fire mitigation, we're providing assistance to the local communities, um and giving them guidance on community wildfire mitigation planning. Then on a daily basis, especially once the season starts, we provide that fire danger rating, wildfire intel, fire weather intel distribution on a daily basis.

So as I mentioned, here's just kind of a picture of where our districts are actually. The black lines are the fire districts and the shields are the locations of our headquarters in those districts. Then here's our fire tower locations and you can tell, we've got a pretty good network. Most of our tower network uh, spread out across the Southeast and the reason for that is we don't have the elevation down there and takes more towers to triangulate smokes, that's1217 the science behind it. Each one of these towers has what we call an validate table with a compass on it and they communicate with each other and locate smokes and it works really well. By the way, the technology started really in the early 1880s, right there in Plymouth, somewhere around the current site of the Plymouth Fire tower.

We've helped other states and that lower left hand corner shows fire 52 acre run that they had in Tiverton Rhode island. It was our Fall River tower that was up, we were able to spot that fire when it started and coordinated resource assistance from Massachusetts. So interstate mutual aid is really super important. This is what our bureau brings to the table through the cooperation and partnership of the State Forester, the state fire supervisor, myself and our partners over in the US Forest Service and other federal firefighting agencies. I mentioned the 1947 event, most of the town of Bar Harbor was lost in those fires in 1947. In 1949, the Northeast Forest Fire Protection Commission was formed, Massachusetts proudly was one of the forming states.

So there were three states that formed the compact and then along came all of New England states, plus New York and five of the eastern provinces of Canada now make up that compact. So it's the oldest international fire compact in the Northern hemisphere here, so very important source of resources. The Stafford Act. Master Coop Fire Agreement is something that goes through the State Forester, it's a five year MOU and this is the vehicle that allows us1338 to both share resources and also receive resources. Most of the Northeastern States are exporters, especially in fire seasons like we've seen recently, the Western, our friends in the West depend heavily on, you know, anywhere from 1000 to 2000 resources that come out of the Northeastern States every year. However, I can see a time where we might find ourselves in a reverse, requesting resources through that vehicle.

So we also provide some of the coordination of aviation assets and DCRs role here has been to provide those ground assessments and then air to ground coordination. So we1393 have a fire where the local incident commander, local jurisdiction says, I'd like to explore the idea having National Guard assets on here and having a Blackhawk and the first thing that happens is a call to myself, we1410 have one of the local district fire wardens get out there, make an assessment to make sure that we sort of cross our I's and dot our T's on protocol and whether there's a true need for that. Remember every time we spin rotors and we put a helicopter over a fire scene, we really raise the complexity and the safety issues and risk management issues that are already at play on the fire ground.

So it's important that we run that risk management process and we do this. Then we have the three way conversation between myself and the director of MIMA and state fire marshal and make a recommendation that it's either a go or no go on a helicopter request. DCR then takes it from there and provides that air to ground coordination with the crew on board. So the 2022 fire season will kind of just quickly go through this and it's data in here, it's not meant to be the one on one of while in fire but 2022 fire season in Massachusetts was fairly active for us, especially when we got into the summer months. The drought induced fire behavior caused by that once again, another flash drought that really set in the end of June and did not let up and actually really just eased here in the beginning of October but really cause some fire response problems for us.

So through the traditional spring fire season, which in the Northeastern United States, we have a traditional wild fire season here which starts as soon as snow has melted away, before the trees leaf out, they1520 are1520 still1520 dormant, we usually typically get warm, drying winds spring winds that come in and really prepare those fuels to burn and it's not uncommon for us to get a number of spring fires and half of them for the1537 year will come in that spring time period. So through the traditional spring fire season, we captured 5681544 reported wildfires which burned about 1100 acres. So important to remember that for us, 98% of these fires are human caused by the way, that's important. So from June 1st to date under drought influence, there's been 450 wildfires which have burned 449 acres. So I mentioned two different types of fire seasons. One is our typical spring, one is when we get in the summer under drought conditions.

So spring fires tend to be limited to surface burning. They're driven by those dormant fuels. They haven't leafed out, they are dry, they're in direct sunlight because the forest canopy hasn't leafed out and so they get direct sunlight on a daily1620 basis when we have good weather. Once we get around these spring fires, they tend to be fairly easy to suppress and the reason is that they're not burning deep into the duff layer. Usually, the duff layer is still moist, it's sometimes muddy under that leaf litter and so fires will burn across the surface. They will burn rapidly, we typically get rapid rates of spread, we typically get structures that are threatened in the spring, especially there's wind behind them. Once we get around them, typically, those events are done within a matter of hours or less than a day. As opposed to the drought fires, The drought induced fire behavior is characterized by deep burning fires.

We've seen these fires burn as much as 2 to 3 ft. into the organic soils, especially in conditions like we had by August of this past year. These fires are difficult to contain and they're very challenging to get full suppression on. They also raised the concern for firefighters safety. We've had a number of these fires this past summer where those fires burn for over 30 days, and if you can imagine if our firefighters are in those conditions, having to dig those fires out, trying to get some sense of containment on the perimeters and they're in 90 degree temperatures, 95 degree temperatures, that's where we really spike the firefighter safety concerns. So let's just kind of show some visual on where these fires are and where they're located, clumped together.

You'll see1729 some influence of the drought here and what I thought I do is just start out with where we're at, as of November 11th when I put the slide deck together. As I mentioned, we were responsible for collecting the data. So every one of our fire wardens is out there collecting data from the fire departments were still trying to this time of year, we're plugging in those tiny little fires 10th of an acre, half acre fires that we didn't respond to, but they're in the fire report because we want to really get a good accurate data set as we can. So up till November 11th, we were at just a little over 1000 fires, 1018 fires which have burned 1556 acres. You can see some trends on the map follows population, follows dry, arid conditions. South Worcester County is always a, you know, a suspect all the way up to the northeast and sort of down that South shore corridor and we have a lot of folks recreating, we have a lot of great open spaces to recreate in.

As I mentioned 90% of our fires are human caused and so there's a recipe for fire starts. So I broke it down, I wanted to break the data down into that spring fire occurrence January 1st through June 1st roughly about when we consider ourselves at full leaf out, the forest canopies have fully leafed out, everything has taken moisture, all live fuels are taking moisture up from the1828 ground and that usually ends our spring fire season once that happens and if things stay normal and average, typically, we're out doing park work and state forest work through, you know, July and August during the human months because there's not a lot of fire activity. 2022 is not that way, but here's the numbers that played out for us, about 570 fires that were tabulated during that period and 1100 acres burned.

So I wanted to break down as we went into the drought, which really are drought task force stood up by the beginning of June, we could see this coming, started to catch up with the fire behavior and started to have an effect on fuels and we started to see in June and July that fire a courage was definitely going to be affected by the drought conditions and indeed it was. So June 1st through the end of July, we tabulated 264 fires for 159 acres burn. If I dug into the weeds a little bit more or drill down a little bit more, we probably would find that most of these fires happened in that last week of June, through the month of July as the drought conditions really set in almost on a daily basis for us. go ahead well. Then August was really the focus, it was the height of the drought conditions, we saw the most heat, we had a number of heat waves where you know, with 90 degree plus days and above and1940 the numbers show it.

So, you know, 156 fires for 277 acres burned and I kind of circled where that extreme drought condition was hitting that corridor from Eastern Worcester County up through the Northeast and down into Norfolk county. Actually, the entire state as you1966 know, was in drought conditions but that particular1969 corridor was what was showing up, read on the National drought monitor lo and behold wildfire activity matched up perfectly with it. So one of the things that we, a product that we bring to the table from the Bureau of Force Fire Control is the Keetch Byram drought index. I mentioned the drought task Force, we have a seat on there, we are one of the seven contributing elements to2000 the state drought score, and that is using the Keetch Byram drought index, which is really a fire ground fuels drought index. It's about measuring the drought conditions in those first eight inches of soil layer. Without going into the science of it all, I need to tell my audience is that 600 is2022 bad, the scale goes 0 to 800 if you look at where we were in August 23rd, we're bad.

So if you look at the narrative, there are 600-800 often associated with more severe drought and increased wildfire occurrence, intense deep burning fires with significant downwind, spotting can be expected when we have wind events. Live fuels can also be expected to burn actively at these levels. That narrative matched up perfectly with what we were experiencing up in Gloucester and Rockport and that whole Northeastern quadrant. When I drove out to Rockport and Gloucester in these conditions, it looked like Arizona, everything was browned out because of the drought conditions in late July when everything should have been lush green. So that contributed extensively to that fire behavior. So a couple of, just as we start to sort of close down here, spring fire season was active for us, especially in the Blue Hills and break heart reservation. I don't have a break heart map, but you know, here's a great example of the Blue Hills.

Remember, I mentioned spring fires can actually, they're easy for us to get containment or to get suppression on once we catch up to them. So we can get rapid rates of spread and that forest trail fire right there in the center of the map, we close that out at 63 acres right in the center of the Blue Hills. We ended up doing some indirect tactics, doing some burnout operations but really those fires moved. If you remember this past spring, we had a lot of2128 wind events that really pushed the fire behavior on these fires. That's why we had larger fires to deal with than we typically have seen in past years. It's just about wind and fire behavior is all about fuels, weather and topography and all those elements come together to either work against each other or they line up and work with each other, that's when we get big fires.

So here's2156 a great picture that we've got, you know, this picture by the way was taken by the Wildland Fire director from NFPA on her way in from a national meeting and said, Dave, you're not going to believe it, you got a good fire going in the Blue Hills and she took a picture of it for us right there off of the expressway and then on the left hand side shows you the fire effects and what you can't see. So the fire burned really active, like I said, they burned hot. However, when you scraped away that the chard leaf litter, it was not burned underneath and that's because the soils2200 were still cold, they're still damp but however big fire effects on the surface. So let's move into our drought conditions. So we had a number of large fires folks, as everybody knows, and I've been explaining that down here in North Carolina at this meeting, I'm at, we had complexes, we had a couple of fires that went over 100 acres this year.

The fire that kept me awake at night as the Chief fire warden was the Briarwood fire that we closed out at only 19 acres, big success story, right? The reason that it kept me awake at night was because of its proximity to values at risk and that's our problem. So, if you look at that left map, you'll see that this fire started on July 13th, by the way, and those first few days, the fire held in different areas. However, the drought conditions were really not working in our favor, we went indirect on this. The blue line that you're seeing where the two arrows are, that was when we started to implement an indirect strategy and the2281 concern was, what if this thing doesn't hold in that little drainage in the middle, we need to protect the2288 values at risk, downwind off of a west wind, right?

There's a lot of them and everything was parched dry from the drought conditions, and so we implemented a fuel break with some DCR equipment, we're familiar with doing this in the southeast, you know, around are prescribed burn units and the fire chief there in Rockport was all2311 for it. So we put it in place and I'm glad that we did because you'll see the progression map on the right that by August 12th, that fire came out of that center drainage where we had brought that fire into the drainage, it was muddy in their and we're thinking, okay, we're going to let it sit there and two weeks later, it came out because it just continuously dried out. On April 12th, we held it at the contingency line, that blue mode line and then we brought our friends from the National Guard in with a crew to put that to really secure it. We2354 actually really didn't call the fire out and fully contained until the end of August because we really needed to keep an eye on it.

The problem for us folks in the modern age of2365 this and as we ramp up to maybe more and more fire activity is if the2370 fire got out of that contingency line, the next contingency, the next barrier for us to use was a road and inside that road was over 35 structures in that neighborhood and that would have been challenging for us. So here's just some2391 quick stats on that. It started on should be July 18th and we really didn't call containment on it until August 30th. You'll2401 often2401 see that in the press by the way where we'll take a fire and you know, it's not active but it's still hot in the middle and we'll keep that at 95% contained just because we're monitoring it to make sure that those containment lines hold and that's just good practice for us in the fire business to keep keep an eye on that.

So, there were 19 acres impacted with structures threatened 30 residents at least 20 outbuildings down, there to only the residents that were definitely within that next rode out from that contingency line. Our strategies had to change with the conditions. They went from direct firefighters and DCR staff were going direct on that fire from the start, meaning they were right on the fire's edge and then we finally implemented an indirect strategy where we mowed the lines in, we actually used some burnout techniques and we started to take control of where we wanted that fire to go using indirect strategies and burnout. So here's some of the fire behavior. So this is not typical in non drought years for us usually where it's humid, those fuels are not available to burn their taking up a lot of moisture, but this is the fire behavior you saw in Briarwood, and now granted that's a pitch pine scrub oak plane up there, it's a sand plain and that's a fire dependent ecosystems, it loves to burn, but you give it the conditions that we had, the natural conditions and boy, that ecosystem is going to take advantage of that.

So that's the kind of fire behavior we had and that's what causes us to have to go to a different strategy for the. You know, if anything else, the number one concern of ours, that's the safety of our firefighters, right? And then the public downstream. So here's the after effects. It's post fire effects. We're always looking at that and it was hard that tells you how much energy was coming out of that, that's mostly an over story. We had groups of oak trees torching up as you can see in that last photo mixed with some pitch pine. Then Gloucester was another one that really was a high profile fire. This fire started in the afternoon, you had some wind behind it. We had again, group torching and oak, it's a high dry site, right in the center of town and again in conservation land, some good open land. This one had2583 topography with it and so topography, weather, fuel conditions all came together. It's perfect alignment we call it, wild fire management. That yellow line by the way, shows our indirect strategy on this one.

That's an old road, that's the old Sunset Hill road. Again, we employed the same strategy using DCR equipment and some expertise to mow that road out, we made it wider so that firefighters could safely work in that road. They had access, but they also had escape routes and that's what they desperately needed and that fuel break held and you can see where the fire came out and sort of touches it there below drop 0.3 in the center of the map and so it worked again. We closed this fire out at 15 acres. So here's some photos and our friends at DFS employed their drone. This is probably one of the best urban interface. We call this urban interface fire where it's, you know, we've got structures and values that2654 come right up against the wildland fuels and that's that urban interface, it's a classic picture for us to have that kind of hard burn up against the urban interface.

So Martial Ostrowski and the folks at DFS went out and took some aerial photos for us. We will be using these and training in the future, and just to the south of this unit is a hospital and you can see the values at risk there. Those folks by the way, on that main road, the night that the fire started, it was like a scene out of California where folks who are not abandoning their homes and they were running garden hoses because they had 16 to 20 ft. flame links coming off of that ledge, threatening their homes. It's really when I looked at it, it's almost luck that we didn't get a roof line on fire or saw fit to catch fire on those homes in that area. Again, a great picture of the use of the Blackhawks, that was a fire that was really difficult to access and really tough terrain and pockets of fuel down in those ledges that we just could not get to without beating up our firefighters and they worked in by the way, 100-105 heat indexes for about three days on that fire.

So our friends at the National Guard and their flight crew were awesome and so there's a picture of one of the ships. Then break heart reservation and we call2749 this a complex. We had five different fires their, human cost up in a again an ecosystem that's really fire dependent, it love us to burn hard in the history of its existence. I just throw this in their because it really took a lot of energy, a lot of resources um from all the partners involved, we had aviation from Ground pounders to aviation, it really demanded an incident command organization on scene and then look at the values at risk and that's why I really put the map up is how do you manage this and keep this fire from getting into those values. The ecosystem, the vegetation and break hearts gonna do just fine, it's done really well2800 with fires in the past but how do we keep fire out of on those backyards?

Sometimes we have to remind folks that as I did in the beginning is that we have a history of fire in Massachusetts and the scars show it. So one of the hazards from the break heart incident was trees with old fire scars that started to come down and in the first three days after we got containment of the fires, the DCR folks spent most of those days cutting old fire scarred trees, we call them snag trees that were a threat to both firefighter and public safety and we actually, in the first three days, we cut 85 of these real hazardous trees and you can see why. You2853 look at that, that tree did not burn out in this particular fire, it was already burned out and the break heart fire this past August just lit it up inside again, continues to weaken the tree and then it's going to fall over and it also burned soil away, so we had trees uprooting and that lower picture shows just how much of that organic duff layer burned away in those hot fires.

Then we put together for this purpose in the last minute last week, you know, we put together some fire history of the Northeast and this isn't all of it. What I said was, how can I get this to get onto one slide to sort of give2897 you an impact or our sense of what the fire history is. So what I did is I said, let's just take all the fires in the Northeast from 1965 to 1995 that were 100 acres or more, 31 fires and I knew that there was a rich fire2915 history up there but I didn't know there were that many fires over 100 acres um in that era of 65-95 and you notice we didn't have the mapping technology back then. So a lot of them are estimated on an old topo map or whatever, but they're probably pretty close, it gives us a sense of the scope of fire occurrence on our landscape up there, and it gives us a sense of the potential. So to close out, here with some of our drought impacts, I've already talked a lot about them, the Keetch Byram drought index is something we bring in our fire management skill set to the table.

This is stuff that I messaged by the way throughout the summer, I didn't just make this slide up, it was already in existence. One of the things I had the message to the fire service was all fires are burning into the ground 10 to 15 inches into2976 the dry soils and we need to prepare for that, right? As we respond, if we have a fire that gets away from us, we can't get on it right away, you can now expect that these things are going to burn 10 to 15 inches and we're not going to be done with them in an hour and a half and get back to watching the patriots game, right? We're going to be there for days or weeks on end and that held true. So most fires with any advanced burning became extended operations over several days or as I mentioned weeks and this becomes an increased risk to firefighter safety and the capacity stress on resources meaning a stress on the system for capacity of responders.

So that's really super important that we remember that and identify that. Smoke effects from extended drought fires will increase. We saw that in Saugus on route one, the break our reservation fires really set some smoke down on that road and we as the emergency response, we just have to be ready for that and message that to the public. Then here we just continue this, this just gives you a visual of that indirect strategy that we use. This was on the spring hill fire in Gloucester and that road that you see there on the lower picture that was narrow and it was grown in and you couldn't hardly get a brush truck down that road and so this is the work that we implemented rapidly over the course3074 of a few hours with a mini excavator and a heavy forestry mowing head on it and it was a game changer for getting containment and a game changer for the incident Commander of the fire chief up there in Gloucester.

We had high energy output on that fire, the BTUs as you can see by the pictures were spiked. We had to learn that in drought conditions, you need to anchor your fires to existing barriers like roads and trails or streams, you know scratch lines with rakes or wet lines weren't going to hold and we had to get into that rhythm and understand that we do that right from the outset. We use strategic burnout operations, they need to be well planned and coordinated and then the use of aviation helicopter buckets. We mentioned the outside while in assets that are available to us in Gloucester. I will tell you this plane that you see is a CL415. It comes through the compact, our friends up in Quebec have these aircraft through the Northeast forest Fire compact agreement, they are available to us and I actually had two of these on standby and I knew that they had a response time about an hour and 15 minutes, so that's something to consider in the future.

We also really wanted the message to consider using those mobile incident support units and DFS and MIMA really established your operations and good organization using those tools. We could have gotten crew and engine resources through the Northeast compact from our local surrounding states and we also if we needed to, we could have gotten federal assistance through the Eastern area coordination center and the National Fire Center in Boise through the Stafford act MOU. We also did some prescribed fire. I throw this in their only because this is what we're doing pre fire season, right? This is all about fuel reduction, especially in the Southeast and pitch pine scrub oak and you can see why we do it. Look at3219 the fire behavior, look at the results and we're expanding those efforts into interior Massachusetts here in the last few years. Then let's talk about just close out with successes.

You know, all I can say is, you know, for us to go through the number of incidents we had and have no serious injuries to firefighters, that's a huge kudos to the fire service for managing that. Those were tough conditions and to have that up there in the number one line, makes me super proud of our system. No residential structures3258 lost or even damaged. As far as homes, we did lose out buildings in the springtime, outbuilding sheds and whatever fence lines, but no residential structures lost, especially when we dodged the bullet had some close calls like like that Briar wood fire in Rockport. It was an unprecedented test of the statewide fire mob system. I'm not going to steal the thunder of the Chief and Marshall on this one and the MIMA director but great work on that, we needed it for surge capacity,3294 inter agency cooperation and collaboration.

I can't say enough of, we spun up those helicopter EOPs really worked well and it's not a surprise you know we've really worked well for years and years on this. So mobile command and rehab units, the integration from DFS and MIMA was excellent. So here are some challenges and that's understanding the complexities of these larger incidents, drought induced fire incidents that forces a demand for an uncommon outside the box approach. We're not used to it, right? If it's not something that happens to us every single year so we need to be ready for that and that was challenging. Managing demand for messaging and maintaining consistent, accurate messaging was a challenge. You know, my life was, it seemed like I had a microphone or camera or something, you know, shoved in my face every other day during those events and it's important that we share that message and do it accurately.

From DCR, it's tough for us because we're limited in resources. So we have to start prioritizing during times like that in those conditions, prioritizing incidents on our end as demand for resources becomes competitive and it can become competitive in August. Then the and then for us in particular are aging fleet is something that we need to be looking at here in the very, very near future, especially if we're going to start facing another year or two like we had this season. The last one is lessons learned and super important. I will tell you that in the wild land fire community, we're not shy about this, we don't have a problem airing our lessons learned and really, that's how we improve, right?3417 So3417 there's a need for a preparedness level rating system that the Marshall and I have talked about this. You know, it behoove us to look at that there's one that already3428 exists regionally and then nationally and I think even Rhode island is using one, so I would like to, to look into that.

Long duration incidents, demand, the need for incident management organizations to get better situational awareness, do better risk management, make sure that we check those boxes on everything that we're responsible to do, incident stabilization accountability and the wise use of resources. Each one of those large fires like Gloucester, Rockport, break heart, once they took that seriously, they were able to get forced themselves into a planning cycle on3469 a daily basis. That's where the tail stop wagging the dog and we reversed that challenge for them. So, that's a good lesson learnt ahead of time. We need to3482 close the loop on being able to use those outside resources. So if we pull the trigger on the use of the air tankers coming out of Quebec, we would have used them, we don't know how we would have paid for them and so it's been a long standing question in terms of what's the funding source and so we just need to close that loop at some point with all of the stakeholders involved with that and then be ready for the next one.

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DAVID HURLBUT - STERLING FIRE CHIEF MASSACHUSETTS - Thank you, Chief Celino and thank you, Chairman Driscoll and Chairwoman Comerford for allowing us to be here today to testify before you and the committee. As previously stated, in addition to being the sterling fire3543 Chief, I also serve as the statewide fire mobilization corner. The state's divided into 15 fire districts which are shown on this map.3558 Under the statewide fire mobilization plan, each of those fire districts is responsible for submitting a coordinated response and then their capabilities for ambulance, structural, forestry and technical rescue task forces. Each city and town3575 in those fire districts build out a run card that predetermines what fire district task forces respond to their communities. This is done when they have exhausted all their local3586 mutual aid resources. So once each of community has their own run card, they call for assets from within their fire district and once those are exhausted, they'll reach out to the fire mobilization plan.

For today's testimony, we will look at Forestry Task Force response which is most likely will respond in the event of a wildfire. These task forces are summoned by the local incident commander through their fire district control point. The control point then notifies3617 MIMA of the request and MIMA pulls up the district run card. So this is an example of what MIMA is looking at when they pull up a run card and then MIMA will notify based on this run card, the district control point from the sending district so that they can send the appropriate task force. This process is also3643 coordinated with the state fire Marshal in the regional and local Fire district coordinators which allow for a smooth flow of assets. It's important to keep3653 in mind that for emergency response, it can take up to an hour to mobilize plus an additional hour to respond depending on how far out these assets are coming from based on the run cards.

In the case of a large scale multi-day incident like what we saw at break heart reservation in Marlborough, task forces can be mobilized up to 12 hours in advance for the next operational period. The resources that comprise of forestry task force include two Chief officers which are Task force leaders, six forestry trucks and two tanker trucks in case there is a need to provide water. Task forces meet at a predesignated area and travel together as a group to a staging area in the community where the incident is taking place. They then get assigned by the local incident commander to perform suppression activities. A typical operational period for a task force is 12 hours. So when we talk about task force responses this particular summer, this is just a breakdown of the major wild land fire responses that we had.

To the break heart reservation as you can see, the first two days, there were two task forces deployed and then the following, three days, there was3735 one task force that were sent out for each of those. Same time frame, in the city of Marlborough, they had a large wild land fire and there were two task forces deployed on August 19th and three task forces deployed on August 21st. So with these fire suppression activities included hand crew work which created fire lines that Chief Celino spoke about and removing potential fuel sources as well as extinguishment activities. So in summary, 12 forestry task forces were activated over a course of five days. This does not include the DCR assets that Chief Celino spoke to or the National Guard3780 air wing assets, that Lieutenant Colonel Hamilton will speak to. I feel it's important to note that during this five day deployment of Forestry Task forces that3789 MIMA deployed other fire district assets with a structural and tender task force to Dudley for a three alarm commercial fire on August 19th and a tender task force to matter poison for a five alarm fire at a boatyard on August 19th.

So as you can see that local mutual aid can be quickly overwhelmed which asserts the need for this fire mobilization. Without a doubt, fire mobilization, the assets that provides is a key link to suppression and property conservation for large scale incidents where a local community can be quickly overwhelmed. The plan was challenged this summer as we experienced unprecedented response requests but despite these challenges it faced, it works successfully and help provide positive outcome to all the incidents.

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PETER OSTROSKEY - STATE FIRE MARSHAL MASSACHUSETTS - Thank you, Chief. Good afternoon, Chairman Driscoll, Chairwoman Comerford and honorable members of the committee. My name is Peter Ostroskey and I'm the Massachusetts State Fire marshal. I'm honored to be with you today representing the men and3856 women of the Department of3857 Fire Services in our mission to support the fire services across the commonwealth. Thank you for having me here today to present testimony on the commonwealth response to wild land fires. Chief Celino has framed this issue very well and I think you recognize just how serious an issue it is and that Massachusetts isn't immune from wildfires. As we saw all too clearly this year, the wildland fire problem in Massachusetts is currently being exacerbated by a number of factors. These include extreme weather conditions like sustained, critical drought.

An extended drought period, leaves, vegetation drier, more flammable and more prone to fires that burn wider and deeper. It also reduces the static water sources we use to fight those fires, the lakes, ponds and streams that we draft from in areas without municipal water. These factors also include an3919 expanding built environment which brings more human activity into more wooded areas that are more susceptible to fire. The expansion of wildland urban interface and internet zones presents reciprocal hazards. A serious fire at a home or business is more likely to spread to surrounding wildlands. We saw a good example of this past year in Lynn and a brush fire or wild land fires is more likely to put people in property at risk, and Chief Celino spoke to the success that we've had. Let me speak a little bit about coordination.

Fortunately, interagency coordination is one of our core capabilities in the fire service. It's also a vital function at DFS. We are the primary state agency for Massachusetts emergency support function for which provides a framework for state support to local fire departments. We have a seat on the fire mobilization committee that Chief Hurlbut just briefed3981 you on which develops and refines the plan that sends statewide resources to support local and regional departments that might otherwise be overwhelmed and we work very closely with our state level partners to ensure that critical information is shared3997 in real time. We share that information horizontally with other state agencies and vertically with EOPs and the administration and of course the departments were supporting. This connectivity is especially important when we are confronting several major incidents at once, as we did this summer.

As you might recall, we had major brushfire responses at the break heart reservation, Marlborough, Sudbury, State Forest and Rockport on the same day as the Mattapoiset boatyard fire. That's a massive amount of task forces, strike teams, water drops and other resources to coordinate. I can4038 tell you first hand, I responded to Dudley as the Chief Hurlbut mentioned and to Mattapoisett personally, and while working in Mattapoisett, there was a multiple alarm fire in Rockland that necessitated increased mutual aid because of all the resources that were committed across the commonwealth at4059 the4059 same time. I want to be clear about the relationship between state agencies and local departments. We're here to support cities and towns.

When we represent the fire service at the statewide emergency operation center or when we staff the fire mobilization plan, our goal is not to substitute our judgment or leadership for there's, it's to get incident commanders and their personnel the resources that they need. That includes some operational support, those resources include direct operational support from us at DFS. We have a variety of specialized personnel and apparatus that we make available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year to the Commonwealth fire services and first responders. Some of the most frequently deployed are rehab units. These are large temperature control canteen trucks that provide a clean, calm, safe environment where firefighters can take a break, cool off, rehydrate and have a bite to eat. Remember Russia and wild land fires can be long term labor intensive events in some of the most demanding conditions.

Firefighter health and safety require rotating them out and giving them a place where they can recharge, can help them avoid some of the most common fire ground injuries. We have four of these units in place across the state. They are regionally responsive when requested. We also have three incidents support units statewide. These are communication centers and conference rooms on wheels that provide telecommunications resources at the fire ground and serve as a platform for on scene coordination of multi agency resources. They cover the radio frequency used by all fire departments statewide as well as state agencies like DFS, MIMA, state police, Mass DOT and even the Coast Guard. Video screens allow us to view drone footage, area maps and other sources anywhere in the state. Speaking of drones, we can provide pilots and drones through our drone unit with high definition and infrared video capability allowing incident commanders to deploy firefighters to active hotspots that couldn't be seen at ground level.

This could be a game changer for departments battling a multi acre fire like the ones we saw a break heart or Gloucester last summer. We also maintain a fleet of all terrain and utility vehicles that stand ready for deployment. These off road vehicles are used for transporting firefighters and equipment in the most challenging of terrain and areas that are simply out of reach of larger fire apparatus. DFS also has several generator units that can provide on scene powerful floodlights, mounted on poles as operations continued deep into the night. Finally, we have a robust4246 public awareness platform through our4248 social media channels and news media announcements.

We work in partnership with DCR and local departments to4255 promote awareness and prevention using standardized language and terminology. At the end of the day, we know that most wild land fires start with human activity. To the extent we can raise awareness of just how easily these fires start and spread, we can try to shape their behavior by reducing some of the most common causes. I hope this shed some light on our work at DFS and I would be happy to engage in questions following today's session.

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DAWN BRANTLEY - MIMA MASSACHUSETTS - Thank you, Martial. Again, Chair Comerford, Chair Driscoll and members of the joint committee, thank you for the opportunity to provide you information about the key areas where MIMA supports our state and local partners and fighting large brush fires and wildfires in the commonwealth. Most directly, relevant to these fire responses, MIMA maintains a robust cadre of 14 regional staff, made up of 12 local coordinators and two regional managers. These folks work year round with local emergency management directors across the Commonwealth to support4334 their work in mitigating against preparing for, responding to and recovering from a variety of hazards and special events including wildfire responses. MIMA's local coordinators work very intentionally year round to support local communities and to build excellent relationships with our local Emergency Management directors so that when a large incident or multiple incidents like this year's surprisingly extended in demanding fire season occur, our local coordinators are frequently the first call the local Emergency Management Director will make for assistance.

For your awareness, many Fire chiefs also serve a dual role as their communities4374 Emergency Management Director. In fact, the vast majority of local emergency management directors are Fire Chiefs and Deputy Chiefs. Local coordinators serve as the primary liaison to MIMA for these communities, providing knowledge, access to state and regional resources and coordinating support behind the scenes. These coordinators are available to our state and local public safety partners around the clock every day of the year and will be on scene whenever they are needed for however long they are needed to support the local community and our state partners. Our operations division also supports response with a4416 variety of field support equipment and services and although not quite as cool and flashy as DCRs and DFS, we4423 do provide critical resource support to wildfire response operations.

At the request of the local community, MIMA4431 deploys4431 one of its two mobile emergency operation centers or Moyock's to the scenes. The specialized trailers can be transported all over the commonwealth and each is equipped with communications and IT equipment, printers, a plotter, external video camera, TVs, conference table and chairs, space and air conditioning, heating of course. You'll see it there in the image we have on the slide, it4458 provides a dry well equipped space for incident command to meet, conduct operations and to rest. MIMA staff accompany army ox every time they deploy Moyock's so that we can ensure a subject matter expert is on the ground to support their operation. So although we can't transport the bunker to local communities are mobile docs can bring some of the same technical capabilities to help manage local emergencies, albeit on a smaller scale.

MIMA maintains generator trailers to deploy with the Moyock's when shore power will not be available and as of October this year, the Moyock's have been requested and deployed 32 times including for both the break heart fire and the Ashbee responses. The picture that you see on the slide is the Ashbee fire response. Local4508 communities also4509 frequently request MIMA's communications trailer and radio cash to4513 support and enhance on scene communications capabilities. This year, through September, MIMA deployed its radio cash 29 times providing 1031 radios to state and local responses including the break heart fire. MIMA also regularly provides response support for GIS mapping and this year we began providing incident specific weather information from MIMA state meteorologist. Both of these capabilities were used for this year's multiple wildfire responses.

During a wildfire response, MIMA plays an often unseen but critically important role. We are the wizards behind the curtain providing resources and coordinating support such as lodging and food for on site4557 responders, coordinating to fulfill resource requests and facilitating activation of task forces through the statewide fire and EMS mobilization plan. MIMA maintains an annex to our air operations plan specifically for coordinating request for water drops by helicopter. When the need for helicopter water bucket drops is4579 identified by DCR, MIMA will confer with Chiefs Celino and Martial Ostroskey about the request to determine if the request is both appropriate and the most effective means of meeting the need. If DCR and DFS concur that the request should be fulfilled, MIMA will then communicate the request to EOPs, providing background information and justification and we provide the main a heads up about the potential mission. MIMA works closely with the main and EOPs to facilitate the mission approval and then once approved, the main will work directly with DCR to execute that mission.

Requests for activation of a fire mobilization task force are called into MIMA 24/7 dispatch center by fire district control points. Our dispatchers will as described by Chief Hurlbut will use those run cards that you saw earlier to notify the appropriate task force and will log all communications for documentation purposes. Typically, there are two dispatchers staffed in the dispatch center around the clock. However, during this year's numerous responses, MIMA had to call in additional dispatchers just because of the sheer number of requests coming in that are coming in in addition to their normal call volume. Their excellence and professionalism helped ensure a smooth and effective fire mobilization and their work was praised by multiple fire Chiefs after these incidents. MIMA is an exceptional partnership with local fire chiefs and EMDs, DFS, Main and DCR benefited the commonwealth during this year's extraordinary fire season. We are grateful for the incredible work our partners do and we're honored to serve them and to serve alongside them whenever we are needed.

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DONALD HAMILTON - MASSACHUSETTS NATIONAL GUARD - Good afternoon. I'm Lieutenant Colonel Donald Hamilton, I'm the deputy director of military support for the Massachusetts National Guard. The office I work in provides inter agency liaison during emergency responses, which called for National Guard capabilities. When requested by Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency, the National Guard applies existing federal capabilities, both personnel and equipment to respond to emergencies throughout the commonwealth. We have well established capabilities which are well suited to support communities for state agencies in certain emergency situations when all other available resources have been expended or are otherwise unavailable. When a community has identified a capability gap during an emergency response and the National Guard has a unique capability or when there are no other resources available to support the requesting community, MIMA will coordinate with our office to request National Guard support for the requester.

When the National Guard capability is required during a state emergency, the commonwealth is generally required to reimburse the federal government for all material equipment costs generated by that response. However, in most state emergency responses, personnel4762 costs will be borne directly by the commonwealth through activation of personnel to a state military pay status. During three recent wildfire support4772 missions, the National Guard provided two helicopter water bucket support missions, one to Breakwater reservation in Saugus and one to the town of Gloucester. We also provided one ground wildfire team mission to Rockport, supporting the Department of Conservation and Recreation, as well as local fire departments.

It's important to recognize here that National Guard firefighters do not generally train for wildfire response as a required federal training task, however, due to our firefighting units assigned location at Joint Base Cape4804 Cod, where the installation is home to 15,000 acres of undeveloped land used for central military training, unit leadership developed a wildfire training relationship with the DCR Bureau of Forest Fire Control and they trained with our DCR colleagues to sustain this capability. This outstanding inter agency relationship between the Massachusetts National Guard and DCR made it possible for us to provide wildfire support to the town of Gloucester during that communities time of4832 need earlier this year. This concludes my prepared testimony. I'd like to complete my remarks by saying on behalf of the National Guard that it is our privilege to serve the commonwealth along with our public safety colleagues. Thank you for very much for your time and the opportunity to testify before the committee today.

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BENINCASA - I'm sure you all are a little bit overwhelmed with all the information that we have given you but I think we can see the theme here which is inter agency coordination and that's what we do, we practice it and we live it. One of the resources that we don't have with us today is the statewide interoperability coordinator, this person is funded through homeland Security. What they do, what their mission is, is to ensure that this inter agency coordination can speak to each other during the disasters. So it is a very important part4901 of our resources that we provide and this person has been embedded with these operational agencies and entities from the day one, they write the plans for interoperability, they train both police and fire on interruptible radio communications and they allow for all of these different stakeholders to come together and actually respond to the disaster on site. So, it's an incredible opportunity for all of us to come together and share to you what we do on a daily basis. So again, I would like to thank you, Mr. Chairman, Chairwoman for allowing us to speak with you today. This is our testimony and concludes what we have done in the past, but we are open to questions, comments and concerns that you may have.

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REP DRISCOLL - One of the things that I'm kind of curious about that that wasn't necessarily touched on is coordination with the public in terms of some of these areas that we're so close to the, I think what's referred to as the interface, the urban interface with the forest, what kind of capabilities do we have? What's the planning around if there needs to be an evacuation in terms of giving people warning about that or if it is kind of a fast moving situation? What would that look like in Massachusetts?

BENINCASA - That's a great question, and thank you for bringing5073 it up because it's something that we practice in our training, our exercises. Because again, evacuations is a big part of a disaster in some ways and some shapes and forms. So we work together as agencies and we do have an evacuation plan that I believe that MIMA5092 has been updating and working with the locals.

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BRANTLEY - So evacuation decisions are going to5110 be made at the local level and so they will be made using information from the on site responders of Chief Celino, the local fire chief, will make a determination. Over the summer when there was there's a large fire that threatened structures, MIMA would also through our local coordinator be having the conversation with the local fire chief and the EMD, if it was a different individual about the possibility and any support that we might need. Any evacuation would be a local evacuation, so their plans would come into play as well as their sheltering plans. Then the state would provide support to that evacuation or sheltering operation as requested and necessary. While it's not specific to wildfire response, this is really the crux of that concept of all hazards, is there are a lot of functions that crosscut disasters, evacuation alert and warning sheltering are three of those. So the localities wouldn't necessarily implement specific you know, fire specific evacuation and sheltering plans, they would just implement they're all hazards evacuation plan. Thank you.

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OSTROSKEY - The director spoke perfectly well to the process. I think the one thing I would just highlight is that we all have pretty robust public facing messaging tools through our public information officers and that's a collaborative effort as well. So that when we work with the local departments and our fellow state agencies, we make sure that it's a consistent messaging to try and get information out early and often that's in concert with each other so that we're making sure there's consistent message and that people are alerted as early as possible to those necessary pieces of information about the incident, about the response of the coordination and especially about the resources available to them in the event that they do have to evacuate. Thank you.

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CELINO - I think they covered it, Undersecretary. What I would say in the wildfire world is and it lines up with my lessons learned and the challenge is part of my statement was in the case of Briarwood is an example up in Rockport, what we learned was use time and space to your advantage because it's such a dynamic environment that as soon as you have an opportunity, as far in advance as you can, you start to plan for those potential strategies. You know, regardless of whether it's evacuations or contingency planning, response triage of those of those neighborhoods, whatever it is, that was important it is. Thank you.

BENINCASA - And quickly I'll just say that, you know, as we talk about this all the time, that emergency response starts with the locals and as they huddle together and talk about what they can respond to and perhaps what they need from the State, the State folks here are huddling as well because they're listening to the situation awareness and they're thinking of preparing what they may need, these locals may need for their response as well. So they're all, you know, again it's a coordination but State5320 will come in upon the request from the locals on what their needs are. So, if that helps answer the question, Chairman.

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REP BELSITO - Thank you, Chair, I appreciate this hearing. I would like to say thank you to the Under secretary and this panel here. Although I don't represent the5353 area of Gloucester and Rockport, it is adjacent to my district, it definitely affects a lot of my communities. I know that we were on high alert in the Ipswich Topsfield area, Rowley area for this same instance. I'll speak, I think topically in the same space, you know, we we noticed such an impact on5379 our water source this past year, this past season, and then on top of it we saw our Northeast region truly deal with something that we hadn't seen. I can recall Saugus as a younger person living in that area, you know, that always having challenges etcetera, but really Rockport, Gloucester, I think for some folks it seems a little counterintuitive, jeez, we're on the ocean, why are we having fires?

So I did want to ask, you know, do you see that there are environmental changes5414 in the region that are leading to this? Do we foresee that continue to change? I also5421 wanted to ask you folks do run through in your response plan and then how often do you see that5427 needing to be updated if indeed there are environmental factors that are going to change this response? And, I just want to say again, thank you so much for this coordination, I'm thrilled to be having this conversation and let folks know that we, as a state in those regions are ready to act, and I thank you chair for the opportunity to ask the questions.

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BENINCASA - Thank you first of all for your kind comments on what we have done to keep the community safe, we appreciate that. I believe acting director Brantley can help with the climate as as they do have a robust program going on at MIMA right now and then we can bring in the other folks on the5473 team that might be able to add to the conversation.

BRANTLEY - Thank you, Under secretary. So I cannot speak to any localities fire response plan or Chief Celino's plans but from the emergency management perspective, MIMA overseas 62 separate emergency plans that are reviewed and updated on a planning cycle depending on how frequently or likely they are to need an update. So for example, our comprehensive emergency management plan is updated every four years, whereas cybersecurity as a new area is would be updated much more frequently because it's an emerging area. For wildfire response, the air operations plan is updated on, I believe a three year update cycle and so we pull in all of the state and local partners, including all of the folks that you see here on this panel to provide input and guide that update and then MIMA is responsible for you know, being the nerds in the cubicle who do the typing and and manage the and facilitate that5540 update.

I will say we also have a really strong partnership with e a for the same cap the state hazard mitigation climate adaptation plan and so we are always looking at and really leading the country on how does climate change impact, how we mitigate. Then at the national level, I serve in NEMA, the National Emergency Management Association which is the Association of State Directors. Currently, one of the big policy5570 level pushes that we have are changing the way that we respond to wildfires to make it more comprehensive. So particularly out West, it's all about suppression5581 during a wildfire response when really it needs to be treated more comprehensively similar to what we do with hurricanes with that evacuation alert and warning, sheltering all being a part of that. So what we're seeing is out West, they aren't necessarily responding that way, but here in Massachusetts, this is what we do when we have a wildfire response.

We're thinking about all these other moving parts that need to be in place already, but we are supporting our sister states and pushing that kind of policy change. The other piece of that is mitigation funding comes into the state and is managed primarily through MIMA. It is passed through funding to other state agencies into localities. That said, it is rare that a wildfire mitigation project can meet FEMA's standards for mitigation funding. It requires a benefit, cost analysis5637 and that depends heavily on how much infrastructure will be impacted by the results of the mitigation project, that is a hard sell when you're talking about forested areas that don't have structures in place. So another push that we're making at the national level is to really change the concept of mitigation to create a standalone wildfire mitigation program at FEMA.

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OSTROSKEY - I think what we see anecdotally across the commonwealth is some strategies that are being employed by fire departments about water resources at all. We see a significant impact from environment and from development on some of the static water supplies and I think I referred to that my testimony, that we no longer have access to. So local fire departments are assessing their needs there, I think calling mutual aid a little earlier at a little higher level to accomplish things that they used to be able to accomplish through those static water supplies in the past, they are employing planning tools and development rules that incorporate for instance cisterns on site or within developments to have easier access to the Peyton water supply that they need when they are establishing a fire attacks. So I think there are a lot of things in play. At at our level I know that director Brantley, Chief Celino, myself have been actively participating in the drought task force that's hosted by EEA as well to both have situational awareness and to share information on the needs and concerns of the fire service and the communities in that process as well. Thank you.

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HURLBUT - I just to echo the Marshal's statement and concern. I know people like examples5819 in this summer, we had two examples of what the drought cause, the first was at the Russell mill fire where normally they have a running river that fire departments can draft from and to help extinguish several mill fires they've had over the years and this year they didn't have that luxury. So we had to deploy tanker task forces out for that fire and we saw it again down in Mattapoisett, we activated a tender task force to protect Plymouth County because of the amount of water that was being used in Mattapoisett5855 that had depleted their local water supply. So had there been any other significant fires, these tankers would have been the only5863 water source that fire departments had to extinguish fires. So it's inherently apparent that as we have these droughts, our lack of water you know, has caused the movement of fire resources throughout the state. Thank you.

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CELINO - It's really good forward thinking. Just a couple of comments on the planning part.5895 So what we bring to the table in addition to what the Marshall and director Brantley mentioned was community wildfire protection plans and that's in our partnership with the US Forest Service, that's a relationship that's been in existence for about 10 years and there is some models in place. There are 10 towns in Barnstable county that have CWPPS. We just actually assisted the entire island of Martha's vineyard with a CWPP, that was actually FEMA5930 funded through some mitigation funding and then we assisted Nantucket as well and these5938 are directed at communities at risk.

The at risk category is really signed to the state and so you can bet that will be taking a look at towns like Gloucester, Rockport, parts of Saugus and with the new infrastructure funding that's available, there is a lot of funding being put out through the forest service, through the state foresters made available to communities and it is ramping up, we've been in conversations in5972 the last two days just done as it rolls out but there is going to be some great opportunities. What I see happening after the Briarwood fire experience and the Gloucester experience in Marlborough in a number of these is that these towns5987 are very well aware now about the importance of getting that planning in place and those community wildfire protection plans are great vehicle.

The best part about it, it's locally driven. Even though it's a federal product and a partnership with the state, it is, it is driven by the local uh entities and6009 it's signed off and approved by local government fire chief and the6013 state foresters, and so we like that a lot, so that's something coming down the road. As far as weather, it is, as I mentioned, it's fuels weather, topography that drives these fire events and what I would point to is we seem to be having these flash drought events about every other season, right? Starting in 2014, 16, 18, 20 and 22. So, whether that's a pattern or not that we can count on, it is hard to say, but it shows the trend.

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DRISCOLL - Thank you. I have another question related to recently the deployment of the National Guard was highlighted during the earlier presentation. Could you talk about the decision to do that in6076 terms of was that a result of the duration of that fire or the proximity to the residential structures? I'm just asking because we6085 know that having one of the other hats of this committee on the COVID-19 front that everyone always wants the leap toward deploying the National Guard to solve a critical problem. So, could you just describe what that kind of the decision there in the threshold and what occurred?

BENINCASA - Yes, that's a great question and we do huddle in as a group to make that decision and send it up to the Secretary EOPs who speaks directly to the Governor on activating the guard when we do need their additional resources as you saw with the Blackhawk and the bucket.

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CELINO - Thank you, Under secretary and a great question. It was really a circumstance of perfect timing. We knew that the guard that that National Guard unit was training at Joint base Cape Cod. We trained that6148 unit last year, our district fire warden and our fire staff trained them to the national NWCG National wildfire coordinating group standards, so they actually got red carded meaning they took the required training, did the fitness testing and everything that goes with it and they happened to be on training at the base and available and they were looking wondering jeez when in the next five years when we get an assignment. So the situation in Rockport and a few other areas was about capacity. Those folks up there in the little Rockport has a force fire department, believe it or not, separate from its fire department.

That fire Chief that runs that organization have been out 22 days straight chasing hotspots, responding to smoke issues, trying to hold that fire in place. My staff had been6203 going seven days a week trying to assist him and respond to other towns and we knew that we needed to hold that fire at that contingency line, that strategic blue line that we mode between the fire footprint and those structures, those values at risk. We knew we needed a fresh crew, we needed crews that were trained how to use hand tools and new trained on how to handle drought driven fires if you will and that meant a lot of elbow grease. A lot of hard labor, a very well organized plan in place. We did a briefing for them and lo and behold, ironically when they started their assignment that morning, that fire got up and ran in some unburned fuels right6249 against that line and they responded perfectly to that.

So it was it was like circumstances that had lined up for us and it was the right resource. Hats off to director Brantley and the colonel and the Marshall and everybody involved in actually pulling the vehicle together to make it happen and the Under secretary, of course. What I'll add, Undersecretary something that the marshal mentioned earlier is that all we can do is bring that subject matter expertise to the table. In most cases, we have success with that, we can't sort of direct them to use that resource, we bring a tool box full of some out of the box wildfire related tools. As the Marshall mentioned though, it's local control in jurisdiction and so they make that final decision as to whether they want to receive those resources and that's really important.

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HAMILTON - Thank you. I just wanted to make sure that it was clear in terms of how we got into that mission. There was a change in policy earlier this year at the National Guard Bureau level, which allowed us to use the firefighters who were on federal annual training for their federal mission and readiness in preparing for deployment. Previous to this year, that would not have6356 been an option to us, that would have been a no go. So it was very fortunate that we had that in front of us and the only reason I bring it up today is to make sure that it's clear to everybody that is engaging in these sorts of decisions that that was a very unique one off situation.

It's unlikely that if we have people on annual training like that in the future, that it will fit as well into the mission, into the emergency. So, we have other resources, if we've got a group of people that are on annual federal annual training, we have other people that are not, and if it is an emergency, you know, we can bring those people on the state active duty like we have over the past several years but I just wanted to make sure that there is no confusion that anytime someone is an annual training, they are available to the state for emergency response,6407 that's not the case.

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DRISCOL - The question will be the final question that we have for the group today, which is how can the legislature support you. Chief Cellino showed a slide of some of the lessons learned and the gaps. I think this is a question in that regard, are there other gaps or other ways that the legislature can be supportive of wildfire management in the future?

BENINCASA - Thank you, Chairman. I definitely think that could be a possibility. I believe that Director Brantley would have some comments to make on this as well as Marshall Ostroskey. Again, you know, we can review the ones that you have Chief Celino, but there are definitely things that we could do to partnership.

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BRANTLEY - Thank you, Under Secretary. As always, we will take any and all support you guys would like to give us. So let's start with that but just thinking off the top of my head, some of our pain points for these responses are things like we talked a lot about this unprecedented6500 task6501 force mobilization, all those costs are absorbed by the local fire departments. I6510 would say like number one, if I could get you guys to hear anything and walk forward with that, that would be at that they, that these folks are are absolutely heroic in these responses but those localities are eating all of those costs each time and you'll notice that throughout the year, all of these responses, none of them arose to a state or a federal disaster declaration and are really unlikely to in the state of Massachusetts. So these responses are all going to be self funded and that is going to continue to be a burden for both state agencies, but also our our local partners who are absolutely6552 critical.

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OSTROSKEY - Thanks, Under secretary, I appreciate that and your support and6585 the EOPs support of the initiatives and the support that were out there providing to the locals every day. I think Director Brantley hit the nail right on the head with regard to the number one question, I think that I field when we are out there working, whether it's these wildfire incidents or other major incidents within the community is how can the commonwealth support. You know, a third of our fire departments in Massachusetts are calling volunteer. Those are people who are leaving their jobs, leaving their families at the ring of that bell and typically are very low if compensated at all, but you know, the support that those departments need during those major incidents and certainly Chief Celino put a excellent point on the fact that these are long duration and very labor intensive incidents.

You know, it's really tough for smaller fire departments like that Rockport Forest Fire division whose depending on call and volunteer members to go for these extended periods of time. One thing I would like to make sure that we leave you with is the fact that we bring tools from the toolbox to the table for those local incidents to be dealt with as a resource. We've gone deep into that toolbox this year with the drought and with the incidents that we've had, and to see these departments and6687 organizations, to see the level of mutual aid response, those are big demands on cities and towns. So I think I couldn't agree more with with Dawn about the,6699 need and I know that this has been top of mind for the Under secretary and secretary Reedy.

Finally, I just mention that Colonel Hamilton's point and Chair Driscoll question, I can tell you that when we bring these resources up, first off, the Undersecretary has absolutely put us through the paces to make sure that there needed and that we've thought through every aspect of this. We don't make these recommendations lightly, but they are absolutely critical and and a key component to the success of these missions but there is a very deliberate process and very deliberative process to make sure we're bringing the right tool to the job at the right time.

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HURLBUT - Thank you, Under Secretary. So I would say the biggest thing that I hear at my level is on the side of broken equipment, reimbursement for, we spent several days out in Ashbee as you know, they had a big stump dump fire and when the Marshall spoke about Colin volunteer departments, they basically ate up their entire budget6802 for the year, the whole fiscal year on an incident that took about a week. Then other departments, they may break equipment through mobilizing to other communities. So I always get asked the question, is there any reimbursement out there for any equipment we break and things of that nature?

So I don't know how that falls into the grant scheme of funding or where we would be headed with this because Director Brantley talked about these, don't meet the threshold of federal estate reimbursements, so those are the types when you ask about, what do I hear on my side of things, those are the biggest hitters are replacement of broken equipment or you know, what happens to my funding if I have an event like this in my community and I exhaust my entire operating budget on fighting6856 it.

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CELINO - Thank you, Under Secretary and I actually probably couldn't put it any better6883 than the three previous, the Marshall and the director and the Chief. From our perspective, I mentioned in mind, you know, lessons learned is that it sort of fits in line with what the Chief just laid out that even DCR, or like the little state wildfire program that could, right? And even, we face those challenges and ageing fleet. Those engines I built in 2008, they've outlasted my expectations actually, the little one ton, you know, 350 chassis and it was, you know, piecemeal together with federal grant money to assist. So unfortunately, you know, they worked, they've seen their time and we're going to see that resource. I sort of tread delicately on this because I don't want to lobby for that, what I want to do though is make sure that folks understand if the towns find that specialized wildland mutual aid asset of value to them, then we need to recognize that that wildland fire fleet needs to, you know, we need to keep that strong to be successful.

The other thing that we're doing is, we're training up our staff in command and general staff incident command related positions and that's to be able to lend that assistance to these towns and Rockport, Gloucester, was a good example. I mention that part about that lesson learned that we need to learn ahead of time, that we need6986 to ramp up those planning cycles to support those towns, you start using resources much more efficiently, having real serious risk management approaches to our tactics and strategies and that's how you're going to do it with a team. I know that from my wild land fire background and you know the landscape that we live in, especially when we bring that back from our experiences out West as well.7013 So it really works and we saw it start to play out when we just even nudged are ourselves in that direction and we got a hold of some of7022 those incidents.

So we're trying to do that on the DCR side.7025 Although, think about it, if we're engaged in, you know, 20 communities across the state, probably we're not going to be able to stand up our incident management team to help out. So that's where we rely on those outside resources. By the way, if we didn't get the National Guard crew in, we would have probably had to go that route of the compact in some outside resources and I had New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut reaching out to me with availability of those assets if we needed.

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HAMILTON - Thank you, ma'am. So probably the most important thing that could be done to help us be most effective is to improve because I don't think7104 it's a gap really is to improve preparatory coordination and conversation about what needs to be done, what kind of gaps there are and what specific requirements there are? We have very good relationships with MIMA and with7121 the firefighting agencies in the state. So specifically to this mission set, compared to some of our other resources, we are very small in firefighting space, but clearly we recognize how important we can be depending on the environment that we're in, the threat and7143 the risks associated but maintaining the outstanding communication between the requesting communities or agencies and MIMA and the Mass National Guard and the EOPs and making sure that that's all well coordinated in advance and that the timing is understood clearly is very important.

I think that the luck of the draw that we had with the fact that our trained wild land firefighters were on duty already when the need came up is extremely lucky. Most of the firefighters that would have been firefighting, they would have been at their own fire house and they would not have been available for 2-3 days. So we were very lucky there and that's something to keep in mind. If there's a chance that the mass national guard is going to be needed in this space as much notice as possible is very very helpful.

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MICHAEL GIBELEY - NATIONAL GRID MASSACHUSETTS - Thank you so much, it's an honor and privilege to be here today. Thank you so much for including National Grid. As Director Brantley had pointed out, that's a picture of our mobile emergency operations center. We have two of them in Massachusetts that we can deploy, one in New York and one in Mass, we can deploy as well. I'll briefly go through and I'll keep my remarks to a minimum, I know we're behind schedule, but again, I'm very grateful that you would include us and allow us to be heard here. We have our standard emergency response7400 plans as part of our normal national incident management system that we follow like all other utility companies as well. We don't have a specific wildfire plan, we are an all hazards plan.

So just like I don't have a hurricane plan or an earthquake plan or a cyclone plan, we have an all hazards emergency response plan founded on the principles of. Thankfully with Massachusetts has helped we, we continue to go through our member training. All of the members of our emergency planning teams come for the most part come from a former life in service or an emergency management in some respects, somewhere either federal state or local as well and I'll get into that in a minute. But an incident with wildfire would be similarly consistent with any other emergency response that we would have consistent with whatever we needed to do to partner with our state and locals to access and address that issue.

Again, an all hazards approach approach using our to emergency response plans, one on the gas side, one on the electric side, those plans are filed annually with the department of public utilities, they are distributed annually as well to all of our statewide emergency management directors. We do have three regional in person conferences as well with our emergency management directors so that we can revise and go through any changes that we might have, where we might need their help and vice versa. This should not be new to anybody here for all the folks in the call, the normal preparedness cycle is what we go through and how we address our7495 emergency planning and our7496 emergency response plans. We train them, we go through it, it's a function of every single exercise and every single training event that we do, whether it be fire, civil unrest, terrorism, any kind of significant equipment malfunction7511 or a host of other things we might have to launch ICS and get into our incident command system.

Specific to fire, we are monthly attendees at the Fire Chiefs Association of Massachusetts. We held a specific meeting on just about 60 days ago with the utility subcommittee for the Fire Chiefs Association. We're proud that the past president of FCAM is a National Grid member of our emergency planning team and the leader of the training and exercise team is also a retired fire chief. So it's safe to say that anything fire related, we're certainly, you know, deferring to the expertise of those who have had a collective 60-65, years in the fire service, so we're proud of both of those folks. As I mentioned7563 before, we do have our annual in person meetings, those are regular across the Commonwealth and we have our customer and community teams that have regular liaison with all of our emergency municipal managers as we go through any of these events.

One of the things that you had asked us to discuss briefly was our vegetation management program. Typically, at grid, we have two main focuses for vegetation management, it's our normal maintenance and pruning cycle and then their enhanced hazard mitigation program. I'll show you kind of the excerpts from our plans, there's a lot of words on the slide so forgive me in advance, I won't read them to you all but I just kind of give you a higher view of what we got there. You might expect a cycle pruning to be, well it's on a calendar, that's not the case any longer. We're actually using data driven and satellite imagery to find the most densely forecasted schedule so that we can prune properly on that schedule. Not to say we aren't using a calendar approach, but it is now more scientifically based on where is the greatest need to get on a schedule. It's using data to solve a problem rather than just a calendar to say okay, we need to get out to the Western part of the state um just because it's7642 that time of year.

Bringing technology and data to the solution is just a more effective and efficient way to kind of handle our vegetation management issue. On the enhanced hazard mitigation, I know there's a lot of words on the slide, I apologize in advance, I'll summarize it and this is more about an emergency response essentially or a significant threat or response that needs to be addressed now for certain types of vegetation and7670 this definition of what a hazard tree is. It has to do with species and health or structural defect and how we address those so that they are not in the way of any of our national critical infrastructure issues. So it is both cadence driven, it is both satellite imagery, data tech, data use of technology driven as well as specific threat to the type of specific tree or a piece of vegetation that7696 we may need to clear in the way of our infrastructure. Like any emergency management team, we are heavily, heavily, heavily focused on weather.

I think any emergency manager would tell you, I heard someone use the word nerd, we are weather nerds, we live and die by the weather, drought and dry conditions is part of the weather that we evaluate. Certainly wind conditions are something we're doing every single day at National Grid. We do have access to full time meteorologists as well, so we are constantly monitoring our weather forecast whether it be for all of the weather conditions we have to face but a wildfire spread would certainly be something we have the ability to track as well. Our process like any other, you know, planning cycle does have after action report after every drill or exercise. We run, we do7750 a written after action plan, we do bring in external agencies to our plans, but it's extremely common to bring in fire departments to all of our exercise or training events and we're very grateful for the partnership and we usually learn a lot in both directions. I would also like to thank the state, especially for including us in the MIMA training. We are across the board emergency7775 planning for the most part now, either completing or have completed all of our ICS courses from 100 up to 800.

So we're pleased that the state would allow us to participate in those as well. Lastly, you are very familiar with our emergency response process, whether it's on an annual plan that we are constantly refining on7795 the left hand side of the chart or what we actually do during an actual event where7800 we're securing resources, we're restoring service. We have constant communication with our partners, our stakeholders and if needed, our customers. We're constantly running the logistics side of getting the right resources in place, getting our restoration done and then trying to model and reform and make better solutions for future events and then obviously with the overarching view on ensuring safety and any impact we might have on the environment. I know I rattled through that very, very quickly. I am more than happy to answer any questions from our perspective and I'm appreciative you giving me the opportunity to partner with all of you.

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PAUL SELLERS - EVERSOURCE - All right, well thank you so much for your patience, appreciate being here with, Chairperson Driscoll and Comerford and the opportunity8264 to give an overview of Ever Source's vegetation management plan as it relates to wildfires within the commonwealth. So for Massachusetts, Ever Source as a provider. We have three geographical locations that we really cover, Western Mass, as you may be aware of the Metro Boston area and of course our South Coast Cape Cod and Martha's vineyard. Why do utilities prune trees? Of course, it's for public safety, safety of our line workers and tree workers, the reliability of our electric system is the driving force and our goal is to train and encourage growth8303 away from our electrical conductors known as directional pruning.

Some of the information regarding New England, especially in our forest cover throughout New England is extremely dense, some of the densest within the nation and Massachusetts actually ranks six in the nation for forest cover, which often surprises a lot of people, and our wildlife urban interface that transitional area where the forest meets our communities, Massachusetts again is one of the higher ranking states8340 within our nation, ranking number two. So we find that we have about 175 trees on average per mile encroaching into our maintenance zone every year, which means every cycle that we do 4 to 5 year pruning cycle, we address some seven million trees within that time period. When you extrapolate that with the number of trees that are within the Fall zone, those trees that could come in from outside are trimming zone and fall into our distribution and transmission wires, there's over 21 million risk trees that we have to look at and account for.

So it simply means that our customers live amongst the trees. So in Massachusetts annually, we have a total of 12,250 miles of primary distribution line within the Commonwealth and we have 266 miles of distribution right away and then we have another 1200 miles of transmission right away. So our vegetation programs on our distribution side of the house include our scheduled maintenance trimming or SMT and this is what we do on our cycle basis every 4 to 5 years pruning trees, the circuits within our individual towns. We also have our resiliency tree trimming program or8423 RTW, and this is an increased clearance among major portions of our circuits. Tree removals are a huge component of our program from the removal of the hazard and risk trees.

Right away maintenance, which will also address here in this presentation, mid cycle pruning that we do for emergent issues that pop up during the cycle, and, of course our vine program which addresses a number of the invasive and fast growing vines8452 that grow up on our poles and lines. So the scheduled maintenance trimming the SMT, this covers about 20 to 25% of our system any given year and it looks at about 2500 to 3000 miles each year. We strive to find 100% quality control through audits that we do with our contractors when they perform this work. Our goal in the SMT program is a line clearance specification of 10 ft. to the side of our conductors, 15 ft. above our conductors and 10 ft. below are conductors to create a window that will last for8491 five years before regrowth starts to encroach in that area.

Our resiliency tree trimming program, or RTW is an exaggerated clearance standard that we apply on segments of our line where we're trying to gain greater reliability and for a longer period of time. This includes a tremendous amount of heavy tree removal and our goal is to get all the branches and tree growth within 10 ft. to the side of the line removed. Additionally, our goal is to achieve a clearance overhead of 25 ft. In most cases, that 25 ft. will give us what we call a ground to sky clearance. Again, the hazard tree removal program annually throughout Massachusetts, we move upwards of 50,000 hazard trees and these represent those removal of the disease, declining decaying trees that cause some of the major damages to our facilities, especially in storms.

Some of the hazard tree challenges that we have are winter and spongy moth, spongy moth formerly known as the gypsy moth. Goal was that we've seen in high population down in our Southeastern portion of the state, emerald ash borer or is a fairly new insect, invasive insect that's worked with the way through our Western Mass territory and is now reaching across pretty much the entire state. This is an impact to the ash trees throughout the region. A new representative of invasive species as the spotted lantern fly. This was recently found this past summer, I believe in the Springfield area, but this has been migrating up from the South and this is an invasive species from Asia. Southern pine beetle, this is an insect that has been ravaging forest cover down in the South for a number of years and this has8618 been discovered recently in the8620 last few years in the Brewster area on Cape Cod and this is something that we're watching.

This is an indication certainly that could be attributed to global warming and warming temperatures allowing this beetle to migrate this direction. Of course, all of these are exacerbated by8639 drought conditions, we're constantly looking at how drought is impacting the trees along our distribution and transmission line. So our right away programs for right away maintenance, these are those quarters that carry our bulk distribution and transmission lines, the major power source for any one of these regions. We have 266 miles of distribution right away and again over 1200 miles of transmission right away. These efforts take a tremendous amount of manpower and equipment and they're very labor intensive. Ever Source is required to maintain the vegetation within these utility cores in order to maintain the reliability of the transmission grid, including this allows us for access maintenance in case of emergencies.

Vegetation in close proximity or that comes in contact with transmission lines has the ability to cause power outages for thousands of customers. Our proactive approach towards removing incompatible species is improving system performance, especially during severe weather and this proactive approach is what helps us minimize any sort of impact from wildfires. This work is done through an integrated vegetation management approach towards vegetation maintenance activities and takes place typically on a four year cycle. The work also includes transmission right of way reliability program or TRRP and this is a program to help expand our clearances on our easements to the easement edge. So to protect the electric system, we remove tall growing incompatible tree species as well as cut tree branches growing into the right away. We remove the vegetation within the right of way through cutting mowing and or8758 the application of a cruise herbicides.

The goal is to create a sustainable, low growing natural habitat of native plants and bushes that support various species of birds, rabbits, butterfly, snakes and turtles, as well as protected types of vegetation. This is a typical shrub landscape that we want to try and achieve on all of our right of ways. It's filled with low growth shrubs and grasses and herbaceous plants. An overview of the three aspects of our vegetation maintenance program are the right away, brush control and incompatible tree removal, removing vegetation within the cleared areas right away, this includes removing all tall growing incompatible vegetation with manual crus, free chipping machines and occasional use of road lifts off road lifts. Side trimming, maintenance management of the vegetation encroaching from the right of ways into the right of ways, this involves pruning of trees and branches to maintain electric safety clearances.

This ensures that we don't have anything coming in8830 and making contact with our transmission line. The hazard tree removals, trees are identified as being a risk to the transmission system based on their height and condition. If a tree is outside of the easement limits, then the property owners permission is obtained. This is just8850 a depiction of our two wires owns. The two zone maintenance area is part of our wires own directly beneath the overhead conductors, extending an outward distance based on voltage. The establishment of native, low-growing plant communities that have a mature height of less than three ft. and the removal of all vegetation that grows tall enough to interfere with safe and efficient operation of electric power lines or obscures the right away.

The established herbaceous or woody plants that grow up to 15 ft. at maturity may remain, but woody vegetation that obtains heights exceeding 15 ft. at maturity at the time of maintenance will be removed. The border zone at the very outside edges of the easement from the wires own limit to the edge of the maintain with right away from the vegetation that obtains heights greater than 25 ft. at maturity at the time of maintenance will be removed. All of the shrub species may remain when practical. So our four year maintenance cycle again includes floor mowing, side trimming, hazard tree removals and invasive incompatible species control. Part of our program is also having yearly patrols and this is done in the spring with helicopters and quite often, post storm will employ a helicopter to patrol our transmission line.

But every year, we also incorporate a foot patrols on our transmission lines and this is our way of identifying additional hazard trees or any emerging issues. And how the work gets done is still again very manually intensive, we use a lot of climbing crus doing handwork. Again, we do spot treatments on invasive or incompatible trees and we employ a tremendous amount of mechanized equipment and that mechanized equipment can include flail mowers to remove the vegetation completely, skinner buckets that have 75 ft. lifts and whole tree chippers to remove the vegetation and the wood source or fuel source out of the area. Just another picture showing some of the mechanical devices that we use fellow punchers, skitters and traditional buckets.

Our goal is to convert again a lot of these right away corridors into native grasses or shrub9023 lands. This is the Pine Baron that we had converted several years ago in the Plymouth area and you can see on the left side of the screen the growth that takes place from the pitch pines left unchecked and as an outcome of just repeated mowing. The picture on the lower right is after several years of our IVM model9049 where9049 we incorporate mechanical means, cultural practices of the desirable plans taking over after incorporating selective herbicides. Another right away down on Cape Cod, this is in the thalamus area, one of our distribution lines a little bit tighter corridor but again you can see within that corridor, are the compatible plant species uh and the sidelines been trimmed and trees that are far in the fact that they were outside of the Fall zone.

Our emergency response for vegetation management, large scale events. Emergency planning often starts days before weather events even take place. We're determining where the storms are going to impact the system wide or is it a localized event or securing resources for us in the vegetation management, that's tree crews, and we have to determine if we have enough internal or external crews. We have to decide staging areas, provide treat group coordinators to work directly with our outage management system and addressing calls as they come in. Part of the large scale events will often decentralize out of our two main emergency management centers and these will be located in our individual area work centers. We provide 24 hour coverage for tree crews and tree crew coordinators and we work in concert with our line department.

Quite often vegetation management in these situations, we are the first one in9154 and the last one out. Tree crews stage prior to the start of storm events and tree crews will often perform post storm patrols and this includes our transmission right away as well as our circuit areas and we look at the hardest hit areas. We look for any dangerous hanging limbs or damaged trees and this effort can extend for days after an event and we will often start to employ drones, especially on our9178 transmission right of ways if we can't incorporate helicopters for that patrol cycle.9190 That's what I had for you. I'm happy for the opportunity to share that with you and certainly willing to answer any questions you might have.

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DRISCOLL - You mentioned the drought in your presentation,9232 is that informing decisions at this point or how is that informing the work that you're doing? Has it changed how your operating in terms of where some of these programs are being sent to work or or not at all at this point?

SELLERS - No, the drought is a tremendous impact to our program um especially this year. We may9258 start to see some of the impact of the trees taking place, but we fully anticipate that the effects of this year's drought will just be compounded over the next couple of years and we'll start to see greater and greater tree mortality, especially when it's combined with some of9274 the other insect problems that I pointed out, that's just going to exacerbate9279 a lot of these trees and we start to see a lot of decline, especially in our urban areas, a lot of the urban trees, but it's been a huge impact. We had a lot of white pine damage over the last several years, decline of white pine and that certainly is one of the species that we were really trying to focus on our transmission right away because of their size, their height and they are9307 within9307 the Fall9308 zone of hitting some of our transmission lines.

DRISCOLL - It makes sense. The graphic that you showed of the transmission lines and how many feet away from vegetation and and the height of vegetation. How much of that is self imposed in terms of setting the standard versus prescribed by the9334 state or elsewhere?

SELLERS - At this point, it's up to us, it's9340 our responsibility to provide that assurance that we're not going to take outages especially on our transmission lines because of trees. So I mentioned our TRRP program, transmission right away reliability program and that is an effort specifically to look at a number of our right away, see how wide are easement is and have we fully taken advantage of all of that easement and we cleared it back, have we ensured that we don't have any of those trees that could come in from the Fall zone within our own easement. So to your point, it's really kind of a self check for us, we're9382 really making a big effort to go out there and adequately clear our easements to ensure that we don't have those situations.

DRISCOLL - You mentioned the different kind of patrols or checks of either on foot or via helicopter. Is that in line with this like a four year cycle that you've talked about a few times in here? How do you make a decision as to what gets inspected or does it all get9411 inspected in any given year?

SELLERS - Sure. So the inspections are an annual inspection, we look at all of the transmission right away on an annual basis. So we fly all of them in the spring and then our transmission arborist, they're responsible for completing their foot patrols, for their territories throughout the year. So we get too good looks at those through either the helicopter patrol and then through our foot patrols, man on the ground viewing it.

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