USGS Fire Response

[Speaking: Michael Shulters (USGS), Director, California Water Science Center]

The USGS has been asked to be a part of the Multi Agency Support Group which is known as MASG [prounounced: mas-g]. That's being centered in Southern California and being led by FEMA and by the Office of Emergency Services of California. Through this mechanism were able to bring to the effort to look at the post-fire effects of all kinds, here in Southern California, and bring our science to the table and make that available to managers to planners and especially right now to emergency personnel at local levels, state levels and federal level.

The USGS is uniquely qualified to bring a lot of scientific expertise to this post-fire issue looking at both what has gone on as a result of fire and what might we expect in terms of things that would happen this winter with storms moving in, with floods, and debris flows. Now we're unique in the sense that were providing scientific information to the effort, to the multi-agency coordinated effort to do this, and it really is in demand. The reason for that is, and if you look around here at this scene, we have scientists that can talk about the habitat, can talk about endangered species that are affected by the fires and they're doing that. We have scientists that can talk about the flood potential, the landslide, the debris flow potential and they're all working together collaboratively and that's being brought to this effort to help the other state and federal agencies in this process which is then designed to get together with local agencies like county emergency personnel and share that information hopefully in time to be some value this winter.