Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Committee Staff (Streaming/AV Tech)]: We are live.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: K. 2PM on February what is today? Fifteenth. We are here with, getting an update on wildland fires from last season's wildfire season and other relevant upcoming bills. I love the

[Dan Dillner, State Forest Fire Supervisor, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation]: capture on that one.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: We have with us commissioner.

[Dan Dillner, State Forest Fire Supervisor, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation]: Did I pronounce that right? You did. Yeah. I thought so. I've been doing that for

[Chair Matthew Birong]: a while, just making sure I didn't have any rust on it. Anyway, good to see you. How are you?

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Vermont Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation]: Good. Good to see everybody. Good afternoon. Thank you for having us here to visit on Wildland Fires. For the record, I'm Danielle Fitzko, commissioner of Forest Parks and Recreation. Before I go into a quick high level of what we'll talk to you about, then I'll pass it on to someone really more intelligent about the topic than me, I did just want to pass on our gratitude for last year for your support for the fire apparatus. It's really a wildland fire engine. I would like to say we went down to the fire engine dealer and we just bought it and it's already in action, but that's not the way it works. But we're working with BGS and we'll soon have an RFP out. It's a process, but we're moving it as quickly as we can. Really appreciate your support. Today, we're going to give you an update on the past wildfire activity. As you know, Vermont faced worst drought in over 100, which made wildfire activity pretty high. It was high risk for us. When you see the numbers, which Dan Dylna, our fire supervisor, will share with you, say you it's not that alarming. But let me tell you, there was a huge amount of work behind that, keeping both the numbers of fires and the acres of burn low. We implemented a statewide burn ban. FPR supported 12 fires, supported local fire departments. We brought in federal resources to have a helicopter drop water in Williston. That was the first. And we were ready to mobilize more resources, crews and equipment if we had a really large fire, Or if there were two big fires going on at one time, how do we really respond to that? I will tell you by the time winter arrived, and people were happy that worked on wildland fires, that it came early, because they were exhausted. I just want to recognize those were first responders on wildland fires. They really worked hard this year, and that's one dedicated group of people that serve Vermont. We're also here to share with you changes to Vermont's forest fires and fire prevention statutes. Over the past few years, our team has been building our systems and capacity for prevention, preparedness and response. We've consulted with local, regional and federal partners, and we surveyed town forest fire wardens and fire chief to understand what we need to modernize our statutes for the future. What we're sharing with you today is the result of that work, a proposal we believe is real positive improvements for the future of Vermont's wildfire management. I'd like to acknowledge Representative Jay Hooper. I just can't say Representative Hooper here. He's our legislative representative Northeast Forest Fire Prevention Compact. He's been engaged with us, how to respond on a regional and state level, helped us with this proposal. The proposal I'm going to share with you today, the way I'm looking at it, kind of falls into three buckets. The first is authority and coordination. How do we do that in Vermont? This is really about clearly defining authority, so the right people are empowered to move when necessary. And also really clarifying roles, particularly with issuing burn permits. Basically, there's fire departments, there's fire chiefs, there's town fire wardens, there's FPR. What's everybody's role? And really clarifying that. The second is prevention and risk reduction. This gives the state and towns modern, flexible tools to reduce risks for emergencies. We put on a statewide burn ban. We have a scalable approach where we can do, like, let's restrict burn ban, then we can restrict campfires. So, it really is meant to be flexible, so we meet the needs on the ground. And the third is preparedness and capacity. We're proposing to actually establish a task force to assess Vermont's long term wildfire response capacity and make recommendations back to the General Assembly about staffing, equipment, funding, infrastructure and policy needs. At its core, the statutes that we're talking about and the framework were built in 1904. These changes, we believe, are to modernize authority, strengthen prevention, and ensure that we're really prepared for the future, thinking forward with the task force. I also want to be clear, like when we're talking about wildland fires, I think people probably think of out West. We are not the West. Our forests, our fire behavior and fire history, we're just really different. But I don't want you to think we don't have risk here in Vermont, it's not insignificant. But it does mean we still need to design a system that's a reality for Vermont today, and not one that was established one hundred and twenty seven years ago. The reasons our numbers were low this year is not because the risk was low, it's because we did take a lot of extraordinary efforts and proactive steps to prevent fires from becoming large. And it required coordination, and it did require significant resources. We actually have a BAA requesting right now to fund our overtime and dropping in the helicopter and bringing up staff from the National Forest of over 100,000 And I think it really tested our limits of our current system. The statute updates and the task force we're proposing are not a reaction to disaster, which is good. We're not here because, oh gosh, we didn't have ourselves set up right. But it is really a deliberate effort for the future, so we're ready before disaster happens. This is about public safety, protecting Vermonters' homes, livelihoods, supporting our local fire departments and ensuring the state have the tools it needs when conditions are escalated beyond local capacity, which can happen. If we get to a point where we can't manage it at the local level and state level, we need to bring in federal resources and we need the authority to call those resources in and the funding. So I just call, like, is kind of like trying to get it right before it's a disaster. So we appreciate you engaging with us. And I'm going to pass it to Dan Dillon, who's a fire supervisor who lives this every day, and one of those extreme dedicated public servants. Unless you have a question for me.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: Any questions for the commissioner? Yes, do. We have a hand. Representative Nugent, sorry. I

[Rep. Kate Nugent (Member)]: know you said it's not like California or forests don't act like that, which makes sense. But I was thinking about if there are any risks similar to how they with the power lines. Do we have anything like that?

[Commissioner Danielle Fitzko, Vermont Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation]: Dan will probably tell you a little bit more. But power lines certainly can be a starter of fires. And I think we had a couple this year, at least one, nine. Nine that were started by a utility. So certainly a risk. Most of them are human caused. I think that's the reality. And that's why we did the bird ban, and there's one of them, one of the bigger ones, think maybe was a cigarette. So, in reality, that prevention is key, and that's what we're really working hard on, to find more flexible tools for that.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: Anything for the commissioner before we shift over? It's our guy in the field.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: Welcome, sir. How are you? Good. Thank you. Appreciate the opportunity to be here. Of course. Alright. My name is Dan Diller. I'm the state forest fire supervisor for the Department of Forest Parks and Recreation. Thanks for your time.

[Dan Dillner, State Forest Fire Supervisor, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation]: I'm gonna talk a little bit about, like Commissioner Fitzgow mentioned, just a little bit about last season's, last year's fire season. So, and then I'll talk a little bit, just briefly, about the history behind the fire prevention, forest fire and fire prevention prevention statutes in the fire warden program, and then the proposed statute changes that we have put forward. And for each one of those, I'll talk a little bit about, well, I'll give you kind of a summary of what the, what it is now, why we think it has concerns, what our proposed change would be, and then the, what the effects or what's the result of that would be. So this past year, Vermont had 84 fires for 66 acres, so it was above average year for numbers of fires, below average on acres. This does not include so this is these are fires on state, private, and municipal lands. The US Forest Service also had 30 fires, which was about maybe 30 times more than normal. So they usually have one or two, so it was also a big year there. We started out, as you know, with some flooding, and we had early early spring was fairly wet, very few fires during our normal spring fire season, but then by mid summer, we were into some pretty severe drought conditions, and then leading to extreme drought later on. We had one hundred and sixty four days of moderate and greater fire danger in Vermont, so that's moderate, high, or very high. So when those adjectives, they describe how a fire might, how likely a fire might be to how hard it would be to control and how likely it would be to escape. So at low fire danger, you would expect, you know, virtually no fires, they would escape. So the higher the ad shift, the more likely it would escape. So one hundred and sixty four days is is quite a lot. So that led us into some drought, and then by, you know, towards the July, we had the largest fire that we've seen in July in Vermont since 1998, and that was the Scott Chill Road Fire in the town of Fairhaven.

[Rep. Sandra “Sandy” Pinsonault (Member)]: Can pause for just a second? Your slides aren't

[Charles Martin (NR)]: advancing on the screen. We're trying to find a solution. Okay.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: Okay. I'll let you run that IT game for a moment. Yes.

[Rep. Philip “Jay” Hooper (Member)]: Commissioner, I appreciate the shout out, even though I haven't done Jack.

[Chair Matthew Birong]: That's why

[Dan Dillner, State Forest Fire Supervisor, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation]: I said Jack. Okay, I think got it. There we go. Woah. Woah. Woah.

[Rep. Philip “Jay” Hooper (Member)]: It's funny because yesterday, I walked in the judiciary, and

[Chair Matthew Birong]: the first thing Martin said, he was mid sent. He said, by the way, we're live. Is information.

[Dan Dillner, State Forest Fire Supervisor, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation]: Good? Ready if you are, sir. Okay. So, depending on the conditions, we change our preparedness level for wildfire in the state. And so it's a level of one through five, and we're at level four for over two weeks, which is for us pretty unusual, especially for late summer, early fall. We would not, we haven't seen that in the past. Our department normally, last year we had called out for nine responses, this year it was 12, so that was, last year was a crazy record year for us, and then this year was another record. We were actually on fires in Vermont for over twenty four days, our FPR staff. Because of the conditions here, we were able to, were in, it was necessary for us to coordinate with our partners in the compact, so which includes the Northeastern States. So every three mornings a week, I was meeting virtually with the fire supervisors in the Northeastern States and Eastern Provinces of Canada to talk about the fire situation, because we share resources, and realizing who had what available, because of the conditions across the area, not everybody was able to share resources all the time, because they needed to keep them for their state. Because of those meetings, it was recognized in our preparedness level being at four, we coordinated with like the state of New Hampshire, and the National Forest and the White Mountains and the Green Mountains, all on the same day to put our restrictions on. That coordination got noticed in the Eastern area, which is the whole Eastern part of The United States, and the US Forest Service was able to put some funding up to have that helicopter prepositioned for the first time in any of our knowledge to have an aircraft prepositioned for the use of the primarily Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. And then lo and behold, on October 4, we had a fire in Williston, which you'd think Williston wouldn't have a mountain, but actually Brownell Mountain is in Williston, and on top of it is a cell tower with communications and radio communications, I believe includes the radio communications for fire and EMS as well. So our staff were there and they, we made the decision that, like, we need to get that helicopter because it's available and it would save a lot of time and money, and they were able to get that on the fire, The state will pay for that, but they were able to put 11,000 just about 11,000 gallons of water on that fire in about half an hour. So, you know, I think overall, probably saved a lot of money. But because of that coordination with the other partners and states, we were able to have that resource available. Just a couple of things that we did this year. We taught a lot of classes in wildland fire across the state and some spring fire department trainings of about five fifty students. We, every year, do a fifty fifty purchasing grant towns where rural towns under 10,000, they are able to purchase PPE this year was limited just to PPE, personal protective equipment, but we were able to give out $40,000 to 33 different towns, and they could buy $80,000 with the equipment and half as paid for. So, very good program. Early season, when it was wet here, we were able to send five forestry staff out on assignments out of state to assist as part of the national effort. But then as the drought persisted here, we made sure everyone was staying in Vermont to assist here. Some accomplishments that we had, we were able to lease a new, another fire response vehicle from BGS this year. We did purchase a UTV skid unit, so that's like a mini pump and tank that goes on the back of a UTV that we share with USAR. And thanks to the legislature, we were able to order a type six engine, which is still in the process of ordering as mentioned. Shifting to some background of the Forest Fire Awarding Program. As Commissioner mentioned, it was started in 1904, following some large fires, I think 5,000 acres burned in Vermont in 1903, so the governor appointed a commissioner of forestry to oversee the town forest fire warden program. At that time, was the first selectman in each town was the fire warden, and then in 1912, he was changed to be appointed by the select warden. The current forest fire prevention statutes, you know, they were set up at a time when there were really no rural fire departments. There were village fire departments and city fire departments, but very few rural fire departments. So it was, you know, at that time, FPR, well, they're not Forest Service at that time, but we're overseeing the town forest fire wardens really directly. Sort of the way it was designed before fire departments, that's kind of what we're talking about today, where it's sort of maintained as a separate system from fire response in Vermont. So you've got your fire chiefs, fire departments, and fire chiefs having that authority. Fire wardens work, really, they work with their town, and sometimes they're very much engaged in the fire department, but there's no statue there's no statute that dictates how that works. So it's sort of kept two separate, for the past over a hundred years. But I also wanna point out the warden program has gone has undergone many changes over the last, you know, over a hundred years. For instance, in 2016, the statutes were amended to remove the authority from the fire warden to arrest without warrant citizens that refused to fight a fire in in in forest fire when they were called. So at that time, you know, before there were a lot of fire departments, maybe some of you have seen those town forest fire warden signs around, that was a rallying point. That's not how we operate today. We You don't round up citizens to fight fires, it's done by firing parts. Just kind of looking at our neighbors, Vermont has not seen a catastrophic large wildfire, but it's around us. I mean, you remember 2023, twice the acreage of Vermont burned in Quebec. That's not very far away. Massachusetts had some crazy years. Connecticut, in 2024, had the Hawthorne fire, which is only 112 acres. It doesn't sound very big. It isn't compared to large Western fires, but the cost was in the millions. They're still actually trying to figure out totally what it costs with two firefighter fatalities. So when we talk about a large fire in Vermont, it doesn't need to be large, what we really should say is a complicated fire, or a complex incident, because it does not need to be large. Think about a 40 acre fire in Chittenden County, with all the, you know, the urban interface. It's just we need to not think about, like, giant Western fires. We're probably not gonna see that with our fuel type, but it doesn't mean it won't be costly, and it doesn't mean it couldn't be devastating to the homes. We had the worst drought in in a hundred and thirty years. And in the past year, we had at least 21 fires that we know of, that lasted more than a day. So when a fire department starts or a fire a fire starts lasting more than one day, local resources, local fire departments, they really have a hard time dealing with that. They're volunteers for the most part, they need to get back to work. So these are the things that we're trying to think about for the future. So we proposed some reforms that will help bring us to that, letting us be more prepared for a large wildfire, like I said, more of a complex wildfire. So we we as commissioner Rutland mentioned, we we engaged fire chiefs, fire wardens into the survey, trying to figure out where we need to be. And we think that we think what we're proposing will help bring us bring us there. And thanks to representative Hooper for helping to bring this forward. Just to note that there's extra notes that goes along with this presentation that you all should have received, so if I have to go through some of this quickly to stay on time, you actually all have some more background, or will. So the first one statute that I wanted to talk about, and some of the ones where it's really, really minor, what's been edited was just some word change. I didn't include slides on this because I wanted to focus on the ones that had, some more substantive change. The first one to mention is the commissioner statutes. Commissioner Forrest and Parks, the way it currently is that the commissioner designee is the state fire warden, and may act in a place as a fire warden throughout the state. Our concern is that it really doesn't define what the intent of this authority is. In a minute, you'll kind of understand what I'm talking about. So our proposal is to clarify what this commissioner's authority is. And so we think, you know, it's already in place that the commissioner is a state fire designee as a state fire warden, where the commissioner has the ability to manage a large incident or any wildfire in Vermont. This clarifies that the Commission does have that authority to take over the incident as an incident commander. It's not something that we are looking to go and take over fires and towns. I'm hoping it doesn't get interpreted that the state is looking to go and just, you know, go into every community and push over, push out the locals. The purpose of why we would need that authority is, say there's a large incident where we need to order resources from out of state. Forest and parks, we're the entity that can bring in those resources, like the helicopter I just talked about. Now this town is not getting paying for that. If we need to order up crews, if we had a fire that was across multi different towns where the fire chief for that town, now there's, you know, a fire that's more than one town. So having us have the ability to have the authority to manage that, because if we had to order a large national incident management team to run a really significant fire, we need to have the authority to delegate to that team to run the fire. If the fire cost over $100,000 of suppression costs, there is something called the Fire Management Assistance Grant with FEMA, which we do the paperwork that fills that out every year with the governor's office. If that was to be requested, the state, we need to be the entity that's in charge of the fire. We can distribute that money out to locals if they're involved with floodgates, but we need to be the entity that puts into that. So it ties it all in together and allows the commissioner to have that authority if needed. Also gives the commissioner the statute that it was to appoint special forest fire wardens, which was already there, it was just under another statute, and later on, it defines what those special fire wardens do and who they are. The other thing mentioned here is just a clarification with the Northeast Compact statute that the commissioner serves on that. Right now, it just says state forestry, and in our stat in our department, the state forestry and the commissioner, sometimes the same person, not always. And the last one is the commissioner can ban primitive campfires on in our levels. So it just that ties in later on with the fires, fire and campfires, but just to clarify that there has authorities there. We think it gives clear lines of authority to help prompt response, and allowing us to have that ability to manage incidents. 2641 is town forest fire wardens. On this one, so currently the way it's set up is every town has a forest fire warden, a town forest fire warden. They're appointed by the commissioner of forest and parks for a term of five years with the approval of the slot board. If they were to be removed, they're removed by the commissioner with the approval of the slot board, so neither entity can do it on their own. There is no requirement for them to be on a fire department, it's not in statute in any way, shape, form with that, but they have two main duties in statute. One is that they are the Town Forest Fire Warden is the entity that's responsible for forest fire suppression, and they are the only entity that can legally issue permits to kindle fire. So that's their two main jobs. Our concern is that the fire warden has the authority over forest fires, but the chief engineer, the chief of the fire department, has the legal authority over the apparatus and personnel of the fire department. The statute says that the fire warden may share that authority with the chief or may delegate that to the chief, but there's no nothing that forces that. We so that's that's kind of the concern. And then, of course, the Town Forest Fire Warden issues burn permits, but if they're not associated with the fire department, which is the entity that responds to fires, and guess what? Number one cause of fires in Vermont is people burning debris without, usually without a permit. This last year was only 30% of the fires, but normally it can be up to 50%. So our proposed change is that the chief engineer of department that provides protection to a town, because not every town has a fire department, would be the town forest fire warden by default. Also in this proposed change is that the special fire wardens, the commissioner, are going to appoint our state employees, of the Wildland Fire Program, that gives us their ability to manage fires and defines who they are. It also so right now, a deputy fire warden has the same power and authority as a town forest fire warden in each town, and this proposal would be it would give the town forest fire warden the ability the authority to designate as many deputy fire wardens as needed on their own without having to have forest and parks appoint. If we don't sign up for us at all, it would be handled locally. But kind of the whole thing is to give it a lot more to local control, as opposed to having another layer where we have to do reappointments and all that. It also, I think giving It looks like

[Chair Matthew Birong]: we got a question from representatives. Sorry, go ahead.

[Rep. Sandra “Sandy” Pinsonault (Member)]: So by doing this, by giving the power to the chief of the fire department, if a town has a fire department,

[Dan Dillner, State Forest Fire Supervisor, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation]: there would no longer be the appointments being made by the select board anymore. That it would automatically default to those to eliminate that. Assuming that each municipality has some mechanism to have the chief be already appointed, whether they're elected in the fire department or however it works. The way we wrote it was that if there if there is no that the town would not have a fire department, every town has a fire department that covers it, so that it would potentially be a chief of another fire department that covers them, maybe they cover multiple towns, but that chief could appoint a deputy to issue burn permits, and very likely, it may be the same person that's already doing it now. It's probably what we expect to happen. That's cool. But this would line up, it would line it up. I think that's the next slide. So yeah, would line it up under the chief, under the municipality, and giving that chief the authority to appoint deputies would help alleviate any extra workload that now we're saying the state's saying now that that that you're also the fire warden, and but really, there's no extra workload if you have appointed deputy to do the work or for burn permits. Really think it's shifting the fire ward and deputy fire ward and appointing this to municipal control. Okay, the next one is salary. I bet nobody knows that this is the case anywhere out there in towns or other, that the town salary for town forest fire wardens in statute is paid by the town. I think most wardens receive nothing, but it is it is in there. FPR annually pays fire warden $30 for fulfilling the duties of the position and filling out reports, also $30 for attending trainings, and $10 for each fire report. Our concern is basically if we're no longer appointing them anymore, it doesn't seem necessary that we would be paying or we're also wouldn't be able to require them. The current statutes say we require them to attend trainings, we would not be able to do that. So our proposed change is that we just leave the provision and then the town can pay the wardens if they want to, and remove our payment provisions, aligning the payment with municipal and fire departments, it would be an annual savings for our department of about 12,000 to $15,000 So the duties of the fire wardens, one of the things that the way it is now with the current state is fire wardens by statute are required to report all wildland fires to the commissioner within two weeks of extinguishment, and deputy wardens also have the same responsibilities as forest fire wardens. Our concern is that we need, as a wildland fire program, we need to know when there are fires occurring, and we need to know in two weeks, we need to know today when there's a fire. So that the staffing levels that we determine like on a weekend, if we decide to pay people to be ready and available, it's based on fire danger, but it's also based on fire occurrences. So whenever every little fire in a town is part of a much bigger picture, that gets reported nationally so we can build a picture like help us have that helicopter pre positioned. So not being able to find out for a couple weeks that there's a fire, we feel is a real problem, helping us build our staffing that's needed. There are times when states or agencies actually bring in resources, meaning crews or firefighting resources from another state or another agency, and pre position them because of the conditions, and that would also feed into that. So if we don't know what's going on, we can't be prepared. So our proposed changes that we would be, the Fireland Fire Program FPR would be, I think it specifically reads the Commissioner, would be informed of fires within twenty four hours of discovery, and then a final report within forty eight hours of extinguish. This is actually really not at all unlike the ANR spill team has to be notified of any kind of a spill for hazardous material, so it's really not that different. And this also, this statute clarifies the deputy warden's only I would have the authority and role to issue burn permits. So it clearly defines that. Our outcome, and we think it would help make us more aware of fires to be able to staff appropriately, and having those deputy wardens appointed locally would help with additional workload on the town force fire ward, which is the chief. Any questions from the table at that moment? Are you forming a thought representative? I have a question, but I'll figure out that I can. I'll ask him something. Okay. Suppression, this is about state aid for suppression of forest fires, the statute. This is kind of a misunderstood statute, I think. There's a lot of perception out there that if there's a forest fire, the state pays for it in your town, in a town. That is not the case. Years ago, the statutes read such that if if a if there was a forest fire and the town paid the firefighting costs, the state would reimburse for half of those. That got changed ten years ago in this in the in the previous time the statutes were edited. That currently states that municipalities are responsible for suppression costs on all non ANR lands. This would also exclude federal lands. However, it says that FPR may reimburse those suppression costs. It does say the FPR shall reimburse the suppression costs on ANR land, so that's forest and parks and fish and wildlife. Our concern is there's lack of clarity when FPR reimburses for those fires on, well, really on all lands and how it works. Where it says May, what does that mean? When may we do that? And there's no assurance that we are involved in suppression on our lands, in our lands, we are a party that shall pay for that fire, there's no mechanism in statute for us to be involved in that. So the proposed changes that suppression costs on ANR lands may be paid, so it's still the town is responsible, but they may be paid by PR if other funds are available for emergency funding, such as that fire management assistance grant for FEMA, or if there was a large fire and there was emergency funds from the legislature. And on ANR lands, it just defines what the requirements are for getting reimbursed. So it lists, I think the FPR is notified and requested to assist on the fire within an hour, and that the reporting I think is within twenty four hours. We just think it gives clear guidance in for payments on all lands, and so we can say, no, we can't pay for this fire, but yeah, we are because this is how it works. It just cleans it up. 2,645 open burn permits. Currently, a permit to kindle fire, a burn permit is technically called the permit to kindle fire for burning, the statutes clearly define clean natural debris, clean natural vegetation, so that's still in there, just had been shifted a little bit. So exempt required to do the following exemptions. If there's snow on the site, you do not need a permit. If the fire has built been built in a stone arch or a ring, it's not located within a field of dry grass or other flannel contiguous to other flannel material, not in the permit, or if it's 200 feet away from any woodland, you do not need a permit. These permits are only obtained from the town of Forest Firewood. Our concern is, although it talks about stone arches and rings, there's really no definition of of what that really is. There's actually no authority for the commissioner to ban campfires, since campfires don't really even exist in the statutes. We feel like that's a concern, especially last year where we had a fire season where we did have to do a ban of reburning. The only way technically to ban fires that don't fit under the category of debris burning would be for the governor to close the woods. So there's no statute we'll talk about in a minute, but that also closed hunting and fishing. So those are our concerns. What we're proposing is some categories of fires to define what's, what a campfire is, so, and would give us ability to kind of do a scalable approach, which I'll mention in a minute. The category one fire would be the campfire that now has a definition, and a campfire would not need a permit, but it can be banned by the commission. So campfire would be 36 inches or less, and it would not need a permit. It would be 36 inches or less in a ring or 36 inches or less that's 200 feet away from any flannel, vegetation. Category two fire would be greater than 36 inches, or less than 200 feet of flammable vegetation, and require a permit from the town of Forest Fire Warden as now, and also can be banned by the Commissioner. Category three fire is a new category that we also came up with. Right now, if someone does a prescribed burn like us doing for habitat management or fuels management, or a town fire department is doing a training, like on control burns for training, or a farmer wants to burn a field, there's nothing in the statutes that talks about that at all. It's just sort of lumped under open burning. So this defines that as a category three fire requires a permit from the town forest fire warden, and also can be banned by the commissioner or and the fire ward. The only difference is category three is also requires a plan. It doesn't say it has to be written, it just has to have a plan that talks about contingency resources. If someone wanted to get a permit from the fire ward to burn their field, the fire ward say, okay, what's your plan? Make sure this fire doesn't escape. So giving us a, you know, potential scalable approach. Your question? Representative Hooper of Randolph. Ben, persevere to see you.

[Rep. Philip “Jay” Hooper (Member)]: Welcome back. There's currently no penalty

[Dan Dillner, State Forest Fire Supervisor, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation]: if you are responsible for starting forest fires. Correct, at least in the state statutes. I don't know if it how that would be covered under municipal statutes or other type of statutes, but listed under these, there's no penalty that I know. So our expected outcome is that it would clearly define the type of fires that need a permit. It would enable the state to have a scalable approach. So it would potentially, you know, if it was just like this last summer, we probably would have started with a burn ban for category two and category three fires, and then maybe towards the end when it was discontinuing forever. So if we ban campfires, that would include state parks and private campgrounds, we would probably do that a little bit later. But we may have, this year we may have had to do that. This is that statute I talked about closing the woods. Really not a lot of changes here, I just thought we'd throw it in. It was done in 1963, the last time that up there, too small to read probably, but that was signed by Governor Hoff in 1963. So penalties there just removes the exemptions about owners of households and their tenants and changes it from newspapers to modernizing the communications. So otherwise, it's still there. Probably would never use it, but it just seems like it's there. If things got really crazy, it might be nice to have another tool. Fire prevention tickets. So this is another little known statute. It's its own subchapter in title 10, subchapter seven of uniform fire prevention ticket. So this is a ticket that can be issued by a town forest fire warden, and it's processed and gone to the criminal division of Superior Court. The fees for these tickets are $25 a violation, dollars 25 additional for each day of non compliance with a violation not total violation not to exceed $75. Our our concern with this is that it's very complicated to fill out. I think we've only done, I've only helped with two in twenty years. They're not generally done. It relies on the town forest fire warden to issue a criminal ticket, so they're they're not a law enforcement person, they're not trained in law enforcement. Us as an administer of of the system, we're not trained in law enforcement. It also, I feel like it's inappropriate for a town, person in a town that's really out there in their community to try to educate people, and now they're issuing a criminal ticket, really for almost no money anyway. It's very likely gonna be thrown out potentially, because it's it's difficult to process, and it's just not used, so our proposal is to actually remove this in its entirety. And I think it's really it's misunderstood how simple it would be to just issue a ticket. So that's our proposal and I think the outcome is it enforces the idea that the Unforest Fire Warden really is someone out there to educate and to work in their community as opposed to issuing criminal tickets. Because if someone decides not to pay it, they're gonna go to court as well as the Grand Polish Fire Authority. I think it allows there's a couple of municipal statutes I think they could rely on somewhat to help with regarding enforcement, but also I think it'll encourage municipalities to help create some of their own statutes that can get better assistance from law enforcement for people burning. Last one, just to mention that task force that is going to be convened, So bringing in forests and parks, Division of Fire Safety, and Public Safety, Vermont League of Cities and Towns, at least a minimum or maximum of two parks, fire chiefs, and Vermont Emergency Management come up with a task force to really look at wildland fire in Vermont and our response capacity, and make some recommendations and then report back in July 2017. I think, moving to the end of the question.

[Rep. Sandra “Sandy” Pinsonault (Member)]: Representative Pinsonault, this might be a crazy question, does the drought of 'twenty five, is there a potential to have a higher threat to 'twenty six if we have another drought season? Does the drought stay dry and then it just, you know what I'm saying?

[Dan Dillner, State Forest Fire Supervisor, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation]: If we start spring and fire season and we're still in drought, it can easily can put us at a higher level. Yeah, right now the drought, I think the drought is still remaining on some of the eastern part of the state, you know, and, you know, so if we started in drought, you know, with low water tables, certainly, that could that could make us, you know, starting off at a at a worse place. Usually, in spring fire season, you know, the heavier fuels down logged and stuff are already pretty wet inside. So they're not in the ground as wet. So the fires don't last very long. And that's the that was the problem that had in the summer is, it was so dry in the ground. So whenever there was a fire, it went for days because it was hard to put out and it went deep in the ground, burning heavier materials. So if we started spring fire season where the fine fuels are ready to burn like they often are in the spring, and those larger things in the ground with that, that could be really bad. I've seen that before. Thankfully, we could be in drought and have almost no fires if it was damp. You know, I mean, it could still be it could be having light rain and be in drought. So it's hard to predict. We haven't gotten any real predictions from the predictive services stuff nationally for this upcoming season yet, but we will obviously be monitoring to make sure we can be prepared. So it could be.

[Rep. Sandra “Sandy” Pinsonault (Member)]: As a native Vermonter, I was amazed at how dry the Brooks and the water levels were, I'm pretty sure what the floods were, and how much water there was, and then to see the Brooks just a trickle, and I have springs on my property that was just a drip.

[Dan Dillner, State Forest Fire Supervisor, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation]: So one of the things I didn't mention, you know, the beginning, I really think we dodged a bullet this year. Oh, see. Fuels were as dry as we've seen in a really long time. They were definitely dry enough to have a catastrophic fire. What didn't align was we just didn't have the wind event. You know, we've seen some wind events in the last couple of weeks, you know, a lot we did not see that this past summer and fall. If we had combined that with the ignition on a slope, we would have had a large fire. So I, you know, we were very fortunate. The burn ban, in our opinion, did really help. The main cause of fires in Vermont, like I said, is debris burning. And this year, you know, that was the main cause, and after the burn ban, it was really easy to see, like, it shifted to being campfires, you know, illegal campfires out there, they got down on the ground, and debris burning was only 30% of the cause. So we think it helped, it really helped certainly with getting it out in the media, you did a lot of public outreach, that kind of stuff, it did help.

[Jennifer Carbee (Legislative Counsel)]: Representative Hooper of Range Law.

[Rep. Philip “Jay” Hooper (Member)]: Usually you meet regionally once a month about the conditions of the dryness or two weeks? For, with the compact and stuff? No, with Your counterparts. Out of state?

[Dan Dillner, State Forest Fire Supervisor, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation]: Yes. So we meet every Tuesday throughout the whole fire season from like, you know, early spring all the way through. But that was more often, right? And then so this year, in addition to that, we were meeting on three mornings a week. Yeah. Virtually. Right. So that was something we actually had never done, just to coordinate in more of an informal coordination of what do you have for resources, what's it looking like in your state, and then trying to we felt it was positive to coordinate burning restrictions at the same time, and that was noticed by governors of multiple states, so that So for how many weeks or months did you meet? So we started it, I would say, I think, after the commissioners meeting in the August, we continued through, I think, towards just about the October.

[Rep. Philip “Jay” Hooper (Member)]: Well, because I remember you were telling me some pretty eye opening things in Albany, and you'll probably do that again if we have a dry summer this week, you just keep heating?

[Dan Dillner, State Forest Fire Supervisor, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation]: Yeah, mean, you know, that was something we hadn't done before, and that was just a really good way to, you know, it was really informal, and we could just have a conversation each day. We coordinate a lot with New Hampshire and the US Forest Service, what they have for resources, and they were in the US Forest Service, you know, because they were seeing a fire season that they'd never seen in the recent history. They brought in a lot of folks from out of state. They had some crews available primarily for the national forest, but we were able to utilize them on multiple fires in state under the agreements we had with them, so that was also really ideal. You know, in volunteer fire departments, they did the majority of the firefighting across Vermont. It's just from those fire and they did a fantastic job, kept the fire small. It's just when those fires go multiple days, they really need to get back to station coverage for other things. Wild cars. With house fires, more wildfires. So that's where we come in and help bring in resources from forestry staff, as well as others from out of state. Can we get him to a

[Jennifer Carbee (Legislative Counsel)]: second? Sure. Thank you very much. We do have about five minutes, so if you'd like to join us

[Charles Martin (NR)]: I have like thirteen seconds here. Charles Martin, NR. This came off another committee, I sent it to your staff assistant, a drought monitor tool. There's only Chittenden County, the Chittenden County is the only county in the state with normal conditions in terms of its dryness level, so every other county Vermont is either moderate drought or ethnomically dry at least all

[Dan Dillner, State Forest Fire Supervisor, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation]: over some of the county.

[Charles Martin (NR)]: Still, as of January 13, updates

[Dan Dillner, State Forest Fire Supervisor, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation]: the complete update. There's some work

[Charles Martin (NR)]: to and on from the earlier question about drought carry forward effects.

[Jennifer Carbee (Legislative Counsel)]: I noticed on that map that there's a section that says none. What is that?

[Charles Martin (NR)]: There's not a, I think it indicates just normal levels. Okay,

[Jennifer Carbee (Legislative Counsel)]: all right, it just confused me because the very next one below it was abnormally dry. Yeah. Okay, great. Thank you. And Nick, I think we could put that up under today's testimony. That should be helpful for folks. And any additional questions?

[Rep. Philip “Jay” Hooper (Member)]: How are the specs coming for

[Dan Dillner, State Forest Fire Supervisor, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation]: that apparatus? So we're working with state purchasing, so it's a lengthy process. We have, I think they're probably by the end of the month, the actual advertisement will be going out to some sort of a system that goes out to any vendor that's interested in bidding on. We're excited. Good. Me too. Just a commentary on that, and from a municipality perspective, I don't know if it's the same for you all, but it's almost like one of my town, when we get we're just in the process of going to an ambulance. Yeah. Sometimes it can take up to two years. You get to get it on track left, bid, bid selection, actually get in the queue to get one, and then get it retrofitted. I think we've done a lot of that initial work where I think we're going to be pretty good on the advertising, it would pretty short. But the build could take a year. You're a little bit out, yeah. We're a little bit out, yeah. Well,

[Jennifer Carbee (Legislative Counsel)]: thank you all very much. Very nice to see you all again, and sure we'll have you back at some point in time because I expect that some of these statutorily requested statutory requests, that's what I'm trying to say, will be incorporated into a bill at some point. Rep. Pinsonault, do

[Rep. Sandra “Sandy” Pinsonault (Member)]: you That was my next question, Jennifer. Could they tell us their launch for this year?

[Jennifer Carbee (Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, so are you talking about budget? Or I did not hear any budget requests, so no. And the changes are all to statute. So that can go in a form of legislation that is related to emergency response. Robert would be my guess.

[Dan Dillner, State Forest Fire Supervisor, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation]: Thank you.

[Jennifer Carbee (Legislative Counsel)]: Thank you all so much. Nick, please take us off.

[Dan Dillner, State Forest Fire Supervisor, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation]: We should give him a hell of a