skrks fa to act as a support agency. local fire departments work well with the forest service in coordinating esf 4 for wild land fires. based on its relationship with the nation's fire and emergency services we think that the mou should continue with the usfa playing a stronger and primary role in structural events, terrorist attacks and nonwile land fire incidents. in addition we support the establishment of teams and firefighters that could quickly deploy in the event of a disaster. as we witnessed in arizona last year local fire departments are the first scene on the last to leave tins dent. these support teams can provide a benefit to the fire chiefs by working with state, tribal and local agencies. the current authorization for the usfa expires on september 30th. in the senate senators joe lieberman and susan collins have introduced mark up s 2218. this bill would authorize funding for the usfa through fiscal year 2017. on behalf of the leadership of the nation's fire and ems service, i ask the committee consider companion legislation this year. i would like to thank this committee for being a continued supporter of the nation's fire service over the years. we have made major progress in reducing the tragedy of fire loss in the past 30 years. however, we have much work to do. thank you for holding this hearing and i look forward to answering any of your questions. thank you. >> thank you, chief. now recognize mr. oconnor for his testimony. >> thank you, chairman, quail, ranking member edwards. i'm kevin o'connor representing the national association of firefighters whose 300,000 members proudly serve communities in each of the nation's 435 congressional districts. i'm pleased to be before this subcommittee i'm currently a student of member john sarbanes after the november elections will be a new constituent of the ranking member. as firefighters have taken on additional capabilities to meet total response needs of our communities so too must the fire administration evolve to meet the needs of the 21st century fire service. the days of firefighters whose primary function was to simply put out fires. today's firefighters are highly educated and skilled all purpose emergency responders with broad responsibilities ranging from ems, hazmat and all hazards response. most significantly your firefighters are always the first boots on the ground for any manmade or natural disaster. the prevalence of fire based ems delivery system requires the agency to fully integrate ems training and preparedness into its mission. usfa is beginning to move in that direction, we want to make sure that ems be afforded aappropriate recognition. the fire administration is integrating into its programs, it must work to change the perception that is primarily focused simply on fire. one way that perception problem may be solved is to simply change the agent's name to reflect its current mission. the u.s. fire, ems and all hazards administration or similar branding would better describe the expanded role of both the modern fire service and the agency. after the well publicized problems stemming from hurricane katrina, congress rightly took steps to revamp our nation's approach to emergency response. usfa is currently working to develop a better means of coordinating existing state and local response for disaster and deployment. currently the agency is considering organizes firefighters and other responders to support fema disaster response and recovery efforts. the iaff fully supports this endeavor. but we must ensure that firefighters are appropriately utilized and deployed during any disaster. during the delayed response to hurricane katrina, fema called up 1,000 firefighters to serve as community relations officers, tasking them with the distribution of fliers instead of deploying well trained respond toers the front line where they presence was dratly needed. frankly, it was a tragic waste of resources and capabilities. the best way to accomplish the goal would be to establish a national firefighter credentialing system. in the past, too many well meaning firefighters have self-dispatched to an emergency, but many of those firefighters have looked the training and experience to operate effectively. a national credentialing system will alleviate that uncertainty by typing responders based on training and certification levels. this will make ince dent commanders to make the most appropriate use of the resource. unfortunately the first administration's ability to represent the fire service at the federal level is compromised by funding. usfa has long struggled to function with sadly diminishing resources. the current level must be main tinned for the agency to carry out its mission i urge the sub committee to maintain or increase the current authorization level. rest assured we will be making the same case to your colleagues in appropriations. lastly, i'd like to address a prior congressional recommendation that in our view has been slow to implement. the u.s. fire academy has successfully further professional development of fire service through training and education. today the academy offers distant learning training locally centered at centers around the state. to expand the academy's reach, congressed usfa to partner with organizations that have established fire service training portions to deliver a portion of the agency's training. organizations such as the iaff provide excellent partnership to conduct this real world training that few institutions can match. through such partnerships it could increase partners to benefit from the training program. we look forward to working with chief mitchell and his role offismenting this program. i thank you for the opportunity to speak before you today. >> thank you. i want to thank all of the witnesses for their testimony and also for being right at the five minutes button. that is rarity on capitol hill. and i thank you for your punk chality. now i want to remind members the committee rules limiting question to five minutes. the chair at this point will open the round of question and recognize myself for five minutes. chief mitchell, as we're examining the usfa we're interested in what changes should be made to the usfa's authorities. currently it serves as a support agency of the u.s. forest service and the federal emergency management agency. emergency support function number four. these responsibilities are are signed at the discretion of homeland security. some in the fire service community have recommended that the usfa should be elevated to co-leader with the u.s. forest service to ensure a more effective state and local response. would the usfa be able to handle this responsibility and to your knowledge has the department explored the possibility of making this change with the forest service? >> thank you, mr. chairman. the short answer is yes we have explored it. in fact, we have come up with a couple of initiatives that would allow us to participate more in response. we are meeting with fema response leadership at this time, this very week and also meeting with the u.s. forest service to discuss how we would coordinate being dual coordinators. we have a lot of ideas on how we could do that and partnering with the other fire service nongovernmental organizations and state and regional agencies to provide some level of coordination to disaster response across the country through some of the existing mutual aid agreements and contracts. so if there was a point where we wondered if we had that authority, we talked with our legal folks and we do find that fema administrator has the authority to write us into that program. so right now we're just trying to coordinate that effort with the forest service and do it in a way that is acceptable to all the parties involved. >> the forest service uses yet we have some specific entities, some specific duties that we do in an event that the forest service model doesn't address. i think this will build up the strength of it if we're both a part of that decision making instead of just one and then coming to a support agency. if we're both there with our voices saying which is the best way to go, i think that's a much better end product than having to wait for support. >> we're always interesting in leveraging r and d. there's ongoing research to protect firefighters. how does the usfa coordinate its research along with other fire safety research going on at the department of homeland security and defense. >> we meet with them regularly. both dhss. we just had an onsite meeting last week. we partner with nfpa. essentially we continually have communications through our team that works in technology and research at the usfa. and just stay in constant communication. we gather input from our fire service stake holders and the other nongovernmental organizations across the country and in the fire service as to needs. we communicate those with the technologying asies and laboratories and partners. trying to see that our needs are being met by the research community. >> have you seen -- have you experienced any sort of problems with actually getting the level of cooperation between the different agencies? sometimes we hear that you know, it's hard to get information from one agency if you're working with another agency. >> i've only recently come into the federal government. and so the level of bureaucracy, is that the right word? >> you can say it. >> that you need from one step to the next is a little different than local government. but no, the people engaged are very cooperative. i think that sometimes the process and our level of resource that supports us being engaged in the research process probably limits our ability to move forward faster. >> okay. >> but we work with them to tex tent that we can. >> okay. thank you very much. now recognize the ranking member miss edwards for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman, and thank you to our witnesses. my staff actually just recently had a chance to spend a day at our fire training academy. and i have to say for the work of firefighters and our chiefs, on the ground, that's not for the faint of heart. in your testimony, both of you we'll allow you to answer this question out of respect for administrator mitchell, and i'll share with you why. you beth expressed concerns over the administration's current level of funding. you described the impact this declining budget is having on the fire administration's activities. and specifically you mentioned that the fire administration won't be able to complete incident reporting system in a number of courses offered at the fire academy will be eliminated in new courses will not be developed. i wonder if you can comment on the ability of the fire administration to fulfill its mission especially as you know what the needs are both for the western states, but at the most local level. i wonder if the two of you could comment on what these budget constraints mean and what level of thorgzed funding do you think ought to be included in a reauthorizing bill as we move forward through congress. >> so to the first point about the losses that we've seen in the u.s. fire station specifically. we've seen a reduction in the number of course. wide ranging courses from hazardous material to prevention to deployment for command and control. lots of those have been reduced. we've seen wonderful program called the trade program that is also locking at a reduction in funding. in the trade program is where i met fire chief olson for the very first time as training officers which builds networks across the nation about doing the right thing with our training. i'm worried that may be lost in it. the executive officer program would have an outstanding way to educate a continue yum of leaders in the fire service so that we're thinking forward instead of staying the way we are. we're all going to have to change. those are issues that i would be concerned about with being cut. on the modernization of the infers, right now we get reports, lots of rofrts for how it relates to the nfpa data. wonderful things for us to do. i'm wondering if there's a way we can do realtime numbers and we can get to finish this so we can have numbers that we can compare our organization to. for example, we've got l.a. fire department and fire department new york having questions about what their times mean. well, if we had a data spot that we could get realtime numbers from, i believe that's an incredible value. >> what you're sharing with us is a reduction in the budget has -- because it's a fairly lean agency has real impact locally. the fire service is inherently a local operation. the chairman referenced the landmark america's burning in 1973. you described it as being very lean and that is correct. some of my testimony is predicated on ems and credentialing. i don't offer that with a criticism with the limbed resources that are dmining, usfa is having a hard time doing its job. the authorization level is great. it needs to be at least at the current level, but it certainly needs to be appropriated. this is a lean agency. there's not a lot of fat there. it's supporting over 300,000 professional firefighters and probably twice and half as many volunteers across the country in every community. we just really encourage congress to recognize that this is an efficient use of federal funds. it's protecting communities and that in our view is government's biggest responsibility. to be able to deliver those things. is that correct? >> yes. i would like to expand our capacity and really since i have been at the fire administration, we have excellent people working there. the reductions have limited and retarred our ability to move forward with some of the newer programs that we need to move forward. >> thank you. and i yield. >> now recognize the chairman of the full committee, the gentleman from texas, mr. hall for five minutes. >> mr. chairman, i do thank you. i thank this panel. i just -- you have such an important job. it's important to the smallest group of firefighters to the wig cities. my dad would run up to the fire station because the first one there got to drive the one truck they had. there was always a race for that. when it's all over and they come home, i'd ask dad, how'd it go? he said we saved a lot. that was usually his answer. it means a lot. they have to rely on you. i guess the administrator mitchell, how does the united states fire administration how do you support the rural fire departments? i have a lot of them in my fourth congressional district there. how do you support those? i guess the fundamentalal differences in the nature of the rural fire problems compared to the u.s. fire problem as a whole and i say this, it's sad that we had to have a 9/11 to really get people to appreciate you all the way they should. a lot of communities are protected by volunteer fire departments and face unique challenges, agriculture fires, fires to wild land and urban interface. usfa offer training especially tailored to volunteer firefighters? and what type of resources have you developed a fire department's operating in rural communities? i guess do you want me to repeat that? >> i think i get it. thank you, congressman. >> i didn't think you'd want me to repeat it. >> we have courses tailored to volunteers. largely what we have are offerings of those courses we work with the volunteers to try to make them more available. ing the difficulties to having the time to get additional training so we work more to expand the online offerings and the in the field courses that go out through the states, state fire training. much of the basic training is done locally. so those are handled outside what we do try to do, do on a larger basis is a lot of that online with respect to rural areas and wild land, we have courses in development right now for wild land and urban interface fires to protect those structures close to the wild land. and we have some wild land courses that are being offered through the national wild land coordinating group. i guess the overall answer is that we're reaching out trying toe make the courses more available to the volunteers and working with the volunteer associations also that help that to happen. >> thank you for that. i think it's very important. i yield back my time, mr. chairman. >> thank you very much, mr. chairman. >> thank you very much, mr. chairman. i want to join the other members of this committee in thanking you all for the work that you do to keep our communities safe. administrator, mitchell, in your testimony you talked about the indirect costs of fire. and estimate that according to your testimony here the indirect costs which includes things like lost business, medical expenses, temporary lodging, psychological damage may be as much as eight to ten times higher than the direct cost of fire. that emphasizes the importance of training and education and prevention. and i know that right now many communities not only in my district and state, but across this country are struggle and don't have the resources they need at the local level to do all the work that they need to do. what i'd like to to do, maybe drflt hall, can you you can about the progress that's been made with the areas that are targeted for example with the assistance to firefighters in the safer grant programs. can you comment about how these programs have really contributed to addressing the challenges that are faced by our local fire service districts? >> yes, i'd be glad to. thank you. we have conducted three needs assessment of surveys of the fire service and the second and third we companied with a matching analysis looking at how the needs had been affected by the grants that people have gotten in the years before the survey was conducted. what we found was that the particular types of needs that were especially targeted by the -- rural volunteer fire department twrairs that mr. hall was talking about. so it was -- what we got was the programs -- the grants are very well targeted. they're very effective. the only limit on the degree of impruchl in need that we've seen is that there's limited funding. they have accomplished as much as they can given the amounts out there. to us the road maps are clear, if you want to get the needs really far down, you need to as the other speakers have said maintain the funding and if possible increase the fubdsing for these grants. another thing we looked at in the needs assessment was training. do they have the training. do they have the certification very various tasks. here again we saw improvements in need, but still very great needs. and this ties back to the outreach programs that are being conducted from the academy. >> thank you. now in my state of oregon we pride ourselves in sustainability and green building so when somebody mentioned the rooftop covered with photovoltaic cells that sound like back home. could you talk a little bit about the work that's being done to make sure that new methods and tactics are developed for fighting fires in green buildings? >> i think that was my statement that you're reacting to. thank you. there is an active project at nfpa that is in cooperation with the fire administration and with other key entities. to try to develop best practices. how should you adjust your way of fighting a fire in order to identify that this particular hazard is there when you show up and then to decide how you avoid shock hazards and other sorts of things in the course of fighting the fire. it's not only going very well in the course of reducing results it's a role model project for how new hazards could be incorporated into the best practices of the fire service in general. >> thank you very much. i yield back. thank you mr. chairman. >> thank you, now recognize the gentleman from illinois for five minutes. bl thank you, mr. chairman. i thank all the witnesses for their testimony. obviously very critical issue here we're talking about fire safety. in the written testimony both mr. o'connor and mr. mitchell you both highlight one area in which you think the usfa can do more with training. mr. o'connor you specifically mentioned that usfa had been slow to implement congress's religiouses that the usfa partner with organizations that establish fire training programs. i want to ask mr. o'connor can you tell us more about iaff training programs and how they can help the u.s. fire academy expand the reach of its classes. >> i think in all fairness to the academy part of the issue is resources. but in our view, the national fire academy is a wonderful resource for people that are able to be in residence there and travel there it's wonderful training. the outreach of state training academies has been magnificent. i think this committee in congress in a previous authorization recognized that there's other opportunities. what we're very proud of the iaff i wouldn't limb it to simply our organization. there are a lot of folks throughout the fire service organizations representing firefighters of all types that have very vibrant training programs. for example, the one i know best is the iff. we have several grant programs funded through the department of homeland security and department of transportation that are predicated on peer to peer training. we have programs that are certified to meet the standards and approval of the fire academy and other sources of the fire service, but they're delivered economically through the local level. meaning if there's a need for a training course in oregon we would find instructors that are trained and certified in portland. their day job may be somewhere else, but they would be dispatched to this area that needs training basically only be compensated for the period that they're actually training. they're spread across the nation so it's a very efficient way of delivering the training. that cadre of instructors currently exists. if we were contracted or through some mechanism be allowed that opportunity to put these programs in the field and again, i don't limit this simply to the iaff, it is simply a very good model of training. it's specially effective because it's not just an academic