Press Gaggle by Dana Perino

Business Wire, Oct 25, 2007

In terms of aviation support, out of USTRANSCOM, 18 helicopters, 14 fixed wing. U.S. Navy is supporting firefighting efforts with a total of seven helicopters. U.S. Marine Corps are supporting firefighting efforts, a total of three helicopters, and 11 additional helicopters are prepared to assist. C-130s flew five sorties, dropping 131,996 pounds of retardant on the Poomacha, California fire. And five of the firefighting aircrafts are currently operational. DOD is providing 18 fire engines, 17 personnel, and supporting equipment and incident management team support.

In the San Diego area, three facilities: the Naval Base San Diego; Naval Amphibious Base Coronado; and Naval air station El Centro are billeting 2,670 DOD evacuees who have been affected in the region. Okay, DOD has got a fact sheet that can give you additional details. Let me take -- let me go to questions.

Q Are you prepared to say the firefighters have turned the corner?

MS. TOWNSEND: No, I think it's too soon to say that; what I said was weather conditions are turning, which should give us the advantage. Today is going to be a very important day. They've been working very hard, but understand before the weather conditions turned, using air assets isn't effective in the old weather conditions. And so you didn't see as many air sorties flying early on because it's not effective. What we're told is if the winds are blowing the way they were, it either evaporates or doesn't fall in an effective way, and so now that those weather conditions are changing, we have got -- especially the winds coming from west to east now off the water, they bring moisture with it, it's a more effective condition, and you're seeing lots more air assets deployed, beginning yesterday.

Q Two-thousand-and-three sounds like it was worse, from the numbers you gave me. How is the federal response different this time and why?

MS. TOWNSEND: I actually think it's hard to compare directly, but let me make a couple of points to you because I think by and large what you're seeing is the benefit of experience at all levels of government. You know, California -- I hesitate to tell you how great we are, how much better we are -- I think we are better, but I think it's important to note the effectiveness of the state and local response. They've got a -- they were very effective at anticipating what they were going to need, setting up evacuation points and evacuation centers.

Did we support that? Yes we did, and we were better and faster at doing it, but fundamentally the state and locals have had a phenomenal response. Their reverse 9-1-1 system, where they were able to get word out, all of this results in less property damage, more lives saved, and so it's not just -- the federal government has done better and faster, absolutely, but this all rides on the effectiveness and preparedness of the state and locals, who have done a phenomenal job.

Q Fran, would you say that this is the most challenging natural disaster for the federal government since Katrina? Is that a fair statement?