Supervisor Royce Reflects On The Rim Fire
Tuolumne County District 3 Supervisor Evan Royce discussed the events of the past couple of weeks regarding the Rim Fire as Thursday’s KVML “Newsmaker of the Day”.
Royce has spent the past two weeks at incident command centers and meeting with fire officials and management.
“The fire was scary at times” said Royce, “and we needed to keep the communities as accurately informed as possible.”
Evans continued, “I went to the county’s Emergency Operation Center and saw first hand how the trained responders worked with various organizations from school officials to Cal Trans to PG&E.
This was my first major disaster and it was amazing to see how when life, property and entire neighborhoods are at risk, politics are set aside and the community drops everything in order to accomplish things that need to be done.
As a representative of the people, part of my job is to keep people informed. During the Rim Fire, we constantly tried to accomplish this through large town hall meetings, work with the Mi Wuk Tribe and visits at incident command posts and the various base camps.
In the future, we need to be active participants in forest restoration, salvage timber issues and wildlife restoration. This was a catastrophe. It affects my backyard and we really need to understand the many issues associated with the forest management, in order to prevent anything like this from ever happening again. Things need to change. Things need to be done. I believe that the Board of Supervisors will be dedicated to that mission.”
The “Newsmaker of the Day” is heard every weekday morning on AM 1450 KVML at 6:45, 7:45 and 8:45am.