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American Morning

Wildfire Season Blazes Out of the Gates in Florida and California

Aired June 05, 2001 - 11:20   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Firefighters on the both the East and West Coasts of the United States are spending another day on the fire lines. Right now, dozens of wildfires are burning across the state of Florida. Many of them were sparked by lightning over the weekend. The state's biggest blaze is the so-called Mallory Swamp fire. It is still burning, but it is now about 70 percent contained.

New fires are also breaking out of California. A five-alarm fire scorched a hillside in San Rafael yesterday. That's the first major blaze of the year for Marin County. Joining us now from Washington to talk about the summer fire season is Interior Secretary Gale Norton. Thank you very much for coming in, Madame Secretary, we appreciate it.

GALE NORTON, INTERIOR SECRETARY: Thank you. Happy to join you.

HARRIS: Well, can you give us an idea of what the forecast looks like, because we have burnings happening already? It seems to be a bit early, does it not?

NORTON: For most of the country, this is a fairly average, but for two areas, we have some particular concerns. Florida has a severe drought, and we're certainly seeing a lot of fire activity there. From the Pacific Northwest, we're hearing that this is one of the worst seasons that they've had in terms of drought in the last hundred years. Many people are saying that it's the worst year since the 1920s and so, we are very concerned about everything in the Pacific Northwest.

HARRIS: We've been covering drought conditions around the country. It seems like it's been happening in three different pockets, there in the Northwest, also in the Midwest and parts of the Rockies as well as Florida. You don't expect any more fires like the ones we saw in New Mexico last summer?

NORTON: Well, it's always hard to predict, and this is a drier year than what we had last we are. And so we are concerned, but we're taking steps to be ready. We've hired 2,500 -- or we're in the process of hiring 2,500 more firefighters than we had last year.

And so we want to be ready on the federal level to respond to those things. And we're also working more closely with state and local firefighters so that we can have a coordinated approach to deal with these thing as they arise. HARRIS: Do you think have you it necessary or you have at hand all of the tools necessary to meet the needs of this season coming up?

NORTON: Whenever there's a catastrophic fire, it's hard to predict and to say with assurance that everything is going to be under control. We're doing what we can to be ready. We're also shifting our approach because really what we have is a problem that has built up over the last 80 or 90 years where we've suppressed fires. We've not recognized their role in natural ecosystems, and we're now moving toward trying to have more prescribed burns, more opportunity to thin out underbrush and to be sure that our forests are not quite the tinderboxes that they have been in the past.

HARRIS: Is the -- your departments performance in handling the fires in this upcoming fire season, are they going to receive, do you think, particular scrutiny because of the administration's perceived problems with the environmental issues?

NORTON: I think that fire problems are something that people recognize are issues that need to be dealt with uniquely. They're an area where you really need to be prepared and there is strong bipartisan agreement on what needs to be done to deal with those things. On environmental issues, we're really beginning to get our message across with the president beginning within the last week to talk about our positive approaches on dealing with the environment.

HARRIS: Yes, we saw the president yesterday at the Everglades National Park in Florida. Now, what can we expect in terms of action, not just talk, when it comes to these kinds of issues? Because we know this is an issue on which the administration has been taking quite a bit of heat from conservation-minded folks across the country?

NORTON: We are beginning to build with the kinds of approaches that deal with federal, state, local, the environmental groups, dealing with getting a lot of different people involved and all working toward the common goal of protecting our environment and that's the approach that we believe is very successful, It's what my department is going to be pursuing in our across-the-board land management kinds of activities.

HARRIS: Secretary Norton, we thank you very much for your time this morning. We wish you luck.

NORTON: Thank you very much.

HARRIS: We'll be watching to see how things happen this fire season. We're just hoping you're too busy, OK.

NORTON: Thanks.

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