AG Today

Ag Today August 10, 2018

Trump cabinet officials to inspect California fire damage

BY EMILY CADEI, McClatchy DC
August 09, 2018 01:53 PM

WASHINGTON
Two Trump cabinet officials are heading to Northern California next week to meet with officials working to contain the deadly Carr Fire, as the administration seeks to show its helping to fight this and other blazes ravaging the state.

Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke and Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue will travel to Redding on Monday for a series of meetings and briefings with fire crews and local leaders, including a walk through of parts of the city that have been damaged by the fire. Redding Mayor Kristin Schreder, local business leaders and other officials have been invited to join the meetings.

The Department of the Interior oversees the Bureau of Land Management and National Park Service, while the Department of Agriculture manages the National Forest Service, which collectively oversee much of the federal land in California. The two departments have been working to better coordinate their firefighting activities, a bureaucratic challenge in a state like California, where various federal agencies manage more than 46 million acres of land across the state.

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