mr. bera of california is now recognized. mr. ra: thank you, madam chairwoman, and the ranking member. obviously, this is a hugely important issue for us in california. if i think about why i left the state of california, from hiking in the back country as a boy scout, hiking the sierra nevada, it is now scarred by forest fires. i will ask a series of questions and i'd ask the witness to keep their answers short so i can get through a number of these. i want to make sure i understand on the fencing side, i heard a number of the witnesses talk about how we just haven't allocated the satellite resources necessary. i don't think this is a technology issue. we have infrared sensing devices. we have the ability to put satellites in space so they're constantly monitoring the area 24/7. we have drone capabilities to surveil these areas. it's not a technology issue. it's a resource allocation issue, if i get that correct. and is that an accurate sense? >> yeah. we can use cal fire as an example. cal fire adopted the latest science and sof

mr. smith: i rise in support of the securing america from epidemics act. i want to thank my colleagues, congressmen bera and fitzpatrick for introducing this bill. covid-19 has shown that pandemics know no borders and that the united states and the world must be better prepared to respond to disease outbreaks including pandemics ash the worrell the bill authorizes the united states to participate in the alliance for countries and private partners financing and coordinating and developing new vaccines for infectious diseases. in addition to covid-19, sefi developed lees of priority diseases including mers, the northeast respiratory sin dome. sefi seeks to develop vaccines before a disease outbreak occurs. i would note parenthetically that in october of 2020, the trump administration gave sefi a $20 million grant to advance its work. mr. speaker, according to the johns hopkins resource center, covid-19 has killed over 4, 092,000 people worldwide including 609,000 in the united states in my home state of new jersey, 26, 546 death, the most cove 19 deaths per capita in the united states. the pandemic could