Posted on 10/30/2006 9:04:15 AM PST by NormsRevenge
Tree-cutters have removed dead and dying trees from 30,000 acres near Idyllwild, but plenty of fuel remains on the 70,000 acres that haven't been cleared, officials said.
Limited resources for tree cutting have been concentrated on clearing hazards near highways and in populated areas and on building firebreaks.
"We've tried to do everything we can with the money we have to protect the towns of Idyllwild and Pine Cove," said Bob Sommer, a vegetation management specialist with the Forest Service.
Since Thursday, the Esperanza Fire has consumed more than 40,000 acres of dry vegetation in the San Jacinto Mountains. Three firefighters died when they were overrun by flames while protecting a home in Twin Pines; a fourth died at Arrowhead regional Medical Center and one remains in critical condition with severe burns.
The fire was pushed by Santa Ana winds that subsided Saturday. Firefighters said they were beginning to feel some optimism about gaining control of the blaze, fire officials said.
Drought, bark-beetle infestations, seasonally dry chaparral and invasive grasses combined to create the tinderbox conditions that fueled the fire. Since 2002, millions of trees in the San Bernardino National Forest, which stretches from Wrightwood through Big Bear Lake in San Bernardino County and south to Idyllwild in Riverside County, have died from a bark beetle infestation and drought.
Hundreds of thousands of dead trees have been removed by various agencies, including the U.S. Forest Service, the two counties, Southern California Edison and private landowners. But many more remain.
Just as dangerous as the dead trees is the dry chaparral that hasn't burned in decades, and the dried-out non-native grass in the foothills and lower elevations, said Richard Minnich, a professor of geography who specializes in fire ecology at UC Riverside.
As the plants get older, their water content decreases and they become more flammable, Minnich said.
The Esperanza Fire has burned in chaparral 40 years old or younger, he said.
Farther east, past Lake Fulmor and Pine Cove, the chaparral hasn't burned in 60 to 100 years, Minnich said.
"If the fire were to get in there, it would be a bomb going off," he said. "It would explode."
Growing on hillsides at lower elevations is a strain of European grass introduced to the area a century ago. The grass becomes extremely dry, catches fire quickly and spreads the flames into the chaparral.
On private land in Riverside County, the Natural Resources Conservation Service, part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, has cleared 52,410 trees, said Hal Carey, a forester with the service. Congress has allocated $120 million to the agency since 2003 for fuel reduction efforts in Riverside, San Bernardino and San Diego counties, he said.
Southern California Edison has spent $185 million removing 178,000 trees near power lines, said Mike Boyd, a spokesman for the utility.
"We are attempting to clear anything that could possibly fall into our electrical facilities," Boyd said.
Assemblyman John Benoit, R-Palm Desert, who held two forums on the fire threat in Anza and Idyllwild in the last three months, said more must be done to thin the forest.
Benoit said progress has been made in populated areas in the past three years, but many mountain communities such as Idyllwild and Pine Cove remain vulnerable.
"At some point in time, that's still fuel waiting for the day it's ignited," Benoit said.
If the Sierra Club lawyers would stop filing lawsuits with weak, emotional judges...
then the USFS and BLM would be allowed to grant allotments to lumber mills who would environmentally harvest the dead trees while they still have some economic value.
This would provide good jobs to rural communities and families...
This would be a revenue source for the USFS...
The forest would be healthier...
Elk, deer...prefer open spaces with grass to eat . Their first choice is not bark from trees.
Eagles, hawks...like open spaces to see and catch their dinner, too.
Small fires would not balloon into major massive explosions because logging would have created fire breaks and roads for access for the fire fighter's equipment...
These massive fires cause air pollution, water pollution, soil destruction...
Very frustrating.
damm sierra club has been taken over by the big city lawyers...
GRRRR
Crisis on our National Forests: Reducing the Threat of Catastrophic Wildfire [San Bernardino Fires]
It is Bush's fault for not thinning the trees fast enough.
Thanks. This is excellent :
" Our national forests are growing older and thicker, some reaching astronomical densities of 2,000 trees per acre where 40-50 trees per acre would be natural. A forest can stagnate for many decades or even centuries under such crowded conditions.
Consequently, plant and animal species that require open conditions are disappearing, streams are drying as thickets of trees use up water, insects and disease are reaching epidemic proportions, and unnaturally hot wildfires have destroyed vast areas of forest.
I have been working in California’s forests since the late 1960s. Never have I seen anything more dangerous than the overgrown, beetle-ravaged forests of the San Bernardino and San Jacinto Mountains. I am concerned for the safety of people living in communities surrounded by these forests.
About 90 percent of the pines will be dead when the beetles end their rampage.
MYTHS AND REALITIES ABOUT RESTORING HEALTHY FORESTS"
You'll enjoy some of the photographs.
I did enjoy it.
I also saved it for future reference.
Thanks
Once again people apply thinking to more northern forests to the chaparral around LA, where it doesn't apply much.
In Southern California (except perhaps in the higher mountain forests) these "forests" are of zero economic value. There are no lumber companies desperate to come in and cut down chaparral that are being blocked by rabid environmentalists.
It costs money to clear out these trees and brush - there's no way to make money off it.
We had forest fires that burned this year for months (Hancock, Rush, Uncles Complex.) Almost all the money for Forest fuels treatment and management goes to the south. Because of all the environmental regulations in my forests - Klamath and Shasta-Trinity - it costs more to manage the forest than is made from any sale. (Spotted owl, salmon, wild and scenic.) So they don't manage it and its full of hundred of miles of overcrowded, diseased and dying trees. We have to fight for every fuel reduction project in our urban interface.
If Congress can't see fit to allocate money to properly manage these forests, they should be sold into private ownership.
Next time someone gets burned out by a fire, they should check the area to see if a lawsuit prevented the authorities for protecting an area...and then sue the heck out of the people who sued.
Even in areas that have economic lumber value, the sierra club lawyers fight to deny small family operations a permit to harvest a few dead trees.
The big lumber companies already own their own forests, thus they are not "desperate" to access the public lands . The bigs like to have the high lumber prices...more profit for them.
So denying small family operations a permit on public lands actually raises the costs to build a home for middle class working people.
Rural logging communities and families made a nice living for decades until the sierra club lawyers shut them down. They all made money and could do so again if the lawyers would back off. The lawyers will not back off because of the big fees that they make.
The lumber can be removed in an envirnomental manner.
Burning many millions of acres of trees, killing fire fighters, destroying peoples homes and businesses, polluting the air, polluting the water, killing wildlife, and killing the soil is not good.
There are many good possible solutions.
Doing nothing should not be one of them.
Good idea.
Foresters that I know want to use science, their graduate degrees, and their decades of experience to manage the forests for the long term.
However, they are blocked all the time by these lawyers who find weak, emotional judges.
What was the ecology of this region 300 years ago? Did the Indians regularly burn it off to clear the scrub? At one time prairie dogs tended the area around their holes and wouldn't let any trees grow, they only allowed short grass to grow. It kept the plains grasslands from turning into forests. Was something like this at work in California? Can we blame it on the indians killing off the giant sloth or something?
The indians used fire to manage forest from ancient times. They used fire to control the buildup of underbrush in some areas. In the plains, fires were set to encourage grass so the buffalo would thrive, as well. And don't forget the impact of the buffalo themselves on the ecology there.
Most of all, the ecology of the world isn't static. It changes with seasons, human impact, other animal impact, weather, insect populations and other factors.
Right now there is a huge outbreak of bark beetles. Mother nature's corrective for this when it gets out of hand is to burn and kill the dead trees. The fact that it expanded so badly may be an artifact of humans allowing little fire and no logging in a lot of places. The logging often acted as an analog in the environment for the effects of fire, by reducing populations and the ability of the critters to spread from tree to tree. The beetle epidemic seems to go hand in hand with the time frame that logging was reduced, btw...And when the wood is left there dead, it dries out and burns extremely hot, which disrupts the ecology in different ways by tending to reduce diversity.
But feelings about clear cuts and other aspects of earth worship and myths about the ecology too often take dominance over good science, which is a shame.
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