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Posted on 10/01/2002 6:01:37 AM PDT by madfly
SHOW LOW — Frustrated residents from fire-charred communities in the White Mountains blasted the U.S. Forest Service for its response to the Rodeo-Chediski fire and the sluggish pace of salvage operations during a special congressional field hearing here Saturday.
The new danger for the communities devastated by the June fires comes from federal officials bogged down by bureaucratic procedures as they prepare plans to salvage trees killed by the wildfires, witnesses said.
Bob Leaverton, fire plan coordinator for the southwestern forest region which includes Arizona, said the Forest Service is conducting an environmental assessment that should be finished by May. The assessment is necessary before salvage operations can begin, he said.
But Leaverton acknowledged that trees begin losing their salvage value quickly after a fire. If the trees are not harvested within 12 to 18 months, they will become so infested with insects and disease that they will become unusable.
Rep. J.D. Hayworth, R-Ariz., who headed the hearing, said by the time the environmental study is complete and salvage work begins, it could be too late for commercial timber companies to salvage the lumber.
“You're sending the ambulance a year after the funeral," Hayworth said.
Leaverton agreed with the assessment, but said a complete environmental statement is needed so the final salvage plan can withstand expected challenges and potential lawsuits from environmental groups.
The delay will be a disaster for the area's economy and create an even greater fire danger in the future, several witnesses said during the hearing. Rather than giving the area's economy a needed boost from timber salvage sales, the trees will fall to the ground and provide fuel for some future fire if quick action is not taken, said Lon Porter, who runs the state's only non-Indian sawmill, located in Heber.
Hayworth is a member of the forest health subcommittee of the House Natural Resources Committee. He headed the field hearing of the committee in Show Low to gather testimony about the initial response to the Rodeo-Chediski fire that blackened 469,000 acres over the summer.
The hearing also was to document management problems that created a buildup of fuels in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests that caused the blaze to break out of control. The only other congressman attending the hearing was Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., who grew up in the area.
While Leaverton and others on the panels of witnesses defended the initial response to the fires by the Forest Service, area residents who lost homes, particularly in the Heber-Overgaard area, testified they believe their communities were sacrificed by poor coordination and decision-making by the agency.
In a special investigation published in July, the Tribune documented a series of decisions by fire commanders that led to a slow response in making an all-out attack on the fire.
The Tribune also quoted several area residents who complained that indecision by commanders meant experienced firefighters and their equipment sat idle until the fire was too close to save a series of communities from Heber to Forest Lakes.
Many of those stories were repeated Saturday.
Vicky Stockton, who lost her home near Overgaard, said fire commanders did not seem to take aggressive action to put out the Chediski fire when it began on the western edge of the Fort Apache Indian Reservation on June 20. By then, the Rodeo blaze farther east was already burning out of control. The two fires eventually merged.
"I'm tired of being desensitized by people using the word structures," Stockton said. "Structures were not lost. Homes were lost."
Mell Epps, chief of the Heber-Overgaard Fire Department, said the Forest Service did not move quickly to battle the Chediski fire when it was small. Federal fire commanders should have known how volatile the blaze was since the Rodeo fire had already exploded and the conditions were identical in both areas, Epps said.
Epps took the blame for not pressing local volunteers into action, saying most of them did not have documentation that they were certified as wildland firefighters and he did not have people or the expertise to certify them. The Forest Service was slow at moving fire coordinators to the area, which caused further delay in recruiting local volunteers for action, Epps said.
Leaverton admitted to glitches in the deployment of forces. But he said that given the size and intensity of the Rodeo-Chediski fire, there was often nothing to be done but get out of the way. At one point, the fire was burning a square mile of forest every minute, he said.
Aside from the initial response to the fires, criticism of forest management practices came from both local residents and federal officials. Forests have grown too thick and debris has built up so much on the ground that devastating wildfires will continue in the future, said Wally Covington, a professor of forestry at Northern Arizona University. Immediate action is necessary to thin the forests of dense clusters of trees and debris that, once sparked, burn into uncontrollable crown fires like the Rodeo-Chediski blaze, he said.
This is correct. A buddy of mine who had his ranch in the Pecos burned in 2000 was able to clear much of the dead wood on his property, but the National Forest wood is rotten with insects. Combined with the drought her in NM, some 80-90% of the pinion trees in Northern NM are going to die from bark beetle infestation.
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SW Logging Ban Lifted by Court-- Court ruling praised by companies, denounced by environmentalists |
By Kathleen Ingley
The Arizona Republic, 12/24/97
The chain saws can start up again.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has lifted a ban on more than a dozen logging projects in the national forests in Arizona and New Mexico.
"We're excited about the decision," said Lewis Tenney Jr., vice president of Precision Pine and Timber Inc. The ban forced the Heber-based company to lay off workers and close mills.
"We weren't sure that we could even continue to exist," Tenney said.
But to biologist Peter Galvin, the court's action is "tragic for the tens of thousands of acres of ponderosa pine that are going to fall to the chain saw."
He foresees the loss of habitat for wildlife, including the endangered Mexican spotted owl and northern goshawk, and "prime recreation areas that will be filled with stumps instead of old trees."
The San Francisco appeals court had imposed a temporary injunction in July on logging while it considered a lawsuit filed by two environmental groups against the U.S. Forest Service.
This latest battle began in June 1996, after the Forest Service tightened its management plans for Southwestern forests. The agency put new restrictions on logging of old growth forest and livestock grazing in the Southwest, but applied them only to new permits and contracts.
The Tucson-based Southwest Center for Biological Diversity and Forest Guardians of Santa Fe, N.M., sued, saying the rules should also apply to existing grazing and logging agreements.
In a ruling issued last week, the court decided in favor of the Forest Service, saying that 16 logging projects -- 13 in Arizona and three in New Mexico -- could go ahead. The court also held that 715 livestock grazing permits, which were challenged, could be honored.
Despite the Forest Service's victory, the ban "hurt all around," said Milo Larson, director of forestry in the agency's Albuquerque office.
"A lot of people were out of work because of the injunction, for what turned out to be no violation," he said.
Logging didn't come to a complete standstill in Arizona. The injunction applied only to the contracts issued before June 1996, most of them held by Precision Pine.
There was no practical effect on grazing, Larson said, because the Forest Service had not taken steps to cancel any of the leases.
With the woods full of snow, Precision Pine can't start cutting trees for four more months.
"Possibly, we can get back on our feet and hire back some of our employees," Tenney said. For a while, all three of the company's mills -- in Heber, Winslow and Eagar -- were closed. The Heber mill opened a few weeks ago, using timber not affected by the ban. With it in operation, Precision has about 35 employees, down from a high of 150.
"We've already decided that with all the pressure there's been, we're not going to be able to operate like we have in the past," Tenney said. The strategy will be to run a single mill, probably the Heber one.
Tenney believes logging plays a crucial role in removing diseased trees and thinning out fire-prone forests. If logging is too restricted, he said, "it's land that will be hurt more than anything else." Environmentalists will continue fighting to protect Arizona's old growth forests, but they don't have the money to take this case to the U.S. Supreme Court, said Galvin of the Southwest Center for Biological Diversity.
Galvin predicted outdoors lovers will be shocked at the loss of pines and Douglas firs, some more than 500 years old, in popular places like the headwaters of the Little Colorado River, in the Apache Forest outside Greer.
I'm not kidding, they really do want to control the water, the fire, the air and the earth and all it's people.
Up there they use fire as a weapon, down here they use flooding. In Klamath they used drought. I'm waiting for the bastards to release locusts on us, so can be destructive in a true biblical fashion.
He foresees the loss of habitat for wildlife, including the endangered Mexican spotted owl and northern goshawk, and "prime recreation areas that will be filled with stumps instead of old trees."
Yup, that's what happened alright...100's of Thousands of acres were destroyed...by FIRE!!!!
My G-d, when will the public realize these eco-enviro-terro-weenies are just so full of Hooey!!!????
Aftermath of the Rodeo-Chediski Fire
These pictures are from the Rodeo/Chedisky fire in Northern Arizona.
They were taken in August on the road from Show Low to Heber, (State Highway 260).
If they are not removed, they may well blow up in an even hotter fire. How will we pay for it?
Most of these trees are (or were) too thin to be marketable for lumber.
I have no idea what anybody could make of it now. Being pine, I don't know about its usefulness as strand board.
It's probably not good for paper pulp. Particle-board? Pellet fuel? Plastics?
They've got to pay for it somehow. If some of that fuel isn't removed, there will be consequences.
Doing it right isn't cheap.
Fire and thinning crews often introduce weeds. 
In an open growing medium such as this, weeds establish and spread very rapidly.
Many Western rangelands are now infested with knapweed and cheat grass.
On our trip across the Southwest, I noted flourishing knapweed specimens in Flagstaff and outside Freedonia, AZ.
If it thrives in an environment that dry, we've got big trouble.
Some of these oaks in the foreground will make it. The pines are probably dead.
The beetles will feast.
When the rains come there will be no cover and the streams will become a boiling mud-pot of ash and silt.
What fish habitat will there be then? There certainly isn't any canopy cover now!
Once some grass and brush re-establish, this stand will be ready to blow up again, perhaps even hotter.
There is no telling how much of the native seed bank was destroyed by the heat.
This last photo was taken about fifteen miles from those later the same day.
If you look carefully at the pine on the right and some of the other vegetation, you can see that the fire burned through here too.
In this case, when it rained, the seed was still viable enough to germinate.
Notice the trunk on the pine and how much thicker it is.
There were numerous stumps nearby.
The Apache log their land.
The Bush Administration proposal is to to thin 1 billion board feet per year in California, Washington and Oregon, combined.
The equally overstocked forests of the Sierra Nevada produce more than twice that much volume in California alone.
It's more of the same.
Rep. Hayworth, it's time an exception to environmental laws were made to allow for speedy harvesting of trees destroyed by fire! On the face of it, it's difficult to see what additional environmental impact can occur by moving ahead quickly. The forest has already been burned, trees and wildlife killed, the soil made sterile. On the other hand, it's very obvious what problems arise when harvesting is delayed. Because of the fear of lawsuits, the Forest Service is paralyzed. Let the law be changed to allow salvage logging to proceed on designated areas as soon as bids from commercial companies are received. The radical environmentalists are going to oppose logging in any form, for any reason, in any location, and legislation must be approved that marginalizes these obstructionists.
It's a great piece.
g
They both have a gun in their pocket, and demand that you pay to use their services.
When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter."Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue.
When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion - when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors - when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you - when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - you may know that your society is doomed.
--Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, 1957
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