Lake Arrowhead

[JWhitcomb]

Now that the CA fire has gotten into the Lake Arrowhead area and distroyed at least 300 homes, I want to get a fact out. There will be a lot of press about how enviromental groups would not let the dead, diseased trees be cut. According to my paper, it has been the home owners groups there that did not let the trees cut, not the tree huggers. They wanted to keep property values up. Now that they have no house I guess the attitude might change. I am truly sorry for the loss but it sure seems they carry a big part of the weight here. Just try and remember that when it hits the fan soon.

 

[illflem]

The Lake Arrowhead, Big Bear areas and mountains surrounding LA have been logged heavier than any area of the country for lumber to build LA. It's also a case study in the negative effects of air pollution on trees. Basically the forest in that area was in shambles anyway, much has been overtaken with brush, the remaining trees puny and insect infested. The timber left at least on USFS land is hardly worth logging, taxpayers would have had to pay to have it logged, the logging companies couldn't make anything off it. Timber on private land is the land owners responsibility. If they choose to have trees brushing up against their log home with shake roof I'd say it's their problem if it burns down.



Big changes are coming in the way fires are handled. An organization of 12,000 current and former USFS employees recently filed a federal lawsuit that will force the FS to revaluate the way fires have been fought, something that hasn't ever been done before.

More info http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2003/10/13/news/local/news02.txt

Fighting wildfires is analogous to putting fans on the coast of Florida to blow the hurricanes away. Fire fighters can sometimes save structures but most often never stop a wildfire, the weather puts it out. Huge waste of money.

 

[JWhitcomb]

Big changes are needed, but we all know this will/is become(ing) a hot debate and the radicals on both sides will beat this to death. And next year or the one after that, the same thing will happen again.

 

[R.ebel]

Originally posted by illflem

The Lake Arrowhead, Big Bear areas and mountains surrounding LA have been logged heavier than any area of the country for lumber to build LA.

Thats funny I lived not far from Big Bear Lake for 35 years. Used to ride dirt bikes there until the liberal environmental wacko's made it illegal. In all the time I spent (a lot) in those mountain I never once saw any logging ever! Maybe it was logged prior to the 1960's, but since then none that I ever saw. At one time or another I've ridden every trail, dirt road and fire road in the San Bernardino Mountains.

 

[Ram4Sam]

Logging???

R. ebel, I just saw that too! Logging in California, that's a good one. I too have been running the hills up there for over thirty years, I have been on every trail and fire road up there. Never seen any logging going on.



Sam

 

[illflem]

You haven't seen any logging in your lifetimes because by the 1930's the San Bernardino mountains were stripped bare by logging interests. This created massive flooding and mudslide problems. The USFS and valley residents decided that clean water and scenery were more important to the area than lumber, the FS bought up all the private logging land and logging was restricted.

History of logging in the San Bernardinos http://www.bigbear.us/history/logging.html



Even if logging wasn't restricted the trees would just now be starting to get to the age where they are economic to harvest.



There is logging going on there now though to remove insect killed trees

http://www.bigbear.us/forest_service_news.html

But that's Forest Service land, on private land a person can log all they want. Most choose not to and lost homes were the result. They can only blame themselves.



When I majored in Forestry at CSU Chico the San Bernardino mountains were a case study on how not to manage a forest. After the massive logging the areas were never replanted, what grew back were 'weed' trees and brush, perfect for a fire and not economical to log.

To add to that fires have been suppressed for the last 75 years allowing large quantities of underbrush and debris to build up resulting in the extreme fires you are now seeing. If the forest is allowed to burn on a natural cycle the fire normally stays close to the ground much cooler removing the flammable accumulation without damage to the trees.



I hope what comes out of these fires is the requirement that all homes and communities in fire prone areas be required to be surrounded by an irrigated 'green belt' composed of less flammable varieties of plants. Good place to get rid of reclaimed sewage water. Cutting down the forest isn't the solution.

We only had 250,000 acres burn in Montana this year, fires were seen to travel faster though areas that had been logged even when clear cut.



BTW Calif is second to Washington in the amount of timber harvested annually. You guys just aren't looking in the right places.

 

[Andy Perreault]

Originally posted by illflem

To add to that fires have been suppressed for the last 75 years allowing large quantities of underbrush and debris to build up resulting in the extreme fires you are now seeing. If the forest is allowed to burn on a natural cycle the fire normally stays close to the ground much cooler removing the flammable accumulation without damage to the trees.

That's the big problem. That whole "only you can prevent forest fires" deal is backwards. I remember going on a ranger-conducted hike in Sequoia Nat'l Park, and the ranger said that John Muir once wrote in his journal, "Today I came upon a forest fire. I stepped right over it and kept on walking... " (or words to that effect, I'm not sure if that's an exact quote) That's the way it would be if we humans hadn't suppressed fires for all these years. They'd be small fires that clean out the diseased, downed trees, kill beetles, etc. , and create fertile ground for new trees to grow in. There wouldn't be an overabundance of fuel that causes fires to be so massive that they completely destroy the forest.

I'm not a tree hugging enviro-whacko, but I do know that we have terribly upset the natural balance, and now we're paying for it.

Andy