Mark Luster, of Sierra Pacific, walks through one of two sawmills at the company’s
Lincoln location. The site also has a biomass facility to power its operations.
sold their property and moved oper-
ations elsewhere. Fewer than 30 saw-
mills now operate.
The decline in commercial tim-
ber activity combined with 100-plus
years of fire suppression practices
(see sidebar on page 64) has led to
California’s forests becoming in-
creasingly dense. “Instead of 40 trees
to an acre, which was the natural
state at one point, we now have 400,
500, 800 trees to an acre, and that is a
huge factor in our fires,” Gordon says.
Historically, with fewer trees to an
acre, flames tended to stay low to the
ground rather than climb into the
canopy. In these modern dense, hot
and dry forests, the fire is more likely
to rise to the overstory, with blazes
moving rapidly and embers flying far
distances. They are more likely to be-
come mega-fires on a warpath.
“People don’t realize how much
vegetation grows over time,” says
Mitzel. “When I moved up there back
in the ’60s, I could go up there and
fish a lot of streams ... Right before
the [Camp Fire], driving through
town, you couldn’t even get close to
the water because they’re just over-
grown with vegetation.”
As government works to do its
part to deal with fire risk, private
industry is starting to play a critical
role too. For instance, in May 2018,
Sierra Pacific thinned trees and re-
moved ground vegetation on its
property adjacent to Paradise Lake,
connecting with previous fuel re-
duction activities between the lake
and the community of Stirling City.
They took this action to protect their
property from human activity at the
nearby lake. Dubbed “fuel breaks” in
industry speak, these sites give fire-
fighters a place to stage equipment
and personnel. During the Camp
Fire, which started on federal land,
the flames reached the fuel break
next to the lake and slowed down,
where Cal Fire took action to stop the
fire’s northerly spread, helping save
Stirling City and other nearby resi-
dences.
“This thing wasn’t exactly de-
signed to save those houses,” Mit-
zel says. “It was really to protect
us from them. There’s a lake in the
background — Paradise Lake — and
this gets a lot of recreation use, and
we wanted to make sure that some-
body that was down here recreating
didn’t accidentally start a fire and
end up burning our property.” Sierra
Pacific has increased its fire reduc-
tion efforts and is coordinating with
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