Comstock's magazine 0619 - June 2019 | Page 63

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 June 2019 | comstocksmag.com 63