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thinning the forest saved homes...

Forest thinning helps spare some homes

A federal effort to clear brush and remove trees in the Arrowhead area is controversial but makes a difference.
By David Kelly, Louis Sahagun and Maeve Reston, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
October 25, 2007
LAKE ARROWHEAD -- As flames ravage surrounding communities, this resort town high in the San Bernardino Mountains emerged largely unscathed, an island in a sea of destruction.

The credit for that isolated victory, federal officials say, should go to firefighting tactics, shifting winds and favorable terrain -- and a sometimes controversial U.S. Forest Service effort to eliminate the tinder that fuels forest fires.

Since 2002, the Forest Service has removed millions of trees, thinned brush and cut low-hanging branches, creating fuel breaks around almost 80% of the community. Fires don't spread quickly or easily through such areas, instead burning lower to the ground and with less intensity.

"The fuel breaks saved Lake Arrowhead," said Randall Clauson, the Forest Service's division chief for the San Bernardino National Forest and incident commander earlier this week on the two biggest wildfires still burning in the mountains.

He said he believes that, without the breaks, "the fire would have run right through Lake Arrowhead and gone to Highway 18, cutting off the evacuation route and probably resulting in the loss of hundreds of lives."

But not everyone was convinced that forest-thinning itself played such a pivotal role.

"Thinning and cleanup of surface fuels really does help," said Ken Larson, a fire behavior analyst with the Forest Service, stationed at the fire command post in the San Bernardino Mountains. "But there are many variables at play. Even that may not save structures in the face of extreme winds and extreme conditions."

Still, evidence was dramatic in the thinned forest areas. In one cluster of Lake Arrowhead neighborhoods protected by fuel breaks, only a few stumps were burning and no trees were lost. Hundreds of surrounding homes were untouched.

Some of the worst-hit areas like Running Springs don't have fuel breaks. Just 20% of Big Bear is protected by breaks, fire officials said.

The Forest Service decided that Lake Arrowhead would be first in line for the fuel breaks because it had suffered worst from the bark beetle infestation and drought that killed 90% of its pine trees, turning them into enormous fire hazards.

"We have been doing it like triage," Clauson said. "We started here so we got the most done here."

The work is painstaking, expensive and controversial. Clauson has a budget of $17 million a year to create fuel breaks in the forest and has so far completed 25,000 acres. The goal is 100,000 acres. He still runs into people who object to cutting trees, suspecting it of being clandestine logging.

To gain public acceptance, Clauson spent a year holding meetings, sometimes attending three a week, where he pushed the idea and urged private landowners to thin their trees.

"This has been the first test of this magnitude and I think it has proven its effectiveness," he said.

And yet there is only so much the Forest Service can do. Lake Arrowhead didn't escape unscathed. In Grass Valley, an upscale part of the town about a mile from Lake Arrowhead, more than 100 homes were destroyed. Many had been surrounded by tall trees and lush vegetation left uncleared by the homeowners.

There were scenes of total devastation -- lakeside homes reduced to their foundations, torched cars and, in one house, only a pair of smudged lawn jockeys survived. Power lines littered the ground or hung perilously overhead.

"We can spend $100 million to put fuel breaks around every town up here but if individuals don't take responsibility for their land I can't save them," Clauson said.

Meanwhile, with winds diminishing and humidity rising, firefighters Wednesday stepped up their offensive against the two major fires in the Lake Arrowhead area, shifting their emphasis from protecting structures to encircling the blazes.

Helicopters, air tankers, earth-moving equipment and firefighters -- freed from other Southern California fires that had become less threatening -- were redeployed to San Bernardino Mountains communities including Running Springs and Grass Valley.

"We would like the Grass Valley fire contained and out of our hair; we're going to put a lasso around it," said Pat Farrell, an operations manager for firefighters headquartered at Rim of the World High School along California 18 between Lake Arrowhead and Running Springs.

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