Brush thinning; Clearing fuel is best way to prevent wildfires

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Brush thinning; Clearing fuel is best way to prevent wildfires

November 28, 2003

San Diego Fire Chief Jeff Bowman was asked whether the region could ever again suffer a wildfire like the out-of-control inferno that scorched more than 350,000 acres last month and destroyed more than 2,400 homes. The chief was blunt. "It's going to happen," he said. Disaster awaits "anywhere in California where you have Santa Ana winds added to fuel mixtures that haven't been burned in 50 years...(that) you're not allowed to thin because of certain types of restrictions."

In a report to the county Board of Supervisors in August, a wildland fire task force noted that almost half the vegetation in the county's wildlands had been around more than half a century; another 30 percent was older than two decades.

"This means," the task force warned, "that almost 80 percent of the wildland areas in San Diego will burn explosively under typical periods of high fire danger."

While several hundred thousand acres of the county's wildland was charred in the Cedar fire and Paradise fire and Otay fire, hundreds of thousands of acres of unnatural, overgrown acres remain.

That's why San Diego County will be one of the nation's biggest beneficiaries of the Healthy Forests Restoration Act, which recently won congressional approval and is awaiting President Bush's signature.

The bill, the first major forest management legislation in a quarter-century, addresses "the most significant environmental problem we have today, said David Bischel, president of the California Forestry Association. That is, he said, "the growing risk of catastrophic wildfires due to increased fuels in our forests."

The federal bill authorizes $760 million a year for hazardous fuel reduction on 20 million acres of public land, including 8 million acres in California. The measure also streamlines the approval process for thinning projects -- the restrictions to which Bowman referred -- so that they can be completed in months rather than years.

Of course, environmental groups like the Wilderness Society are reflexively opposed to the bill. They claim it concentrates too much on removing large trees deep in the forest and not enough on thinning the chaparral, brush and grass that provided much of the fuel for the fires in Southern California.

But Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who helped shape the final bill, disagrees with the environmentalists. She notes that at least half the $760 million a year that will go to fuel reduction will be used to thin out chaparral and brush near communities. The remainder will be available to thin out municipal watersheds or wildlife habitat or areas that have suffered from serious wind damage or insect infestations, such as the bark beetle.

The Healthy Forests Restoration Act is a "major step," said Feinstein, toward preventing future catastrophic fires like those that struck San Diego County. The federal dollars and the streamlined approval process for thinning projects should be welcomed.