RAGING TAHOE FIRE'S ROOTS: 150 YEARS OF FOREST ABUSE / HISTORY OF MISMANAGEMENT: From Gold Rush logging to modern development
This article explains why todays forest fires are so much more destructive then the ones we fought 50 years ago. It is worth clicking the link above and reading the entire story.
The raging fire that is denuding hillsides and darkening the clear blue waters of Lake Tahoe is the final product of 150 years of mismanagement of the Sierra Nevada ecosystem, fire management experts said Monday.
From Gold Rush clear-cutters to modern home-builders, people have brought changes to the Tahoe basin that have fueled the intensity of the 2,500-acre Angora fire near the town of South Lake Tahoe. By Monday night, 178 homes had fallen casualty to the 2-day-old blaze, which was only 40 percent contained.
Ecologists and local residents said they saw such a disaster coming.
"It's the fire we've been anticipating for 20 years," said Patsy Miller, who owns a residence at Fallen Leaf Lake, about a mile from where the flames had spread by late Monday.
"People have interjected their homes into a system that has a natural tendency to burn very frequently, and where we have suppressed the frequency of those fires for so long, there's an ungodly amount of fuel there," Forest Service regional ecologist Hugh Safford said.
The immediate cause of the Angora fire was under investigation Monday. But the fire's beginnings can be traced all the way back to the Gold Rush and the Comstock-era mining boom.
"They clear-cut about two-thirds of the basin," said Shane Romsos, science and evaluation program manager for the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency.
Mixed-growth forests of fire-tolerant species like the self-pruning Jeffrey pine were replaced by uniform stands of dense white fir and undergrowth, which grew rapidly in the unusually wet years of the early 20th century.
Then came the vacation homes and ski areas. As development spread, land managers focused on fire suppression, allowing the fuel load to build every year.
Federal officials began to shift fire-management policies in the mid-1990s and in recent years have sought to clear away dense underbrush and thin trees in the forests around Tahoe and in the rest of the Sierra. U.S. Forest Service officials said those efforts probably saved at least 500 homes that otherwise could have been engulfed by the Angora fire.
But many forests are still vulnerable to catastrophic burns. This past winter had a notable shortage of snowfall, and Sunday brought ferocious winds that whipped the flames from treetop to treetop even in woodlands where some thinning had been done. Winds that died down Monday were expected to pick up tonight and Wednesday.
"Conditions were ripe for a fire like this," Romsos said.
Now, fire-stripped hillsides could lead to a surge of runoff, clouding Lake Tahoe.
