Counterspin - Where there's smoke, there's fire    

By Phil Hayworth

Pioneer Press

Fort Jones, CA 530-468-5355

mailto:pioneerp@sisqtel.net

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Page E13, Column 4

July's forest fires plunged Scott Valley and Yreka into a hell-like miasma of lung-choking, eye-watering smoke that many locals will tell you is par for the course now in these parts.

Older members of the community, along with children and those with lung ailments, suffered the most, and many continued to cough long after the smoke subsided. Many -- especially those not affected by the smoke -- figure that it's the price to pay for living in a pristine, heavily forested paradise.

But some old-timers will tell you that things seem to have gotten worse, that it "wasn't always this way," and that, back in the good old days, fires raged, but seemed to require less effort and money to control. Back then, they say, there was less fire and, thus, less smoke.

The culprits, they say, are those darn environmentalists and their excessive, outdated logging and forest management laws.

But that's not the whole story.

Weather patterns have a lot to do with where the smoke settles, and Yreka and Scott Valley are ideally suited to producing smothering blankets of smoke. Scott Valley native Shirley Gilmore comes from a long-line of area loggers and said things were much clearer two weeks ago near her house up in the hills near Etna. Down below in Scott Valley , however, she could see the blanket of smoke. Still, she remembers 1989 as a much worse.

Where a fire rages certainly has much to do with it all. The fire near Happy Camp was only 20 percent contained on Sunday, but had burned 8,300 acres and its smoke had blanketed Scott Valley . The China-back fire raged for a week, burning up 2,900 acres, and was the likely culprit for Yreka's smoke, say firefighters and Yreka locals.

Folks like Gilmore, including most environmentalists and firefighting agencies, agree that something should be done to clean up our forests. There's just too much fuel on the ground, they agree, and in a perfect world, resources would be directed at preventing fires, putting people to work and bringing forests back to good health. But they argue over the definition of a healthy forest, and, for far-left environmentalists, reviving a logging industry - even one that is environmentally sound -- is typically low on the list of priorities.

As far as fires and money are concerned, we've had it pretty good so far, experts say. That could change quickly, they warn.

The $12 million bill for the Happy Camp fire, for example, is a pittance compared to the $153 million spent fighting the 2002 Biscuit fire that burned 500,000 acres and raged for six months in Southern Oregon 's Siskiyou National Forest and Kalmiopsis Wilderness Area. But jaws are sure to drop when the bill comes for the Lake Tahoe fire, which decimated that wealthy, politically influential enclave. Sad to say, but that one will likely help folks in remote, fire-prone areas by pushing legislators to, perhaps, change laws. They'd better hurry.

"It's very conceivable to have a series of Biscuit fires all over the U.S. ," warned Dave Meurer, spokesman with U.S. Congressman Wally Herger's office. Herger recently sent a letter to House colleagues calling for a change in forest management law. He's been doing so since 1998, but no one seems to hear him.

If multiple, Biscuit-like fires were to happen, you can bet the U.S. Forest Service, Department of the Interior, House Resources Committee, state Environmental Protection Agency and environmentalists of all stripes would stand up and pay attention. The key word here is "pay," because when it comes down to who pays to fight forest fires - and the bills threaten to bankrupt - only then will key players be willing to rewrite forest management legislation.

For example, the Happy Camp fire, officially known as the Elk Complex fire, required over 1,200 firefighters and support crew to battle. It could cost more than $12 million in the end, but was entirely on federal land, so the feds get the bill. Out in China-back, however, because the fire straddled state and federal lands, the U.S. Forest Service and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or CalFire, reportedly scuffled over who would pay for what part of the $2 million bill. It's called "cost apportionment" and happens all the time, except this time, say some insiders, high-level negotiations - at least away from pubic view -turned ugly when some parties talked about pulling off the firefighting effort.

That didn't happen this time. But in the case of a catastrophic series of Biscuit or Tahoe-like blazes, it won't matter. There simply won't be enough troops to do the job. And if legislators and key players don't rewrite forest management plans soon, any argument during or after a series of Biscuit or Tahoe-like fires will be akin to surgeons arguing about a bill while their patient lays cut open on the table, guts exposed. Even worse, they could have prevented the operation altogether.

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