SOUTHLAND NEEDS TO SEE FOREST FOR DEAD TREES.

Byline: Peter Brierty Local View

MOUNTAIN residents in San Bernardino County, east of Los Angeles, dodged a bullet. A bullet that could have taken the life off of, if not out of, these mountains.

The California fire siege of 2003 is now recognized as the largest fire in California history, with more than 3,000 homes lost to flames and deadly mudslides now a part of the disastrous aftermath. Part of the San Bernardino National Forest burned, and chaparral and coastal sage sent walls of flame across the foothills.

With the fires out, two important facts remain. First, the fire affected fewer than 5 percent of the dead trees that cover these mountains. With millions of dead trees still standing and more dying every day, there is a tremendous fire threat here.

Second, as much as advanced planning by our Mountain Area Safety Task Force, Fire Safe Councils and citizens helped during the siege, nothing less than heroic firefighting kept this fire away from the dead trees. Ten times more homes would have been lost had this fire burned into the dead forest.

The San Bernardino forests are the most populated in the country, home to more than 50,000 people and $8 billion of assessed real estate value. There are houses and businesses on roughly 49,000 parcels adjacent to national forest land. Private landowners, clearly vulnerable, should receive as much funding for fire hazard mitigation and dead tree removal as possible.

We must protect communities and be wise with the dollars we spend doing it. I encourage the Forest Service to work with local fire jurisdictions to establish fuel treatments and fire protection zones as quickly as possible. Fuel breaks will not fireproof a community or restore a forest, but they can provide a degree of protection that doesn't exist today.

Immediate funding should be made available to local agencies and our Fire Safe Councils, citizen-led organizations that have made terrific progress in every community on the mountain.

We must also re-evaluate tree removal itself. It is not enough to fell the tree; infrastructure must be developed to utilize the wood. Felled trees should be considered raw materials, not waste, and tree removal should include the generation of wood products.

Valuable resources are being wasted now. Wood going to incinerators or the county landfill now exceeds 800 tons a day from private lands alone. When Southern California Edison has its tree removal operation in full swing, the waste will top 1,500 tons every day. The solutions we consider must include the private sector and beneficial uses for the wood regardless of its origin.

In the meantime, we have the continued threat of fire and its aftermath.

The County Office of Emergency Services has initiated an action plan in cooperation with our Flood Control Districts to mitigate the effects of debris and flood runoff from burned areas. Debris and mudflows threaten property and drinking water for millions of Southern Californians.

But until the dead trees are gone and the forest is restored, we won't be out of the woods. We're still relying on heroic efforts to save our forest and our homes.