In the News

Lake Tahoe Fire Plans Nearing Completion
date posted: December 22 2005

Lake Tahoe Report #85
Sept 17, 2004
By John Cobourn and Heather Segale

Even before the Waterfall Fire in Carson City nearly burned over the ridgeline into the Tahoe Basin in July, the fire protection districts in the basin and the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA) were working to develop community wildfire protection plans. The Nevada districts and Nevada Fire Safe Council hired Resource Concepts Incorporated to assess the fire threat in communities in the Nevada portion of the basin. The California districts and Tahoe Basin Fire Safe Council hired Davey Resource Group, and are now working with C.G. Celio and Sons Co., Wildland Rx, and Steve Holl to complete the fire plans for the California portion of the basin. The fire plans will assess the wildfire threat in Tahoe communities and propose management projects to reduce those threats.

The North Lake Tahoe Fire Protection District in Incline Village and the Tahoe-Douglas Fire Protection District in Round Hill have completed their plans. The North Tahoe Fire Protection District, Meeks Bay Fire Protection District, Fallen Leaf Fire Department, and Lake Valley Fire Protection District expect to have their draft plans completed by Sept. 30. The TRPA will combine all the district plans into a basinwide wildfire protection plan. This plan will be submitted to the federal government for funding under the Healthy Forest Restoration Act by Oct. 1. Plans are due to be submitted October 1st. Norb Szczurek, division chief, North Lake Tahoe Fire Protection District, says there is plenty of fuels management work to do in the basin. He hopes the federal grants will be available to start work in spring 2005.

The North Lake Tahoe Fire Protection District has been conducting fuels management work in the forests around Incline Village since the late 1980s. They have obtained grant funds to employ seasonal hand crews each summer to remove small trees and to cut limbs from trees that could carry fire upward into the tree crown, like a “ladder.” The crews also conduct prescribed burning, creating a low-burning, controlled fire to clean dead branches, trees and flammable shrubs off the forest floor. These crews have responded, when called, to fires in other parts of the country.

Szczurek notes that the fire protection districts encourage property owners to implement their own defensible space around their homes, especially the first 30 feet out from structures. He is hoping that new federal grants will enable all Tahoe fire protection districts to step up fuels treatment for 300 feet to 400 feet out into the adjacent forest.

Most of the forested land at Lake Tahoe now is overstocked with trees and loaded with dead branches, snags and dense undergrowth, known as fuels. Extensive clear-cutting of the forests occurred during the Comstock mining boom, 1860 – 1900. After the mining boom, the original forests of large, widely spaced trees were replaced by new forests of young trees growing closely together. Now, over 100 years later, these seedlings have grown to maturity. They are too densely stocked to thrive in years of less than average precipitation. They become weak while competing for scarce water, and many die during droughts from disease and attacks by bark beetles. This mortality increases the amount of dead wood in the forest.

These fuels continue to build up because in Tahoe, as in most parts of the country, we have suppressed wildfires for most of the past century. Prior to the arrival of European-Americans, frequent low-intensity wildfires would clear out these dead fuels without burning down the taller trees. Wildfires now burn with high intensity, destroying all vegetation and habitat in their paths. Such fires threaten lives and property, as well as our natural environment. The ecological damage of large, high-intensity wildfires can easily extend down into nearby creeks and the lake when a large rainstorm strikes the watershed within the first few years after such a fire. The rain can erode soil and ash, and deliver it to the lake when healthy vegetation, mulch and an organic soil duff layer do not protect the watershed. For this reason, fuels management for wildfire prevention is regarded as a best management practice for protecting water quality.

The fire protection districts and the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency are working hard to reduce the likelihood that such a fire will devastate the Tahoe Basin. With additional federal funding, fire prevention work hopefully will accelerate in 2005.