Restoration work starts in area burned by Ponderosa fire

While embers from the nearly 30,000-acre Ponderosa fire are cooling, an intensive effort has begun to restore the forests that went up in smoke, along with 52 homes and 81 outbuildings. The fire, which straddled the boundary between Tehama and Shasta counties in northeastern California, burned for about two weeks and was finally contained Aug. 31. Seven people were injured during the fire and thousands were evacuated from their homes.

Numerous landowners lost private forests to the fire. Sierra Pacific Industries said it lost more than 17,000 acres, which it called the greatest loss the company has every experienced in a single wildfire. The company said it has closed its lands damaged in the Ponderosa fire and in other major fire areas to public access and hunting until further notice, citing the safety of the public and those working in the salvage effort.

"The company will work closely with state agencies, university scientists and local landowners to assure that the ecosystem is healed over time," said Dan Tomascheski of SPI. "We will make significant investments to stabilize the soil, to reduce the potential for erosion caused by the fire."

SPI will plant about 5 million trees in the burned area to get the new forest started, he said. Replanting will take up to three years to complete.

"Further, we will make sure culverts are free-flowing and we will break up the impervious soil surface left by the heat of the fire outside stream buffer zones to help the soil absorb water," he said. "At the same time, SPI's biologists will conduct wildlife surveys and identify trees and snags to be left as habitat for species likely to re-inhabit the area."

Sierra Pacific said it has engaged a scientist from Colorado State University to help design an erosion impacts study and to better understand the benefits of control practices through monitoring.

In addition to harvesting its own burned timber, the company is deferring harvest of unburned timber and will purchase burned logs from other private landowners affected by the fire.

"Along with mills in the area, we'll purchase as much burned timber as we can feasibly store, to prevent decay and loss of value," Tomascheski said.

Fire season typically ends in Northern California in late October or early November, said Daniel Berlant, information officer for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. In Southern California, it tends to be the end of November. But California has had years when fire season burned through December and January.

The autumn is historically when California experiences its most damaging wildfires, particularly in Southern California due to Santa Ana winds.

CalFire said this year's fire season is running ahead of last year in terms of the number of fires that have occurred in its jurisdiction—4,934 fires for 51,145 acres burned so far this year, compared to last year with 3,592 fires affecting 51,725 acres.

During the Ponderosa fire, SPI said its foresters and others worked with neighbors and with CalFire to suppress the fire while it burned, providing detailed topographic information to help firefighters with attack plans. The company said its previously harvested areas also helped reduce the fire's spread and allowed firefighters to take stands to combat the blaze.

"Areas where harvest had occurred were clean—slash was chipped and did not present control problems," Tomascheski said.

He said firefighters used "virtually every pre-existing SPI road in the fire area," and that the presence of roads minimized the amount of new dozer line needed.

(Kate Campbell is an assistant editor of Ag Alert. She may be contacted at kcampbell@cfbf.com.)