Logs litter California cities as trees cut to prevent forest fires



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PARADISE, Calif – As contractors rush to cut trees for this community decimated by a wildfire last year does not burn anymore, it creates a new problem: stacks of wood everywhere.

The piles are visible through the charred remains of paradise. One of the largest is along Skyway Road, on the outskirts of the city, where contractors working for public services

PG & E
Corp.

have piled more than 3,000 newspapers in the last month, according to a worker. You could see smaller piles on residential and commercial land, some of which also contain charred cars and other fire debris.

The so-called log bridges have angered locals who complain that dead trees are a source of visual pollution and are still burning in a fire. A large number of residents blame the public service, which, according to state investigators last month, is responsible for the campfire that killed 85 people and destroyed Paradise, due to the destruction of Paradise by its transmission line .

"PG & E is just giving up all its responsibilities here," said John Scott, a 74-year-old retired aerospace engineer, who lives about a mile away from a log bridge.

Paul Moreno, a spokesperson for PG & E, described the stacks as "temporary log storage areas", which are part of the normal transport chain. The public service, he added, raises awareness among some entrepreneurs who have accidentally stacked logs in fields to which they do not belong.

George Gentry, senior vice president of the California Forestry Council's trade group, said the biggest threat posed by logging aprons is the insects they can attract. The insects can then attack the surrounding trees, which dries them out and makes them more flammable. "You really do not want to leave big piles of logs around your community," said Gentry.

Recent logging is part of an effort to remove approximately 300,000 dead and highly flammable dead trees in Butte County, which local officials say is at high risk of another catastrophic hell.

Mark Wilson was hired by a contractor working for PG & E to fell trees around Paradise, located 90 km north of Sacramento. One morning last week, he unloaded freshly cut wood from the back of his trailer in a field just outside Paradise, filled with hundreds of similarly discarded logs. He said that he had no other options.

"The factories are full so we have to pick up the wood here," Wilson said as his white pickup idled.

Thousands of trees burned by the camp fire are being recovered or thinned to reduce the risk of fire.

Photo:

Max Whittaker for the Wall Street Journal

According to federal data, there are only 25 sawmills in California, up from more than 100 in the 1980s, mainly because of the reduction of logging in national forests for environmental reasons. The number of biomass plants, another option for tree removal, increased from 66 in the 1990s to about two dozen, in part because of the expiry of government price subsidies, according to the report. the California Energy Commission.

Most of the remaining sawmills are operating at full capacity and homeowners are reluctant to expand, fearing that their demand will remain above the current glut, said Rich Gordon, general manager of the California Forestry Association, a lumber trade group.

"This is the Achilles heel of the situation," said Calli-Jane DeAnda, executive director of the Butte County Fire Safe Council, a non-profit group. "We can write subsidies to eliminate these trees, but where do you put them?"

Mr Moreno, from PG & E, said the company had almost finished removing around 90,000 dead or endangered trees around power lines in the campfire area and finding places to take them away was not a problem.

"Our contractors can transport logs to facilities outside the county, some of which have their own storage facilities," he said.

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PG & E assured local officials that he was planning to clean the unauthorized piles of logs by the end of July, said Casey Hatcher, spokesman for Butte County.

Loggers are pouring into the woodlands of northern and central California to reduce the risk of fires that have become more and more common due to drought and global warming.

In March, Governor Gavin Newsom signed an emergency ordinance authorizing the accelerated removal of trees and shrubs from 90,000 acres of uncultivated land bordering hundreds of California's most endangered communities.

PG & E has announced to state officials that it will double the number of drought-damaged trees it plans to cut or remove from 160,000 this year to 375,000 this year. It is in addition to the million trees that its teams shoot each year for other reasons.

The San Francisco-based electricity company informed state control authorities in April that there was "a risk of delay" for this job due to a myriad of challenges including the search for a sufficient number of skilled tree cutters. Officials of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers say they have deployed 3,500 union members to remove trees and brush their fields mainly in PG & E territory, which is three times the average.

"There is a shortage of staff because it is a dangerous job, hot and sweaty, that does not pay as well as jobs," said Bob Dean, IBEF Local 1245 Associate Director of Business. in Vacaville, a city in northern California.

Write to Jim Carlton at [email protected]

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