Nearly 40 people, including Shasta County Supervisor Les Baugh, gathered for the tour showcasing the importance of constructing and maintaining fuel breaks.
“You’re really not getting anywhere if they are not maintained,” said John Dobson, a landscape specialist for the state Department of Transportation. “That’s the key.”
Otherwise, he and others said, constructing a fuel break is just a waste of money if they are not properly maintained because the vegetation simply grows back.
Despite the welcomed stormy weather, those attending the tour, and those hosting it, are well aware that the rain and snow won’t last, and will eventually give way again to hot temperatures and potentially catastrophic forest fire conditions.
With crews planning to burn or cut some 5,000 acres of brush and trees for thinning projects and fuel breaks in Shasta and Trinity counties over the next several months, the tour provided examples of good — and not so good — fuel breaks.
Not to be confused with fire breaks, which are more severe and strip vegetation to the bare ground, fuel breaks are akin to forest growth-thinning designed to prevent wildland areas from getting too thick with brush and trees. They are also designed to keep fire on the ground, rather than letting it get into the tops of trees, fire officials said.
Properly constructed, they can save property, as well as lives.
“It’s not going to stop a fire on its own,” Jeff Oldson, a reforestation expert who was one of several guest speakers during the tour, said of fule breaks.
But, he says, it gives those fighting fires, and those threatened by them, a fighting chance.
Ryan DeSantis, a forestry and natural resources adviser for the University of California Cooperative Extension in Redding, said the tour was organized to raise the public’s awareness of the need for fuel breaks and the importance of maintaining them.
Still, he said, the practice has no shortage of regulations, controversies and monetary constraints.
Nevertheless, he said, they work.
“They are very important in slowing them (fires) down,” he said.
The tour, which included four stops at various fuel breaks along Highway 44, including Wilson Hill Road and Shingletown Ridge Road, helped to bring focus on a number of issues, including grant-funding, cost-sharing, and the use and effectiveness of herbicides and prescribed burns.
The tour comes as the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection plans to build a 2.2-mile-long fuel break southwest of Burney, which will tie into existing lines that are designed to protect Burney from a devastating wildfire, he said.
The Shasta-Trinity National Forest also plans to burn about 3,400 acres to thin out overgrown forest and create another 1,029 acres of fuel breaks.
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