Tahoe fire yields lessons

There's agreement on the need to thin forests in places like Tahoe. As of Wednesday 55 percent of the Angora fire has been contained and 229 homes, valued at $141 million, have been destroyed.

By Ben Arnoldy and Brad Knickerbocker | Staff writers of The Christian Science Monitor

from the June 29, 2007 edition

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South Lake Tahoe, Calif. - The wildfire scorched half the homes on Gary Lefler's street. The others, it left alone.

Why his home was spared he couldn't say. The wind may have veered slightly just moments after he fled the onrushing flames. Or maybe, he says, it helped that the National Forest Service had recently piled and burned the dead wood lying behind his property.

"On the other end of my street that got wiped out, they still had heaped piles [of forest debris] that they hadn't gotten to for at least five or six years," says Mr. Lefler. Residents of South Lake Tahoe, he says, are upset. "They blame the Forest Service for not doing its job."

Both generosity and recrimination are evident in this community as it deals with the worst wildfire here in a century. So far 229 homes, valued at $141 million, have been destroyed. Firefighters delivered some good news, too, Wednesday, announcing they had 55 percent of the fire contained.

Heaps of dry kindling cluttering public and private lands have intensified the fire – along with high winds and a long drought. Why the forest cleanup didn't move faster boils down to a lack of funds and strains between regulators, residents, and public land stewards – issues familiar to the growing mountain West.

There's general agreement on the need to thin forests in places like Tahoe, given years of fire suppression and housing development.

"Any manager would have to know that they needed to deal with the fuels, and to my knowledge there's been very little underburning – prescribed burning – in that [area] for a number of years," says Rich Fairbanks, a 32-year Forest Service veteran who has supervised firefighting throughout the West.

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