EDITORIAL: Tahoe, Black and Blue: Century of Scars Wounds Tinderbox Basin

Jun 26, 07:53 AM

Current Headlines: By The Sacramento Bee, Calif.

Jun. 26--Fire has long been a part of California's forests, but the blaze that ripped through hundreds of Tahoe homes Sunday night was anything but natural.

This is a fire whose origins can be traced to the 19th century Comstock mining boom, when the Lake Tahoe basin was heavily logged, allowing unnaturally dense stands of white fir trees to dominate the watershed.

This is a fire that became a near-certainty as Tahoe evolved as a vacation mecca and after a 1990s drought killed about 30 percent of the basin's trees, allowing beetles and other pests to spread through fragmented forests.

Over the last decade, certain Tahoe communities and the U.S. Forest Service have spent tens of millions of dollars -- much of it courtesy of federal taxpayers -- to protect the public lands and private dwellings that ring the lake.

Thinning and prescribed burns have helped reduce the risk of catastrophe in some areas. But as Sunday's blaze demonstrated, strong winds can turn a single spark or tossed cigarette into a Tahoe inferno.

Any observant visitor has known this fire was imminent. Drive around the lake and you can see vacation tracts surrounded by dead and dying trees, with brush and limbs touching structures. State law requires that wildland property owners create a minimum 100-foot zone of defensible space around homes. But violators are rife at Tahoe, just as they are in Malibu, Big Bear and other heavily developed fire zones.

Why?

Many Tahoe dwellers enjoy being shrouded in the forest. They don't like the smoke that comes with a prescribed burn or the manicured look of a stand of thinned trees. Thinning also costs money in places such as Tahoe, since the spindly, sick trees have little commercial value.

For Tahoe to become more flame resistant, attitudes and responsibilities must change. While the federal government will continue to play a role in protecting this world-famous watershed, people who buy and own property at Tahoe need to take charge of their own land and contribute a fair share to a much larger regional effort.

As of Monday afternoon, the Angora fire had burned more than 200 homes and 2,500 acres and threatened the city of South Lake Tahoe. While the immediate focus must be on controlling the blaze and helping displaced families, the longer-term questions shouldn't escape our attention.

For years, scientists such as Charles Goldman at the University of California, Davis, have warned that a major fire could denude hillsides and unleash ash and erosion into Tahoe, further threatening the lake's clarity. The Angora fire may not necessarily prove to be that blaze. But if not this one, it could be the next one. It's only June, and at Tahoe and across California there are many fire months -- and years -- ahead.

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