Tag Archives: Forest Service

Wildfire still looms over S. Calif. mountain town

Longtime resident Dave Jones was back in his Southern California home a day after evacuating, but remained ready to leave as a huge wildfire fire threatened to top a ridge near his mostly empty mountain town.

The walls were bare in the home where he’s lived for the past 40 years after the 64-year-old and his wife stowed the valuable mementos, along with more practical items, like clothes, jewelry, medicines and the computer hard drive before heading to their son’s home in nearby Hemet.

“The fire came right up by the ridge yesterday afternoon, gave everybody a pretty good scare that it was going to come down the hill,” Jones said Thursday night.

The last time he evacuated for a fire it was 1997, and he stayed away for four days. Jones said he considered the order he got Wednesday “a light evacuation” and wasn’t afraid because he knows of a controlled dirt road to use as “an escape route” if fire does come down that ridge.

Forest Service spokesman John Miller said firefighters had made “great progress” by late Thursday night given the tough conditions and terrain, and evacuations were called off for a small handful of the thousands under orders to leave.

But the 35-square-mile blaze remained just 15 percent contained and had been growing in an atypical manner. The majority of the 3,300 fire fighters are on the western flank of the fire, near Idyllwild.

“Usually it cools down at night and we get more humidity. That hasn’t happened,” said Tina Rose, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. “It’s been burning like it’s daytime for 72 hours in a row.”

Temperatures were expected to dip into the 60s overnight before creeping up into the 80s on Friday.

“What we’re concerned about is what you see right here,” said U.S Forest Service Fire Chief Jeanne Pincha-Tulley, pointing to a hazy sky. “When you get a column that puts out this much smoke, embers get into the column and can drop anywhere.”

She added the column was expected to go right over Idyllwild for the next two days. While authorities said only 5 percent of the town rebuffed evacuating, they cautioned they might not be able to help those who remain if conditions worsen.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News

Officials: Southern Calif. wildfire threatens dozens of homes

A fast-growing wildfire in the mountains west of Palm Springs destroyed three houses and three mobile homes, and was threatening dozens more residences, officials said Tuesday.

The blaze also destroyed more than a dozen small buildings, a cabin, a garage and about a half-dozen vehicles, the U.S. Forest Service said in a statement. One house was damaged but not destroyed.

The wildfire started Monday between Palm Springs and Hemet, near the rural Riverside County community of Mountain Center, and a day later had surged to about 14 square miles.

More than 2,200 firefighters and 25 aircraft had the blaze 10 percent contained.

It was mostly moving east toward the desert and away from small communities of homes, summer cabins and ranches in the San Jacinto mountains, but a change in the wind could easily sweep it back toward homes, authorities said.

“It’s a rapidly changing animal,” said Forest Service spokesman Lee Beyer.

About 50 homes were evacuated along with Camp Ronald McDonald, which hosts programs for children with cancer and their families.

The fire also led authorities to close a pair of state highways and the Pacific Crest Trail.

A public pool about 20 miles away in Indio was closed because of ash falling on the water.

The fire raged in thick brush and trees at an elevation of 5,000 to 7,500 feet, sending flames 100 feet high. Some of the area had not burned in 35 years and the vegetation was dried out, Beyer said.

“We only had 40 to 50 percent of normal precipitation” over the winter and no rain at all since early April, he said.

Meanwhile, an 11-square-mile wildfire in San Diego County was contained Monday after destroying more than 100 mountain cabins. Authorities say human activity sparked the fire near Julian on July 6.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News

Calif. wildfire destroys 3 homes, 3 mobile homes

Officials in Southern California say a wildfire in the mountains west of Palm Springs has destroyed three houses and three mobile homes, and is threatening dozens more residences.

The U.S. Forest Service said Tuesday night that the fire also destroyed more than a dozen small buildings, a cabin and about a half-dozen vehicles. One house was damaged but not destroyed.

The fire started Monday between Palm Springs and Hemet, near the rural Riverside County community of Mountain Center. Since then, it has grown to about 14 square miles and is 10 percent contained.

About 50 homes have been evacuated, along with Camp Ronald McDonald, which hosts children with cancer and their families.

The fire also forced the closure of a pair of state highways and the Pacific Crest Trail.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News

Idaho family sues Forest Service for $1M after tree hit son

An Idaho family has sued the U.S. Forest Service demanding more than $1 million after a large dead tree at a remote campsite fell and injured their young son.

Richard and Melinda Armstrong, of Caldwell, said their family was camping in the Boise National Forest in September 2010 when a gust of wind blew over the dead tree. It fell on their son, resulting in a large laceration, a compound fracture and a puncture wound in his back that impaired his breathing.

The boy, who was 6 at the time, was taken by helicopter to a hospital in Boise.

The couple said the Forest Service was negligent because it didn’t remove the tree, which was a hazard. They’re suing for more than $1 million in damages and emotional stress in federal court.

“The tree was clearly dead — had been dead for years — and was within eight feet of the fire ring, and within 48 feet of the Forest Service road,” said Eric Rossman, their attorney in Boise, on Wednesday. “It was an obvious hazard.”

Rossman said the Armstrong’s son has undergone multiple surgeries and suffered “severe permanent impairment” of his leg.

David Olson, spokesman for the Boise National Forest, cited agency policy that prevents comment on pending litigation.

At issue is whether the federal agency had a responsibility to ensure that a site where people frequented and was near a public road was adequately protected from a potentially dangerous tree.

There have been similar lawsuits elsewhere, including an Oregon man who sued the Forest Service in 2010 after he was struck and injured by a tree while driving in his truck. That case was settled earlier this year and has been dismissed.

The Armstrongs’ camping trip took them about 50 miles north of Boise, to a remote Forest Service road east of the hamlet of Ola in Gem County. They contend the place along Squaw Creek where they were overnighting was, in fact, a developed campsite, according to the Forest Service‘s definition.

But even if the campsite was not considered to be developed, according to their complaint, the improvements there, including a fire ring made of rocks, and the Forest Service‘s knowledge that it was a place where people camped regularly created a duty for the agency “to take immediate measures to inspect and remove the tree, close the site and/or warn user at the site of the serious risk of injury, death or property damage.”

From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/national/~3/-c_MSD4XD0Q/

Search growing increasingly urgent for 2 California teen hikers missing since Easter Sunday

The search for a young man and woman who vanished in Orange County’s Cleveland National Forest was to resume Wednesday morning, with the search growing more urgent with every hour since the teens were last heard from on Sunday night.

Parents of Nicholas Cendoya, 19, and Kyndall Jack, 18, hoped for a sign of their kids somewhere in the wooded area as experts and volunteers continued the hunt, sheriff’s Lt. Erin Guidice said.

Searchers were concentrating on an area of the Holy Jim Trail where a bloodhound picked up a scent during an overnight search, Guidice said. T

he Costa Mesa teens called authorities Sunday night saying they were lost about a mile from their car in Holy Jim Canyon, but their cellphone lost power soon afterward.

Friends who joined the search told KCAL9 that the couple is very active.

“They’re very fitness-oriented, so it’s not really a shocker that they’d be hiking but it’s a shocker that they’d be missing because of it,” Daniela Conderes told the station.

The rocky, tree-shaded dirt trail leads to a waterfall on a 2.8-mile round trip and is popular with day hikers. Its difficulty is listed as moderate to serious on a U.S. Forest Service website.

However, the lost hikers “did not keep to the trail,” Guidice said. The area has heavy brush and a creek running through it, she said.

Temperatures were moderate Friday, following an overnight low in the 50s. The area is in a section of the national forest in the Santa Ana Mountains, which lie along the border of Orange and Riverside counties southeast of Los Angeles.

The trail ranges in elevation from about 2,000 feet to about 4,000 feet.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News

Idaho firefighting group reaches deal with OSHA

Officials from an Idaho firefighting organization have reached an agreement with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration over citations and fines levied after a 20-year-old firefighter was struck and killed by a falling tree while working on a wildfire last summer.

The Lewiston Tribune reports (http://bit.ly/10rQ4zM ) the Orofino-based Clearwater Potlatch Timber Protective Association has agreed to a $10,500 fine, down from the $14,000 fine that OSHA proposed in February for the death of U.S. Forest Service firefighter Anne Veseth of Moscow. The agreement also revised the citation.

Idaho Department of Lands spokeswoman Emily Callihan says the original citation would have required firefighters to leave any fire where standard firefighting orders couldn’t be followed or dangerous situations were present. Callihan says OSHA realized that could prevent an initial attack on many fires.

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Information from: Lewiston Tribune, http://www.lmtribune.com

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News

APNewsBreak: US braces for another bad fire year

Despite the slowest start to a wildfire season in a decade, the head of the U.S. Forest Service says his agency is preparing for another busy year, but with fewer firefighters.

Chief Tom Tidwell tells The Associated Press that late winter storms have helped, but the South and Southwestern U.S. are expected to dry out heading into May and June.

That will give way to a season much like last year, when more than 14,500 square miles were charred. That’s an area bigger than the state of Maryland.

A dozen lives were lost last year, and more than 2,200 homes and businesses were destroyed.

Tidwell says the agency’s preparedness budget has been trimmed by 5 percent this year, meaning there will be about 500 fewer firefighters and 50 fewer engines.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News

Forest Service Fire Policy Change May Let More Wildfires Burn Out Naturally

By The Huffington Post News Editors

SAN FRANCISCO — After coming in $400 million over budget following last year’s busy fire season, the Forest Service is altering its approach and may let more fires burn instead of attacking every one.

The move, quietly made in a letter late last month by Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell, brings the agency more in line with the National Parks Service and back to what it had done until last year. It also answers critics who said the agency wasted money and endangered firefighters by battling fires in remote areas that posed little or no danger to property or critical habitat.

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More on Wildfires

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at Huffington Post

Suspect in ecoterrorism fires to be arraigned

A woman who spent a decade as a fugitive in the largest ecoterrorism investigation in U.S. history is due in federal court in Oregon on conspiracy and arson charges.

Rebecca Rubin, 39, a Canadian citizen, was to be arraigned Friday afternoon in U.S. District Court in Eugene.

A federal indictment accuses Rubin of being a member of cells of the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front known as The Family based in Eugene.

Investigators blame the cells for 20 fires across the West from 1996 to 2001 that did $40 million damage.

Among the group’s targets were a ski resort in Colorado, wild horse corrals in Oregon and Northern California, and lumber mills and U.S. Forest Service offices in Oregon.

Rubin turned herself in at the Canadian border with Washington last November. Two others indicted in the case remain at large. Ten people pleaded guilty in 2007 to conspiracy and arson charges and were sentenced to prison.

Rubin is specifically charged with helping set fire to buildings at the Vail ski resort to prevent expansion into habitat for the threatened Canada lynx, and to U.S. Bureau of Land Management corrals in Eastern Oregon and Northern California holding wild horses rounded up from federal rangelands.

She also is accused of trying to set fire to a lumber mill office in Medford, Ore.

Rubin is not specifically charged with terrorism, but the indictment alleges she and other members of The Family tried to influence businesses and the government and tried to retaliate against the government.

At the time of the fires, the FBI characterized the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front as the top domestic terrorism threats in the nation.

The Family disbanded in 2001, but a federal task force known as Operation Backfire used an informant to pursue them.

By the time they were sentenced, members of The Family expressed regret and frustration that after all their hardships, they had accomplished practically nothing.

A horse slaughterhouse in Redmond, Ore., was never rebuilt, but the ski resort and ranger stations were rebuilt, timber companies stayed in business, and wild horses were still rounded up and removed from federal lands.

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News

500,000 Acre, Private Property Land-grab By U.S. Forest Service

By Suzanne Eovaldi

ForestServiceLogoOfficial.svg  500,000 acre, private property land grab by U.S. Forest Service

Nearly 200,000 American citizens in Los Angeles and Ventura Counties could lose free use of their private lands and property if the proposed Rim of the Valley National Park converting two national parks becomes law!  A continuation of United Nations-sponsored Agenda 21′s aims of shoving American citizens into carefully defined clusters of living space around large urban populations, the Rim of the Valley plan would severely affect personal liberty!  Urgent action is needed to stop this huge new federal land grab threat, says Chuck Cushman of the American Land Right Association.

“It will start with a small scope and gradually increase over time until the Federal Government and the National Park Service take over huge portions of the mountains around Los Angeles.”  The Rim of the Valley consists of parts of the Santa Monica Mountains, the Santa Susanna Mountains, the San Gabriel Mountains, the Verdugo Mountains, the San Rafael Hills, and adjacent connector areas to Los Padres and San Bernardino National Forests, according to Congressman Adam Schiff.

Nearly ½ million acres, over two thirds the size of Yosemite, could be under the control of the US Forest Service. Coffee mugs with the inscription “Forest Circus US Department of Aggravation” being sold in Montana already express disdain for the rapidly expanding federal agency.

Cushman reveals the mind-set of federal official David Hales who allegedly said, “If Congress puts a circle around a land area, we’re going to own it all.”  Such is the aim of Agenda 21, a one world, UN initiative designed to adversely impact private property rights (particularly in the United States) by seeking to cram residents into approximately 900 square feet of “dwelling space” and move them off of wide open land areas and out of suburban sprawl locations.

Additionally, California farmers are very upset about plans by Gov. Jerry Brown to move water from their farmlands through tunnels into drought areas in the Southern part of the state.  “Although portions of the San Gabriel River and its tributaries have been altered for flood protection and water conservation, these urbanized channels still serve as habitat for wildlife and often provide opportunities for recreation,”  maintains the left. For decades, liberals have threatened the existence of farmers by diverting vitally important water resources in order to prevent harm coming to their furry little “endangered” friends! Crops die as progressives consider the needs of a bug more important than those of a man.  Should Rim of the Valley become law, the damage inflicted by these programs of environmental lunacy will increase.

Rim of the Valley will place a Park Service noose around the necks of 169,000 threatened landowners: 158,000 in LA County and 11,000 in Ventura County, says Cushman.  He calls the regulatory costs staggering, with a projected $2 Billion dollar figure for land acquisition alone.  Making the Rim of the Valley National Park the most expensive in American history, this project could drain off needed repair and maintenance funds from other, older parks.

Cushman is urging concerned citizens all over the United States to contact the National Park Service, Rim of the Valley Corridor Special Resource Study,  570 W. Avenue 26, #175, Los Angeles, CA 90065.  E-mail: pwr_rimofthevalley@nps.gov.  You also need to contact your CA senators and US House of Representatives, toll free at 1-877-762-8762.

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Western Journalism