Vail creating barrier against fire

Vail Daily ^ | August 28, 2007 | Edward Stoner

[george76]

Crews cutting trees in hopes stopping wildfire from jumping between neighborhoods and the forest.

As the color red has grown in the forest... The mountain pine beetle epidemic has hit ...hard.

Whether it’s a lightning strike or a barbecue sparking a blaze, Spaeh says she understands the risk of a destructive forest fire.

....town, county and the U.S. Forest Service are cooperating to create a layer of “defensible space” — a 200-to-300-foot barrier — that aims to stop the spread of a fire, either from the forest into the neighborhood or vice versa.

“This is a really good thing,” ...

Above Intermountain and Matterhorn in West Vail, crews will cut about 8,000 trees, starting in the next couple of weeks.

Experts talk about the dying trees as fuel that’s just waiting to burn.

“From the impact from the pine beetle, eventually there’s going to be a lot of fuel building up there,” said Phil Bowden of the Forest Service. “You want to have space between where that fuel will be building up and the homes so you can defend homes.”

The “defensible space” also creates a staging area where firefighters can set up when they have to fight a blaze...

While the pine-beetle epidemic is an environmental worry in Vail, some of the felled trees will go toward a “green” cause: biomass energy.

The county is selling the logs to Confluence Energy, which has built a wood-pellet mill in Kremmling. The pellets are used in special furnaces that heat homes while emitting relatively little pollution.

[george76]

If a big fire got going west of town, there is only one way out. The tourists would be going wild to try to escape over the pass.

[moondoggie]

the forests generally are not healthy

That's for darn sure.

The wackos didn't want the trees cut, so now they're all going to burn instead.

Tis a shame.

[colorado tanker]

I didn’t notice any hullabaloo about lynx habitat or environmental assessments. I guess that stuff doesn’t matter when liberals’ seven-figure houses are at stake??

[george76]

Amazing how this works ?

[NonValueAdded]

All that habitat for creatures that depend upon standing deadwood ... how could they remove it? Where is the injunction? Oh, wait, Vail, hangout of the beautiful people. never mind.

[Wally_Kalbacken]

The author's name is Ed Stoner. He-he.