Media Helps Biomass Industry Spread Wildfire Hysteria
- by Melissa Santos, January 4, 2015, The News Tribune
[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"371","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","height":"317","style":"width: 334px; height: 253px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","width":"418"}}]]Ann Stanton credits a state program with saving her home from the worst wildfire in Washington’s history.
Despite her property being in the path of the Carlton Complex fire, which scorched about 256,000 acres in Okanogan and Chelan counties last summer, Stanton’s home and the trees around it survived with minimal damage.
It wasn’t just luck. A year earlier, Stanton and her husband worked with the state Department of Natural Resources to thin the trees on their 20-acre property, reducing the wildfire’s ability to spread.
“It made all the difference in the world for us,” Stanton said last month. “The house was completely spared. If you could ignore the black trunks on some of the ponderosa pines, you could imagine the fire had never happened.”
DNR officials think thinning and restoring more forests on public and private lands throughout the state could help prevent another wildfire season like 2014, which was the most destructive in state history.