For Release: October 31, 2005
Contact: Walter Herzog (530) 224-2100 Jeff Fontana (707) 252-5332
CA-N-06-10

BUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT PLANS WINTER PRESECRIBED BURNING

During winter months, fire crews from the Bureau of Land Management will be conducting pile burning operations along several new shaded fuel breaks and recently thinned forest lands in Trinity and Shasta counties.

Depending on weather, fuel moisture, and air quality conditions, the piles will be burned on favorable days from early November through March. Burning will begin at higher elevations where it is cooler and substantial rain has fallen over the last two weeks, and then move to lower elevations.

Burn piles in Trinity County are ridge-top shaded fuel breaks south of Highway 299 and west of Buckhorn Summit. Burn piles in Shasta County are located throughout the French Fire timber salvage area where the BLM completed timber salvage operations to remove the dead and dying trees from the 2004 French Fire. Limbs from the cut trees were piled near roads for burning because leaving the material in the forest would create unnatural and hazardous fuel loads.

Fuel breaks are usually 40-foot to 200-foot-wide areas along selected roads and ridgelines where brush and trees are thinned to reduce wildfire danger. Some trees and plants are left along the break to provide shade, limiting re-growth of heavy vegetation.

Fuel breaks help slow wildland fire spread and provide areas of defensible space for firefighters. Each year the BLM Redding Field Office has created at least three miles of new shaded fuel breaks in cooperation with other agencies, resource conservation districts, fire safe councils, and private land owners.

For more information, call the Redding Field Office at 530-224-2100

-BLM-
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Redding Field Office 355 Hemsted Drive Redding, California 96002