Three-Mile Shaded Fuel Break
Owner and Supervisor Steve Pye bucking and limbing a felled Douglas fir within a heavily burned area of the fuel break.
Overview
Spye General Engineering was hired by the Sonoma Resource Conservation District to implement a 3-mile long shaded fuel break on a network of ranch roads within the 2020 Glass Fire burn scar and adjacent unburned lands. Steve Pye and his crew thinned and treated over 21 acres during this landscape scale fuel load reduction project. Much of the focus was on encroaching Douglas fir that frequently outcompetes oaks and other species, as well as Tanoaks that were either dead or dying due to infection from Sudden Oak Death. In all, more than 3,000 dead standing or unhealthy trees were felled or pruned over 20 days in the field. The resulting fuel break was three miles long and 60’-70’ wide.
Crew member Michael felling a dead standing Douglas fir that burned in the Glass fire.
Crew members Michael and Stephen working together to fell a hazerdous dead standing Douglas fir.