On May 7 Mattole Restoration Council workers, Andrew Nash, Jason Evans, and C. Moss worked with 6th through 8th grade Whale Gulch School students and teacher Steve Fry on a fuels reduction project adjacent to the school.
       
Jason is shown here with students from the Whale Gulch School making a fire.  Fuels reduction focuses on removing small diameter dead and suppressed material usually with chainsaws and handtools and disposing of the material in a safe manner.  This reduces fire hazard and opens the forest up for improved landowner access. 

This volunteer day is helping kick off a shaded fuel break project that will be completed along the thickly forested road through the Whale Gulch community: Chemise Mountain and Usal Roads.  Thirty-two acres are slated to be treated along a 3 1/3 mile stretch of road.  Forest is composed of second and third growth tanoak and Douglas fir and peppered with homesteaders who settled in this remote Southern Humboldt/Northern Mendocino community starting in the 70's.  Heavy fuels provide the background matrix but many landowners have done fire safe-ing around their houses.  This project is focusing on fire safe-ing the ingress and egress along one of two main roads accessing the Whale Gulch community. Whale Gulch is extremely susceptible to catastrophic wildfire due to the combination of heavy and low fuel loads and a steep landscape (fire travels uphill rapidly).

This project has been funded by the California Fire Safe Council and was selected over others to a large degree because of strong support in the Whale Gulch Fire Department and general community.  The community has pledged over $12,000 in in-kind and cash donations to add to $94,000 in California Fire Safe Council funding. 

Permits and permissions have been secured and work crews will be starting in May 2010 and finishing at the end of the year.
                          

For questions and comments, please contact Andrew Nash at the Petrolia office.