How the Shasta Trinity National Forest aims to prevent landslides post fires
22 September 2022
Published by: https://krcrtv.com
USA – Last year, about 300,000 acres over 7 fires burned in the Shasta Trinity National Forest. In 2022, they haven’t seen any major fires this year but they’ve been using that time to prevent another natural disaster: landslides.
Brent Wachter, predictive service fire meteorologist, said burn scars from these fires can lead to trouble in the wetter months.
“The burn scars that are fairly recent, whether it’s this year or the past three possibly four years, we just don’t have the vegetation to catch the rainfall,” Wachter said.
For areas in or around recent burn scars, he said it’s important to be aware of the potential for slides this upcoming fall and winter.
“Those will create issues with debris flow, heavy runoff, especially downstream of where people live,” Wachter said.
KRCR reached out to Brad Rust who leads the Burned Area Emergency Rehabilitation group on the Shasta Trinity National Forest to see the work they have been doing.
“Fixing all the roads where there were burnouts, like on the sides of the roads, are starting to collapse. We’re also upsizing culverts, upsizing them and rolling dips on the roads,” Rust said.
They also have a multi-organization alert system for flooding and landslides which senses when there is a possibility of heavy flooding and slides.
“It’s a system where they say a big storm is coming in, our gages are showing really high rainfalls in that part of the watershed we need to contact OES,” Rust said.
And with ever-changing threats, Rust said his important to stay on top of it.
‘Why is it important that the forest service is staying on top of this and is working on preventative measures and alerting people,” KRCR’s Mason Carroll asked.
“Well because we have this thing that’s called climate change,” Rust said. “So there needs to be a vigilance of the forest service, national weather service, OES.”
He said in burn scare areas it can take three to five years for vegetation to recover and they will be watching those areas very closely during that time.
