The Associated Press
INCLINE VILLAGE, Nev. — Tahoe-area firefighters told a new bistate commission on Friday that they need relaxed rules for dealing with fire fuels because of the high hazards in the area.
But the new California-Nevada Tahoe Basin Fire Commission stopped short of asking for an emergency declaration on fire fuels management, and said such a move would have to wait until the panel’s next meeting.
Nevada State Forester Pete Anderson termed the basin a “tinderbox” as he described the condition of the basin’s forests.
“What we’re seeing is a problem right now,” Anderson said, adding, “We have a forest-health crisis, and hand crew work is excellent but very slow. We need better access to the forests to get the biomass out that is cleared for defensible space.”
“If the forests aren’t thinned properly, the basin is at a higher risk of fire.”
North Lake Tahoe Fire Protection District Division Chief Norb Szczurek said there are three elements that contribute to a fire: weather, terrain and fuel.
“We can’t do a thing about the weather or terrain, but we can control the fuel the fire has to use,” Szczurek said.
The seven fire chiefs in the basin said several Tahoe Regional Planning Agency rules should be relaxed or abandoned. That includes any that conflict with practical guidelines for defensible around buildings, the chiefs said.
The defensible space guidelines favored by the fire chiefs mirror a California code that calls for a 30-foot noncombustible vegetation zone around any house, known as a “lean and green” area.
Sig Rogich, the Nevada co-chairman of the commission, said he’d like to see uniformity in the rules governing each state’s side of the lake.
“We should function as one lake and one community. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think that TRPA and the fire chiefs can’t find some sort of commonality,” Rogich said.
TRPA spokeswoman Julie Regan has said that TRPA is willing to compromise with the basin fire chiefs.