Efforts are underway in Williams Lake to create a fuel break that will protect residential areas from the threat of wildfires approaching from the west.
Under the direction of Williams Lake Community Forest manager Ken Day, crews have begun clearing a 300-metre wide pathway in the community forest’s Flat Rock block that will eventually be 11 kilometres in length.
“We have been asked by the Cariboo Region and the forest district to create a shaded fuel break to protect the city of Williams Lake and the local area from a wind-driven crown fire approaching from the west,” Day said Wednesday as he gave the Tribune a tour of the area. “If you think back to 2010, and the concerns we had with west of the Fraser River and everybody was on high alert in the log yards to deal with sparks, etc. That’s what we are addressing here. ”
The project is comprised of three phase and will take quite a few years to complete, Day said.
The first phase is to thin forest stands.
Secondly, crews have taken out all commercial logs to the roadside and transported them to local mills.
Read the full article here.