A record amount of Sierra Pacific Industries land has been torched by the wildfires burning in eastern Shasta County. The nation’s second-largest timber producer estimated that roughly 33,000 acres of its timber had burned as of last Wednesday.
The Ponderosa Fire alone consumed 17,600 acres of the Anderson-based company’s land from Manton east to Lassen Volcanic National Park. “It’s the biggest loss we have ever had on our land,” SPI spokesman Mark Pawlicki said.
The company had lost about 14,000 acres in the Bagley Fire, about 24% contained Friday afternoon. It is burning west of Big Bend in a remote area of the Shasta-Trinity National Forest.
Dan Tomascheski, SPI’s vice president of resources, said the Ponderosa Fire burned extremely hot. “We saw that one burn pretty much everything, and the fuel-break-type work we had done, the fire was moving so fast, there wasn’t enough time for the agencies to get in place and use the fire breaks,” Tomascheski said.
SPI trees that burned in the Ponderosa ranged from mature timber to plantation lands growing everything from year-old seedlings to 25-year-old pine and fir.
From Redding.com: http://www.redding.com/news/2012/sep/01/spi-reports-record-losses-in-recent-fires/