Northstar Community Evacuation Route (HVR) Fuels Reduction Project

Northstar Community Evacuation Route (HVR) Fuels Reduction Project

The multi-year project schedule for this project is May 2022 and expiring at the end of November of 2023. The projects funding mechanism is from a 2021 Tahoe Mountain Resorts Foundation Grant Cycle and driven by private funding. The project that has a focus on various methods of forest fuels reduction designed to enhance an identified evacuation route from the updated 2022 Northstar Community Wildfire Protection Plan. Below are key components to the project: 1. To perform forest fuels reduction within an identified major evacuation route to the upper part of the Community of Northstar. The project exists on privately owned, open common space forested land and next to a major evacuation route to the upper part of the Northstar Community. The project area is a part of Priority Number One in the Northstar Community Wildfire Protection Plan. 2. To remove dead, diseased, dying and pest infected trees that identify as a fire hazard and or are detrimental to forest health. 3. The funding from the grant will help subsidize forest fuels reduction for an evacuation route that exists outside the Northstar Community Services District Boundary. The project will treat 1.5 linear miles of road, 45-acres of land and set up a three-hundred-foot (300’) buffer for the road, (150’ each side from centerline). This project is Priority Number One with the 2022 updated Northstar Fire Department Community Wildfire Protection Plan. 4. This project exists within a State Regulatory Area (SRA), CAL FIRE named Very High Fire Severity Zone. The project area holds over-stocked conifer tree stands, declining conifer trees, vegetation health that is a result of multiple years of drought and correcting one hundred plus years of historical timber harvesting practices which altered the forests of the Martis Creek Watershed. Currently, forest fuels that exists along the evacuation route areas require a combination of first entry and maintenance treatment. The goal is to reduce forest fuels within areas that are readily able to burn hot and travel at an accelerated rate across the topography and affect a safe community wide evacuation. A secondary issue is addressing the removal of dead, diseased, dying and pest infected trees will help reduce the acceleration of tree mortality before reaching an epidemic level.

Truckee

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Northern California

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