Congressional budget cuts made
the Yosemite fire worse!
A cluster of controlled fire and
tree-thinning projects approved by forestry officials but never funded might
have slowed the progress of the massive wildfire in California, a wide range of
critics said this weekend.
The massive blaze at the edge of Yosemite national park in the Sierra Nevada
mountains has scorched an area larger than many U.S. cities – becoming the
fourth-largest conflagration in Californian history, at 348 square miles. The
Rim fire -- so-called due to its proximity to a scenic look-out point nicknamed
'The Rim of the World' -- is still spreading, although on Sunday fire officials
said it was 40 percent contained – up from 35 percent a day earlier.
Some of the land affected by the
fire is in the very location pinpointed by the U.S. forest service for eight
projects aimed at clearing and burning brush and small trees that help fuel
wildfire.
The projects, which were approved
by the U.S. forest service but never funded by Congress, would have thinned the
woods in about 25 square miles in the Groveland district of the Stanislaus
national forest, much of which was incinerated by the blaze. About 9,000 acres
were deemed to be suitable for controlled burning as a fire prevention buffer
zones in 2012, the forest service said in a document provided to the news
agency Reuters.
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