By Jim Carlton 

PARADISE, Calif -- As contractors rush to cut down trees so that this community decimated by a wildfire last year doesn't burn again, they're creating a fresh problem: piles of timber everywhere.

The stacks are visible throughout the charred remains of Paradise. One of the biggest sits along Skyway Road on the outskirts of town, where contractors working for utility PG&E Corp. have stacked more than 3,000 logs over the past month, according to a worker. Smaller stacks could be seen on residential and business lots, some of which also contain charred cars and other fire debris.

The so-called log decks have angered residents who complain the dead trees are an eyesore and would still burn in a fire. Many of the residents blame the utility, which state investigators last month found was responsible for the 153,000-acre Camp Fire that killed 85 people and destroyed Paradise because its transmission line sparked the inferno.

"PG&E is just abdicating all their responsibility up here," said John Scott, a 74-year-old retired aerospace-facilities engineer who lives about a mile away from a log deck.

Paul Moreno, a spokesman for PG&E, called the stacks "temporary log-staging areas" that are part of the normal transportation chain. The utility, he added, is educating some contractors who mistakenly piled the logs in fields where they don't belong.

George Gentry, senior vice president of the California Forestry Council trade group, said the biggest threat posed by the log decks is the insects they may attract. The insects may go on to attack surrounding trees, which would dry them out and make them more flammable. "You really don't want to leave big stacks of logs around your community," Mr. Gentry said.

The recent logging is part of an effort to remove an estimated 300,000 highly flammable dead and dying trees in Butte County, which remains at high risk of another catastrophic inferno, according to local officials.

Mark Wilson was hired by a contractor that works for PG&E to cut down trees around Paradise, located 90 miles north of Sacramento. One morning last week, he unloaded freshly cut timber from the back of his flatbed trailer in a field just outside Paradise filled with hundreds of similarly discarded logs. He said he had no other options.

"The mills are full, so we have to take the wood here," Mr. Wilson said as his white pickup truck idled.

According to federal data, there are only 25 sawmills in California, down from more than 100 in the 1980s, due in large part to curtailed logging in national forests over environmental concerns. The number of biomass plants, another option for disposing of trees, has fallen to about two dozen from 66 in the 1990s, in part due to the expiration of government price subsidies, according to the California Energy Commission.

Most remaining sawmills are running at capacity, and owners are reluctant to expand due to fears that demand won't stay high beyond the current glut, said Rich Gordon, chief executive of the California Forestry Association, a timber trade group.

"It's the Achilles' heel of the whole situation," said Calli-Jane DeAnda, executive director of the Butte County Fire Safe Council, a nonprofit group. "We can write grants to get rid of these trees, but where do you put them?"

Mr. Moreno of PG&E said the company has almost finished removing about 90,000 dead and dying trees from around power lines in the Camp Fire area and finding places to take them hasn't been a problem.

"Our contractors may haul logs to out-of-county facilities, some of which have their own storage properties," he said.

PG&E has assured local officials that it plans to clear out the unpermitted log stacks by the end of July, said Casey Hatcher, a spokeswoman for Butte County.

Loggers are pouring into the woods throughout Northern and Central California to lessen the risk of fires that have become increasingly common amid drought and a warming climate.

Gov. Gavin Newsom in March signed an emergency order that cleared the way for expedited tree and brush removal from 90,000 acres of wildlands abutting hundreds of California's most-threatened communities.

PG&E has told state officials it will double the number of drought-damaged trees it plans to trim or remove to 375,000 this year from 160,000 in 2018. That's in addition to the roughly one million trees its crews remove annually for other reasons.

The San Francisco-based utility advised state regulators in April there is "a risk of delay" to that work from myriad challenges, including finding enough qualified tree trimmers. Officials from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers say they have deployed 3,500 union members to remove trees and brush in mostly PG&E territory, three times the normal average.

"There's a shortage because it's a hot, sweaty, dangerous job, and it doesn't pay as well as some jobs," said Bob Dean, senior assistant business manager for IBEW Local 1245 in the northern California town of Vacaville.

Write to Jim Carlton at jim.carlton@wsj.com

 

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 14, 2019 05:44 ET (09:44 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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