<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">Found on mcn announce listserve<br><div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: medium; ">By Mike Kalantarian<br><br>The Mendocino Lightning Complex Fires of 2008 burned nearly 55,000 acres.<br>Thousands of firefighters were engaged in that effort: 47 were injured, and<br>one died (Robert Roland, an Anderson Valley volunteer).<br><br>The county's largest private landowner, Mendocino Redwood Company (MRC),<br>owns 10% of the county. So, one would expect about 10% of that burned<br>acreage to belong to MRC. Instead, MRC hosted 42% of those fires (23,196<br>acres), and more than a quarter of their burned acreage (6,000+ acres) was<br>in Hack & Squirt zones. That means more than 10% of the total Mendocino<br>Lightning Complex Fires took place in MRC poisoned forests.<br><br>MRC owns 228,800 acres but has only one habitable structure on all that<br>land, so MRC pays the same State Responsibility Area (SRA) Fire Prevention<br>Fee as the rest of us single-structure homeowners. When first assessed in<br>2012, that fee was $115.<br><br>Cal Fire reports the cost of the Mendocino Lightning Complex Fires at $48.5<br>million. Since 42% percent of that event took place on MRC property, their<br>fair share of the cost would be a little over $20 million. At the rate of<br>$115 per year, it will take MRC (and the multi-billionaire Fisher Family of<br>San Francisco, who own the company) more than 175,000 years to pay us back.<br>The SRA fee structure obviously needs some serious rethinking.<br><br>Meanwhile, the proposed Measure V: "Shall the People of Mendocino County<br>Declare Intentionally Killed and Left Standing Trees a Public Nuisance" can<br>help address this inequity. It states: trees "intentionally killed and left<br>standing...are a public nuisance and the party responsible shall be liable<br>for any resulting damage." If such an ordinance had been in place in 2008,<br>it could have helped recover some of those costs.<br><br>For more info: <a href="http://www.citizensforfiresafeforests.com/">http://www.citizensforfiresafeforests.com</a><br>______________________________________________</span></blockquote></div><br></body></html>