Is the Sierra healing? Humans' work relies on nature's assistance

By Jeff DeLong, Reno Gazette-Journal.  August 3, 2008

A sign in the front yard of Bruce and Marcia Johnson's Verdi-area home reads Serenity Hill.  Fourteen years ago Monday, the place was anything but serene.  That's when the flames of the Crystal Peak Fire rocketed over the Verdi Range, descending through thick timber and into the Johnson's Sunrise Creek neighborhood. Two homes just down the road were swallowed by fire. The Johnson home, built just a few months before, was ringed by flame but spared.

"It burned a complete circle around us," Marcia Johnson recalled. "But our house stood." The forest didn't. Most of what she described as an extremely thick stand of timber that existed around her home was lost to the fire. Bruce Johnson recalls a conversation with a neighbor when he learned his home had survived the fire. "They said the good news is your home survived," he said. "The bad news is we can see each other now." The Crystal Peak Fire was one of more than a dozen major blazes that have roared along the Sierra's eastern face over the past 25 years. Each posed its own dangers, caused its own destruction and left its own scar on a forested landscape.  Slowly, the land recovers. Much of it is up to nature, with surviving trees dropping seeds that take root, becoming saplings that replace trees lost to fire.

Humans take part as well. The government reseeds burned areas with grasses and brush, with an early priority to prevent mudslides and erosion. It plants new trees, as do homeowners.  Three local fires -- Crystal Peak in 1994, the Martis Fire in 2001 and the Waterfall Fire in 2004 -- are different examples of the land's recovery in progress. And the recovery of the land bodes well for more recent fires, including the Angora Fire, which burned 3,100 acres and destroyed 254 homes at South Lake Tahoe last summer.  Genny Wilson, a Forest Service official in the area for 20 years and the new chief of the Carson Ranger District, was involved in each. She was a member of or led teams of experts that were established after each fire to pursue the most immediate restoration efforts.

"The long-term goal is to bring it back to something representative of that site," Wilson said. "If it's a forest, you want to try to re-establish that forest."

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