Commentary: Forest service should halt bureaucratic dispute and fix fire road

The Angeles National Forest road to Mt. Lukens that was hazardous in April, when I wrote a commentary for these pages about it, is now lethal. It is so narrow in one place that trucks have to travel within inches of a section of the roadbed that is hollowed out underneath and could capsize at any time.

Any vehicle getting too close to the edge risks hurtling down an almost vertical drop of 20 or 30 feet. The driver of such a vehicle would be lucky to escape with his life. I talked to one of them who refused to run that risk. There are certainly others who feel the same way.

Another spot is now so deeply rutted that heavy vehicles are having to turn back for fear of getting stuck. In places the ruts — more accurately described as crevices — are up to three feet deep. They are also so wide that there is no room for a vehicle to pass without driving through them. In time that will deepen them so much that only light vehicles will be able to get through.

Yet week after week repairs are being held up by a bureaucratic dispute about who should pay: the forest service or the companies that have to maintain the cluster of antennae on the top of the mountain.

Before those antennae went up, just about the only tire marks on this lonely road were from the few bicycles ridden up here each day plus fire trucks in rare emergencies. Now a road built for that kind of light traffic is being pounded regularly by bulldozers, propane carriers weighing 3,500 pounds and trucks heavy enough to carry equipment the size of generators.

The forest service defends itself by saying it is short of money and has to prioritize. It is difficult to see, however, what could be a higher priority than keeping open the emergency services for the whole Los Angeles basin that use the Mt. Lukens towers, let alone the hospitals, police and cellphones that also depend on them.

Reg Green is a La Cañada Flintridge resident. He can be reached via www.nicholasgreen.org