Total Cost of Forest Fires in State Set at $310 Million

The cost of putting out California’s 1987 forest fires and restoring the blackened timber and rangeland will be more than $310 million, a legislative committee was told Friday.

The U.S. Forest Service has estimated that state and federal governments spent $160 million to fight 1,200 fires that were touched off by lightning strikes beginning Aug. 29. One major blaze in the Klamath National Forest in Siskiyou County still has not been contained.

The fires burned about 800,000 acres in California.

Losses in Oregon

The cost estimates Friday did not cover 200,000 to 300,000 acres scorched in Oregon.

Jon Kennedy, assistant regional forester for the U.S. Forest Service in San Francisco, estimated that the total rehabilitation cost alone would be $150 million or more.

Kennedy testified at a hearing of the Assembly Natural Resources Committee where Director Gerald Partain of the California Department of Forestry said the state is concerned about reductions in U.S. Forest Service personnel in recent years.

“They (U.S. Forest Service) may need to increase the numbers of their people in the field,” Partain said. “It may be that not all their resources are used to best effect in California.”

Capability Defended

Kennedy said that the federal Forest Service “does not believe that there was a material reduction in our capability to respond.”

The question of political responsibility in the fires, which killed 11 people, was raised by the committee chairman, Assemblyman Byron D. Sher (D-Palo Alto).

A briefing paper by Sher’s committee noted that the Administration of Republican Gov. George Deukmejian turned down a request by the Department of Forestry last spring for a $3.7-million budget augmentation to meet the fire threat posed by low rainfall in the 1986-87 winter.

Sher carried a bill to restore the money, but it was scaled down to $1.7 million by Deukmejian, who signed the measure after it passed the Legislature in July.

“A previous penny-wise and pound-foolish attitude may have contributed to these difficulties,” Sher said.