Delay in Rebuilding After Yosemite Fire Angers Residents

As the high tourist season opens today in Yosemite, bitter scars remain from last summer’s fires that swept over 23,000 acres of forest and devoured most of this enclave of private homes and vacation cabins within the national park.

Vegetation sprouting in the burn zone marks the start of physical healing. But Foresta property owners, still smarting, are preparing to file suit--with the help of attorney Melvin Belli’s firm--charging that the fires were mismanaged into a disaster.

The residents also are fighting with Yosemite park officials over the rebuilding of the small hamlet and efforts to evict its unofficial mayor and caretaker, 71-year-old George Lange.

The house where Lange has lived for 30 years was one of 18 spared by the firestormthat swept through Foresta on Aug. 9. But Yosemite Supt. Michael Finley wants to evict Lange to make room for summer employees.

For now, Lang is ignoring the superintendent’s order to leave.

“He’s got a vendetta against me,” said Lange. “I’ve been told by two congressmen and my attorney to just stay put.”

The bitterness in Yosemite is the aftermath of wildfires that erupted after lightning strikes on a dry afternoon last summer. Brush left tinder-dry by four years of drought exploded, forcing Yosemite Valley to be evacuated and closed for 10 days for the first time in summer.

Blackened parcels of forest are visible this spring on all routes into the park except the Tioga Pass road, which opens at noon today after its winter closure to kick off the Memorial Day holiday rush, traditionally the busiest weekend in Yosemite Valley. Campgrounds and overnight lodging have been sold out for weeks.

The 70 cabins that burned down in Foresta were the only homes destroyed by the fire. At the Yosemite Valley Visitor’s Center, the park’s official display on the fires says Foresta was “destroyed.” But the residents who remain say that is just wishful thinking by the park service.

Foresta is one of three “in-holdings” of privately owned land that existed before Yosemite became a national park. Wawona and Aspen Valley are the others. The park makes no secret of its desire for the land at Foresta, the closest of the three to Yosemite Valley and a possible location for new buildings the park would like to locate outside of the valley.

“If we had an offer up there, we would buy,” Finley said.

That desire has made property owners skeptical of long delays in rebuilding. Yosemite has not approved any permits for reconstruction at Foresta, despite pressure from Mariposa County, U.S. Sen. John Seymour and some congressmen.

The only rebuilding under way is at the Flying Spur Ranch, just outside the park boundary near Foresta. The owner, Shirley Sergent, is a park historian who lost all her files and photos of old Yosemite in the fire. She has become a vocal critic of Finley.

“Finley, on behalf of the National Park Service, has harassed Forestans,” Sargent wrote in a letter to Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan Jr. “It seems that Supt. Finley is conducting a personal vendetta against hapless property owners.”

Mark Gallagher, a 10-year resident who directs recycling for the Yosemite Park & Curry Co., says Finley has been holding up applications for building permits to put pressure on owners to sell.

“I’m not going to let the government push me around,” said Gallagher, whose rented home was spared by the flames. The fire did, however, sweep across land he bought in July, where he planned to build a permanent home for himself and his wife, also a park worker.

“We both love it here. We certainly don’t plan to leave,” Gallagher said.

Finley says he will approve permits for lots that are big enough to meet modern health codes. Most lots in Foresta were subdivided in the 1920s into parcels less than a quarter-acre in size, not large enough for the required distance between water wells and underground septic fields.

Frank Dean, Finley’s management aide, said the first permits will be issued soon and others will follow quickly now that procedures have been worked out with Mariposa County. The county, which retains some jurisdiction over the Foresta area, has supported rebuilding by the residents.

Owners whose property is too small to meet health codes may be able to arrange a land swap through the park service, Dean said.

But for most property owners, any enthusiasm for cooperating with the park vanished in March when Finley sent an eviction notice to Lange. A popular character who drives the community’s snow plow, Lange built his cabin in 1959. He and his wife moved here permanently in 1985.

Originally, Lange bought the land. But he voluntarily sold his land and A-frame house to the park service for $26,100 in 1976 and was allowed to stay under a special permit. Lange says he was told at the time that he could stay until he died.

“We severed all ties with the Bay Area,” Lange said. “We have nothing other than what we have here.”

But Finley said Lange’s permit states that his occupancy can be revoked at any time.

An eviction letter has given the Langes 90 days to leave. Since then a standoff has developed in Washington. Seymour, along with Reps. Robert J. Lagomarsino (R-Ojai) and Gary A. Condit (D-Merced) have written letters to Lujan urging him to cancel the eviction.

“Needless to say, I am very dissatisfied with the park service’s response in this matter,” Seymour wrote in a separate letter to Lange.

Finley, who denies any vendetta against Foresta residents, said Yosemite needs the Langes’ cabin to help relieve the housing crunch created when the fire swept through Foresta. Some of the burned cabins had been used for years to house park workers, he said.

This year, eight summer seasonal employees are sleeping in bunk beds in a house vacated by the chief ranger, Finley said. “We had seasonals last year sleeping in their cars.”

He said that “the biggest need around here is for employee housing.”

Finley acknowledged, however, that Lange has succeeded in getting the attention of Lujan, who will make the decision.

“It’s totally in the secretary’s hands,” Finley said, adding later: “Foresta has become a cause.”

Eight months after the fire, Lange and several property owners remain bitter that the flames were allowed to reach Foresta at all. “This fire should never have gotten away, should never have happened,” said Lange. Belli’s law firm in San Francisco has gathered reports, dispatcher tapes and other evidence of the fires’ handling.

“We have some information that not everything that could have been done had been done,” said Jack Dougherty, the Belli associate representing Foresta property owners. “When the time is right, we will be filing a federal court claim.”

Finley contends that the fire was fought all-out. “We did our level best,” he said, adding that there was no way park officials would have told firefighters to let Foresta burn. “We had our boys up there to protect.”