(January 29)  In reaction to the drought condition that has created uncommonly dry conditions this winter, mountain fire officials have reinstated the county’s curbside chipping program.
The lack of rainfall this season and most of last year has left vegetation in much of the San Bernardino National Forest parched.
Despite the cool temperatures, the fire hazard in the San Bernardino Mountains is unusually high. In reaction, the Crest Forest Fire Protection District has stepped up fire prevention efforts, including inspections aimed at hazardous weed and debris abatement.
The fire department has initiated and in large part completed inspections within two blocks of the forest boundary in the communities of Crestline, Cedarpines Park, Valley of Enchantment, Rimforest and Twin Peaks.
The intent of the stepped-up program is to have homeowners create and maintain “defensible space” around homes. Defensible space is created by clearing the area surrounding a structure of excess vegetation, wood debris or any other flammable materials.
In conjunction with this, the county of San Bernardino, which last year subsumed the Crest Forest Fire Protection District, is making a mobile wood chipper available to the community to perform curbside chipping.
The chipper is used to chip wood debris such as tree limbs and branches. That debris must be prepared by being reduced to a diameter of no larger than 10 inches in diameter in order to be fed into the chipper and thereby processed. The wood chips are then redistributed back onto the property from which they originated. In chip form, the flammability of the wood is degraded.
Information on the wood chipping program can be had by calling the county Land Use Services Department at (909) 884-4056 or the Office of the Fire Marshal at (909) 386-8400.