El Dorado County will get more than $3.3 million to prevent wildfires — funding to remove timber damaged in last year’s Caldor Fire and help for firefighters and residents as they prepare for another fire season.
The money is part of a nearly $118 million Cal Fire grant package to fund 144 local wildfire projects across drought-stricken California. The project cash is part of what Cal Fire director and fire chief Joe Tyler called “a critical part of our overall wildfire strategy” in another early fire year stoked by drought conditions.
In El Dorado County, the El Dorado County Fire Safe Council will receive more than $2 million to create shaded fuel breaks — a forest management strategy to thin and remove vegetation while leaving larger and more fire-tolerant trees.
Officials say the project along eight priority roads in southern El Dorado County will improve emergency routes for more than 26,000 residents in and around Diamond Springs, Omo Ranch and Outingdale; and reduce the chances of roadway-related wildfires.
Another $1.25 million will fund a tree removal project along El Dorado’s western slope to curb the spread of bark beetle infestation and to remove fire-scarred timber that endured the 220,000-acre Caldor Fire.
The beetle infestation has claimed thousands of pitch pines in El Dorado County since 2015, say officials, and thousands more dead and dying trees have been identified so far this year.
Meantime, the Caldor Fire and the fire breaks cut along the eastern boundary of the mammoth blaze served to weaken other trees that are now new homes for the bark beetle.
Officials say the project will target dead and dying trees that directly threaten public safety.
The 144 funded projects statewide in this round join 105 projects across California that were awarded funding last September, said Chief Daniel Berlant, a Cal Fire deputy director.
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