Controlled Slash Burn
During the week of August 17th, 2009, members of the Berthoud Fire Protection District's Wildland Team mitigated a "Fuels Modificiation Project" in an Urban Interface area of the District. An Urban Interface area, or UI, is an area where structures and other human developments meet or intermingle with undeveloped wildland areas. This intermingling causes fires to spread from structures to vegetation and vice versa with extreme ease.
Because one of the best ways to prevent this from happening is to modify the vegetation in highly dense areas, Berthoud Fire took it upon itself to thin out an area halfway up Cougar Run Lane, an area just south of Carter Lake, by cutting and removing dead trees and heavy canaopy overgrowth. Not only does this process reduce fire hazards, it also improves the health of the wooded area.
After this mitigation became a success, a large "slash pile" (debris/branches from the August vegtation thinning project) accumulated and was in need of being removed. Therefore, on the 1st and 2nd of this month, we took the opportunity to perform a controlled burn of this pile while there was still snow on the ground!
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