Slaughter for Safety

Pyramid of Four: madrone, canyon live oak, Douglas Fir, and coastal Redwood. From my friend Sam’s yard, where once upon a time, you couldn’t see the road.

I recently stopped by my friend Sam’s to bring him lunch. I know he fails to pack food when he works on his devastated land, and while he likes to brag that his new diet of nothing but beer and splitting wood is the secret to his slim physique, I thought some food was in order, as well as a bottle of wine. It’s always strange to visit his property, he has a bird’s eye view now of the ocean, but also of the acres and acres of newly cleared land in all directions. As we drank our wine together in the sun, the constant sound of chainsaws buzzed around us, annoying background noise like mall music. It’s never ending on the mountain now, trees being felled in all directions. In many cases, it’s homeowners trying to clean up the standing dead before fire season, but for other entities, the slaughter of the trees has become sport, or at least a game of let’s see who can chop down the most trees in the name of “safety.”

The chainsaws got louder and suddenly, I heard a crack like a glacier splintering apart. A huge tree fell, crashing into the others, before thundering to the ground. For a moment, my heart stopped and time stood still as I connected to the being we’d just lost. The men however began to whoop it up, yelling and cheering and I found it interesting how much conquering nature can get a person excited. Everywhere I looked, I saw the carcasses of trees, first taken down by PG&E so they could avoid having to continue to care for the trees near their faulty lines that literally burn down entire towns when the wind is too strong. Now it’s CalOES, California Office of Emergency Services, who is clear cutting the forest, taking the trees they think are going to fall into the road. For the most part, this is a good idea, we don’t want dead trees falling into the streets. There are plenty of trees that should have been brought down long ago, shame it took a firestorm that destroyed 800 homes for them to do their jobs.

However, one must be given a bit of perspective. In the weeks that followed the CZU Lightning fire, PG&E literally took every burnt tree near the road, because that’s where the power lines were. They went way beyond their Right of Way to do so. You can read here to see what they did to our neighborhood. For much of our mountaintop, we’d already been cleared. What’s left are trees that were burnt, but even PG&E was willing to leave behind, because there were some signs of life or they weren’t going to fall on the lines, which basically also means PG&E didn’t think they’d fall into the road, since the two so often go together. So why the does the removal continue at such a ravenous pace without permission from landowners? Turns out those who used the public option to clean the hazardous debris from their sites—clean soils is the gateway to getting your permitting started—also signed off the rights to removing hazardous trees that might endanger the public way, and the state, who is funded by the federal government or FEMA, determines what is hazardous.

There are some on the mountain who applaud this, just like the men who cheered the death of the great one I watched them fell. This isn’t surprising. My love for that tree, my ability to understand it as a living creature who deserved the chance to decide it’s death, that’s the strange thing. I have several trees that I watched die on my property and just yesterday, had to take them down. They were a hazard to my future home. The difference here is choice, both on my part as a landowner and on the part of the tree. I let them be green until they weren’t and then I called the tree crew to take them. The reverse is happening to us as a whole; landowners are not asked and thus, neither is the tree. We don’t live on our land right now, because our homes burned in the fires, and so while we’re away, the chainsaw men are having their play. They take the trees without warning, never bothering to ask if we’d like our own arborist to discuss the removal with theirs, or if we want the wood, or if we’d like them to clean it up. They cut them down like a combine in a corn field in September, clearing space after space each day, leaving the mountain bald as Dwayne Johnson, but nowhere near as handsome.

This is shocking to watch and a painful reminder of the society of which I’m a part. If we were willing to kill an entire human species because they stood in the way of mining, fishing, hunting, and farming lands, why wouldn’t we also kill the non-human species in our way of progress and profit? It’s not a small leap whatsoever for our people to destroy the very thing that gives us oxygen, just so we can have electricity. Don’t get me wrong, I love electricity. I spent the morning with a contractor trying to get it back on my land. But let’s take a good look at how we’re using our technology, literally a gift of the gods. We have more computing power in our pockets than used to launch the first rocket to the moon, yet the most important things we do with it is cancel one another on Twitter or watch YouTube videos.

You think you have rights as a landowner, but if you lose your home, you have literally nothing; not a home, nor a place at the table. I should be able to simply call PG&E and ask them to fix the burned power connection on my property, like I’m doing with my well. Instead, I have to apply for a temporary power permit, hire an electrician to install a 100 amp metered panel, and have the county inspect it, before PG&E will turn it on. Why? So that the county has the power to limit the amount of electricity I use on my land until I’ve built the house that meets their permitting criteria. If I don’t do that, they will shut off the power. Imagine it, I lived on that land for 14 years, and now, because my home burned, I’m no longer allowed to put in a hot tub and sit under the now incredibly open, starry sky? Because that’s not deemed an appropriate use of the land where I raised my children?

Yet this same county that can limit and control the amount of electricity I use to rebuild my life, can’t seem to keep PG&E from cutting my trees while I’m forced to live elsewhere at the moment? They can’t work with the state to create a plan where landowners and contractors meet to discuss the hazardous trees on their land BEFORE cutting them? The Planning Commission can literally put in hurdle after hurdle when it comes to regulating my ability to live on land I’ve called home for over a decade, but they can’t put in a simple procedure to inform us when they’re about to send in the crews to slaughter the few living beings left on the mountain?

I stood on the hill with my friend and he showed me how far into the distance he can now see. In all directions lie huge trunks, many unburnt, strewn like dead bodies left to rot in the sun after a great battle. There’s enough wood there on the ground to build fifty cities, yet lumber prices are up 193% since last year. What type of mind creates a world where we treat each other this way? What sort of race establishes such methods as business as usual? It’s incomprehensible, the amount of madness we put up with as the “new normal.”

Thanks to some community activism, it appears the county woke up from their slumber recently and asked that the clear cutting of the mountain take a moment and pause while they institute some procedures that force Anvil to discuss tree removal with owners first before taking the trees down. The crews I watched at Sam’s supposedly had owner permission. We’ll see. I’m grateful for my fellow Dooners that forced their hand, but I have lost my faith in our ability to govern. I know I’m on my own. If I didn’t have my other mountain friends, I don’t know what I’d do. Most people don’t lose their homes to disaster, and that’s a good thing, but a note to all of those who haven’t—yet—should you lose your home one day, your trees will not be considered yours, nor will your property. The county, state and utility providers can and will do what they wish to make it easier and more profitable for them, all the while using the word, “safety” as their justification. You’re not safe, you don’t have shelter for god’s sake, but what you need matters little. Which is why it’s no shock that the trees matter even less.