Waters Littered with Post-Fire Debris Added Plugs to the Flood

This is part three of our four-part series where we are going to dive into some of the issues facing Tulare county producers this spring.

We are joined again by Tulare County Farm Bureau Executive Director Tricia Stever-Blattler.

Last episode Tricia mentioned Tulare’s creeks and smaller water ways weren’t prepared for the volume and speed of water coming from larger rivers, and the community is still feeling those impacts. She says what the water is transporting off the mountains adds to the damage.

“There's a lot of tree debris and sediment and silt and erosion coming out of our forest, which have experienced large high heat, and what we would call catastrophic level forest fires over the last decade. Several of these fires have added a lot of debris to the forest floors, and in that debris, when we had these rainstorms started sending dead trees and branches and leaf material down these rivers. And unfortunately as those big tree branches and tree trunks got stuck in culverts and at bridges… it created massive damage. So a lot of the farmers have been out using their own heavy equipment to clear channels and try to save a lot of communities right around their own neighborhoods.”