3/10/2014 BOARD OF SELECTMEN Minutes

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�1 NATURAL R1 RESOURCE • R MANAGEMENT s Seeing the Difference with Every Tree Cut Down By Jesse Freeman-Erbin After seven months on Cape Cod, myself and the other five members of the FireCorps, have served on many different projects and learned even more. The majority of our time has been spent serving with the National Park Service in Wellfleet, under the tutelage of Fire Management Officer, Dave Crary and Assistant Fire Management Officer, ,Justin DeForest. x Our first couple months were enveloped with learning. Learning how to be a Wildland Firefighter; learning how to use achainsaw; learning more than I could ever imagine about the weather and the role weather plays in fire; learning to use a wood chipper; learning how to use pumps to supply water to a fire; the list goes on! I, for one, was surprised by how much there is to learn about the day to day activities and the science —Members clearins Old Kins' that goes into wildland firefighting and maintaining the health of the forests where these fires might take place. The vast majority of service projects the FireCorps has been completing are fuels reduction projects. The basic idea behind these projects is to go into a designated area that has become overgrown with fuel and selectively remove some fuel. By thinning the fuel load, we are decreasing the likelihood of a catastrophic fire, which would be more dangerous to suppress and contain due to the large amounts of fuel. Although we have participated in a number of prescribed fires in order to reduce the fuel loads, due to the snow and rain of winter, we have mainly been removing fuel through mechanical means, i.e. chainsaws. The typical day of service,has us in the field for upwards of seven hours using chainsaws, pole saws,brushcutters, backpack blowers and other various hand tools. Once we cut down the trees, one of three things happens to them. First option is that we feed it through a wood chipper, second option is to burn it and third option is to leave it on the ground to create habitat for salamanders and eventually degrade on its own. Burning the biomass is a much faster way to remove the fuels, but has to be done safely when the conditions are right. There is the ever present danger of burning your eyebrows off. At this point, all six of the FireCorps members have burned off some facial hair! One specific project where you can directly see the impact of the service we have done is Old Kings Highway Fire Road. Old Kings Highway is a limited access fire road that runs parallel to Route 6. In the event of an emergency or a disaster requiring Cape Cod residents to evacuate, Old Kings Highway would be used as a route for priority emergency traffic — ambulances most critically. Without Old Kings Highway, or the other fire-roads like it, emergency traffic would be forced to compete for space on public roads with civilians, potentially slowing response times during a period when emergency medical response might be crucial. Since disaster preparedness is among the biggest of AmeriCorps Cape Cod's focus areas, it makes sense that maintaining such an important piece of Cape Cod's disaster-relief infrastructure would be a key task. We began the project in October and since then — serving on this project on and off— we have completed maintenance on nearly two miles of Old Kings Highway. The road needs to be wide enough to allow an ambulance to follow it, so we have been brushing and mowing the sides, sawing down encroaching trees, and chipping or burning everything we cut. In our wake we leave a six foot buffer on each side of the road, more than enough space to drive an ambulance through, even in rough conditions. We know, there are many more miles and acres of fuel reduction to go, but when you look around and see the impact of your service on the Cape Cod environment and community, it is easy to carry on. 12