Largest California wildfire threatens marijuana crop
SACRAMENTO » California’s largest wildfire is threatening a marijuana-growing enclave, and authorities said many of the locals have refused to evacuate and abandon their maturing crops even as weather forecasters predict more hot, dry and windy conditions that could fan flames.
Thewildfire called theAugust Complex is nearing the small communities of Post MountainandTrinity Pines, about 200miles northwest of Sacramento, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Law enforcement officers went door to doorwarning of the encroaching fire danger but could not force residents to evacuate, Trinity County Sheriff’s Department Deputy Nate Trujillo said.
“It’smainlygrowers,” Trujillo said. “And a lot of them, they don’t want to leave because that is their livelihood.”
As many as 1,000 people
remained in PostMountain and Trinity Pines, authorities and local residents estimated Thursday.
Numerous studies in recent years have linked bigger U.S. wildfires to global warming from the burning of coal, oil and gas, especially because climate change has made California
much drier. A drier California means plants are more flammable.
The threatened marijuana growing area is in the Emerald Triangle, a threecounty corner of Northern California that by some estimates is the nation’s largest cannabis-producing region.
People familiar with
Trinity Pines said the community has up to 40 legal farms, with more than 10 times that number in hidden, illegal growing areas.
Growers are wary of leaving the plants vulnerable to flames or thieves. Each farm has crops worth half a million dollars or more and many are within days or weeks of harvest.
One estimate put the value of the area’s legal marijuana crop at about $20 million.
“There (are) millions of dollars, millions and millions of dollars of marijuana out there,” Trujillo said. “Some of those plants are 16 feet tall, and they are all in the budding stages of growth right now.”
Gunfire in the region is common. A recent night brought what locals dubbed the “roll call” of cannabis cultivators shooting rounds from pistols and automatic weapons as warnings to outsiders, said Post Mountain volunteer Fire Chief Astrid Dobo, who alsomanages legal cannabis farms.
Mike McMillan, spokesman for the federal incident command team managing the northern section of the August Complex, said fire officials plan to deliver a clear message that “we are not going to die to save people. That is not our job.”
“We are going to knock door to door and tell them once again,” McMillan said. “However, if they choose to stay and if the fire situation becomes, as we say, very dynamic and very dangerous … we are not going to risk our lives.”
Efforts to extinguishmore than two dozen major wildfires across California have benefitted recently fromlow winds and normal temperatures along with and moist air flowing inland from the Pacific. But forecasters said that weather pattern will reverse during the weekend as a ridge of high pressure boosts temperatures and generates gusty winds flowing from the interior to the coast.
In northern and central areas of the state the strongest winds were forecast to occur from Saturday night into Sunday morning, followed by another burst Sunday night into Monday.
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