>> It's like chasing a snowball downhill only it's tinder -
>> As we drive by the highway, as I drive into my camp,
I look at every other tree virtually is dead or dying.
>> We're faced with a situation that's really beyond our ability
to handle either logistically or financially -
>> Watching the trees die around us, it's almost like looking
at matchsticks throughout the forest ready to ignite and burn down the community.
>> No, pretending is a dead end.
If a major wild land fire starts into our community, we will be overwhelmed -
>> It's very frustrating to have to live your daily life wondering
if I leave the mountain, will my children be safe.
>> When the big fire happens that we're going to be hard pressed to get people
out of here in a timely fashion -
>> If we have to evacuate, there's only one real road out of here.
>> The local residents are quite honestly scared to death.
They're worried about losing their homes, they're worried about losing their schools,
they're worried about losing their businesses, and they're worried about losing their lives.
[ Background Sounds and Music ]
>> For 24 million people in the Los Angeles Basin,
the San Bernardino National Forest is an island in a sea of suburbia.
It is home to more than 20 threatened and endangered species,
and it's a critical natural resource that offers a unique refuge to millions
who live and play in it every year -
>> It's the only place that I know that's local enough for our several hundreds of thousands
of students down the hill where they can come and see all this in a day or week-long camp.
>> Growing up in Los Angeles, this has always been the place to, you know, escape.
To find refuge and inspiration -
>> When my family and I moved here, in order to appreciate a lifestyle,
in order to have a sense of calm.
>> But across the West, a firestorm is brewing -
>> Right here, we have a forest that's in big trouble.
>> Years of fire suppression and public opposition
to forest thinning have led to unnaturally dense conditions.
As a result of severe drought and overstocking, the trees have become stressed
and extremely vulnerable to natural predators like the bark beetle,
which is killing them by the thousands -
>> We've known for a long time we had a forest health problem
in the San Bernardino National Forest, and probably throughout the West,
but we have not had the resources nor the public will to deal with it.
Communities have objected.
>> As trees do all the time, they're always recruiting and making new ones.
Fires in the past selective eliminated most of those trees.
Without any fire in the system for 100 years, it has been relentless recruitment
of more trees competing for water.
More trees are going to die -
>> Because there's so many drought-stressed trees,
the bark beetle populations have built up to huge numbers.
>> Other diseases and pathogens came in and took advantage of very stressed trees,
and the die off has been astronomical.
>> With up to 100 percent tree mortality in some areas,
190 million acres of public land are at risk -
>> It's absolutely tragic.
It's just overwhelming to look across a mountaintop, look a ridge of trees that used
to be green, and now it's just totally brown.
>> It's not a few trees in the forest.
This morality here is unprecedented.
There's not a person who's come to this mountain
that hasn't said they've never seen anything like this in their career -
>> Usually, green conifers carpet the San Bernardino mountains, but now the dead
and dying trees look strangely like fall colors not common to this area -
>> These trees that have been killed by drought and bark beetles and other pests are fuel,
and a fire that comes through here will not just take out the dead trees.
They'll, it'll take out all the trees.
>> We are very afraid this fire season because of the drought we've been experiencing.
There are tens of thousands of people living in these communities that are totally surrounded
by national forests and 100 percent affected by our management decisions.
>> With nearly 100,000 people living within its boundaries,
the San Bernardino National Forest has the largest urban population
of any national forest in the United States.
This community that relies largely on tourism for its livelihood owns residential
and community property totaling seven billion dollars.
>> You know, we rely on tourist trade here.
This is a resort, and if all the trees are dead, people aren't going to want to come up here.
This town, if it doesn't burn down, it'll dry up and blow away.
>> It's a regional problem that will affect the economy of Southern California,
if not the entire state of California, and it's a problem
that will affect the entire western region -
>> Once you cut trees down [inaudible] -
>> The community is very frustrated.
People are scared to death.
I have people in my neighborhood who are putting their houses up for sale.
>> Many are out already many thousands of dollars
and potentially tens of thousands of dollars.
With trees dying on the property, the cost of getting them removed.
>> It's costing some homeowners thousands of dollars to remove one tree on their property -
>> We have many people that they will take care of the trees on their property,
but their neighbor will not be perhaps they cannot.
Many are on fixed incomes -
>> An 84-year-old lady called us indicating that she had spent three months
of her Social Security income last spring on taking down some dead trees, again,
trying to be a responsible homeowner, but not six months later, she has ten more dead trees,
and she doesn't have the funding or wherewithal to take them down.
>> Tree mortality in this community means every single tree on your personal land is dead.
That's a concern because these trees are right
up against people's houses, not by feet but by inches -
>> So we have an entire neighborhood that's standing
in a forest of entirely dead pine trees.
>> The trees continue to die, but they continue to stand and pose a major fuel load.
>> Well, we've been using every available resource,
including government crews, private contractors.
We've been taking down hundreds, if not getting the thousands of trees, but we are not able
to keep up with the amount of trees that are dying.
>> We are doing all that we can to remove the dead trees and the other dying vegetation,
but it's dying faster than we can get the stuff out -
>> The public is demanding a response to this issue, and it doesn't matter what patch you have
on your sleeve, but they want the government to show up and do their job p-
>> The crews have been working very hard.
We're doing the best we can with what we have.
It's barely making a dent.
>> But with 77,000 dead trees currently on the private lands within the forest boundaries,
local agencies have been overwhelmed.
At their fastest rate of removal, 150 trees a day, they still need 500 days to cut
down just the current stock of dead trees.
Unfortunately, a dangerous fire season will arrive long before that.
>> A crown fire or a timber fire that might start moving
through this community is not defensible, neither by the volunteers
that protect our community nor by the professionals that work nationwide.
>> The BTU value or the heat that's given off of those trees is so extreme that many houses,
the fire service won't be able to make an approach on them because the heat coming
from the entire length of that tree.
>> The amount of energy suppression is trivial compared to the energy of fires.
People seem to think because there's air tankers or bulldozers,
this part of firefighting is, actually has very little use.
Little effect -
>> We know that if a fire comes up here, it is going to be catastrophic because the mortality
of trees is lending itself to just being a fuel box and ready for, like, an explosion.
>> These communities are at the top of the mountain.
In this landscape, the fires that start below us always run uphill.
>> And we have the potential of putting a crown fire
through a town of tens of thousands of people.
>> In these fuel conditions, the fire has the capability of burning so intense at such a rate
of speed, getting people evacuated off is our greatest concern.
>> In this area, there are as many as 5,000 kids on any given day,
and there is one main thoroughfare in and out of camp.
We would have difficulty bringing up buses and removing the kids and taking them to safety -
>> If it were something that just suddenly flared up, and we had to get out,
let's say, in an hour, we'd never make it.
>> It will be very, very difficult.
We only have three ways off of the mountain, and when you designate one road to bring
up equipment and another road to get forty some thousand people off of the mountain,
especially nighttime, it's going to be a catastrophe.
>> Nobody wants to be trapped in an area
where there's only one way road in and out supposedly -
>> It's not going to be, oh, yeah, you can hang out here.
You know, we have it under control.
It's going to be get out.
So there, you're talking seconds.
>> The problem that we're trying to solve now is an immediate problem,
and we are trying to address the immediate public safety needs, but it's more than that.
It's a long-term project that we're working on because what we're trying to do is provide
for the best possible management of the national forest -
>> It's not going to end when this drought ends.
Obviously, the immediate concern is the dead trees, but after that, there's going to have
to be intensive thinning of live trees.
>> If we don't do any vegetation treatment now, we're going to lose species,
but more importantly, we're going to lose the habitat in which the species rely on,
and they won't recolonize for many years.
Maybe at all.
>> We have to set up a management system that thins these forests down.
Within the urban areas, it means real cutting, but simulating the ecology of these ecosystems.
That is getting rid of young trees and leaving the big ones.
>> The situation we're in with the forest health, the densification,
it's not about timber sales to make boards for saw mills.
It's about saving human lives.
It's about saving this forest for the 24 million people
in Southern California that use it on a daily basis.
It's about saving it and having a forest and having a vision for what kind
of forest we'd like 50 or 100 years from now -
>> You can't keep every leaf.
This is just not an option because this place is hazardous for public safety -
>> I'm really worried that if we don't do things, and we don't do things in a hurry,
we're going to lose an ecosystem, we're going to lose communities,
and we're going to lose a lot of lives.
>> It doesn't matter how wealthy you are or how poor you are, you still have a home.
You still have a livelihood, and to lose that home, is going to be,
it's going to be catastrophic for those people -
>> The forest is dying.
It's absolutely coming our way, and there's nothing we can do to stop it at this point -
>> I'm literally helpless in the face of the situation -
>> Government machinery is set up to respond after the fact, you know.
After you've had the flood come in and take away the houses, or after you've had the fire go
through and burn down a city, then the money comes in to help people rebuild.
>> Our concern, of course, is what's going to be left when the fire goes through.
Not only the potential loss of life but the complete destruction
of a community that's been here since the late 1800's.
>> I've been in this business forty years.
I have a lot of co-workers that have been in this business a long time.
None of us have seen anything like this, the magnitude of this,
and the threatened communities and threatened lives
and threatened ecosystems that we're seeing here today.