Oregon: Clearcut logging destroys rural people’s lives with no consequences to the loggers who did it!

EAGLE CREEK — Foresters say it’s often unfair to attribute such
slides solely to logging. Some slopes have been susceptible to
landslides for centuries, long before logging began. Richard Smith
stood near the smoldering hulk of his home Saturday afternoon,
crumpled at the base of a collapsed wall of mud. The fire early Friday
took all his possessions except for the family Bible and his
grandfather’s World War II memorabilia that he grabbed as the slide
shoved his house off its foundation.

Smith and his wife, Stacey
Simpson, were grateful they and their two young daughters were able to
scramble through a damaged window to safety. Heavy rain, combined with
melting snow, has battered the region in recent days, causing
flooding, landslides and road closures. But Smith says he has seen his
nightmare coming since 2005, when nearby landowners clear-cut property
on a hillside above his home. “The minute I saw all the trees cut
down,” Smith recalled Saturday, “I said one of us is going to get
wiped out.”

For the neighbors, it is a prime example of the state’s
failure to protect homeowners from the potential dangers of logging
steep slopes. The clear-cuts, they say, were the essential ingredient
to cause a saturated hillside to give way. ODF officials couldn’t be
reached for comment Saturday, and the forest landowners either
couldn’t be reached or declined to comment.
http://www.oregonlive.com/clackamascounty/index.ssf/2009/01/clackamas_county_residents_pre.html
— Posted to http://forestpolicyresearch.com via gmail to posterous and
also to forestpolicyresearch@yahoogroups.com

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from Deane’s posterous