Recent rains provide chance to use ‘fire to fight fire’ with prescribed burns in backcountry
Jason Kraling sank his fingers deep into the spongy soil on Mount Laguna Saturday and pulled out a fistful of dead leaves, brittle pine needles, shards of wood and rich brown soil. “Look at how moist this is,” said Kraling, a fire battalion chief with the U.S. Forest Service. “We’ve gotten a reprieve from how dry things were last summer. It’s a good time for prescribed burns.” Years of sporadic drought had left San Diego County so parched that firefighters thought the region would explode with wildfires as soon as the Santa Ana winds returned in the fall.
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