Replanting begins for millions of trees burned in Station fire

Volunteers have begun the long process of replanting trees burned during the largest fire in Los Angeles County history.

Crouching on a charred slope in the Angeles National Forest, La Cañada Flintridge resident John Schiller carefully packed soil around a 6-inch green sapling. It will serve as a replacement for one of the millions of trees burned in the Station fire last August.

“I think if [the forest is] all of ours to enjoy, it’s all of ours to take care,” Schiller said.

Schiller and his wife, Karin, were among the three dozen volunteers who spent Saturday working alongside representatives of the U.S. Forest Service as well as Tree People, a forest conservation group, planting young Coulter and Ponderosa pines.

The event, which took place at Chilao Campground, located half a mile south of Newcomb’s Ranch Restaurant on Angeles Crest Highway, was part of a comprehensive, multiyear reforestation project being spearheaded by the Forest Service, according to the La Cañada Valley Sun.

The Station fire, which ignited just north of La Cañada on Aug. 26, burned 53 square miles of forest. In some places the heat was so intense that it seared the soil, hampering future natural regeneration. And in the foothills immediately north of the Crescenta-Cañada area, it created conditions ripe for dangerous debris flows.

Read the full story here.

-- Megan O'Neil, reporter for the La Cañada Valley Sun

Photo: Beth Olhasso and John Stranger plant pine tree saplings on a slope in the Angeles National Forest on Saturday. The Foothill Reforestation Committee is leading a local grassroots effort to assist the U.S. Forest service with replanting the San Gabriel Mountains. Credit: La Cañada Valley Sun