Source: Page 88 of White Noise Keywords: "siding," "streams," "good"

From: "Larry Harrell" Subject: The Biscuit from the loggers point of view (long) Date: 4 Apr 2005 Newsgroups: alt.forestry

April 3, 2005 Oregon Mail Tribune Logging the Fiddler salvage sale 'I guess they just don't see our side of it,' logger says of protesters; trees burned in 2002's Biscuit fire fall By PAUL FATTIG Mail Tribune KERBY - Lumbering machines danced a clanking ballet atop the Fiddler Mountain log landing as Rick Parrett considered his gut reaction to protesters he saw on the way to work that morning. No anger, shrugged the soft-spoken logger. "I guess they just don't see our side of it," said the Canyonville-area resident. "We're coming out here to get rid of the dead trees and get a forest going again. "It isn't only our jobs - we're doing this for the future," he added. "This is a renewable resource. If you don't come in here and take care of it, you're going to lose 50 years of growth, maybe more." Parrett, 48, who has been working in the woods for 30 years, is a "siderod" - the boss of the logging operation at this particular site. Several logging "shows" are occurring simultaneously on this mountain a half-dozen air miles northwest of Kerby in the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest. He works for Allen & Gibbons Logging, a Canyonville logging firm contracted by the Merlin-based Silver Creek Timber Co., purchaser of the 14.5 million-board-foot salvage sale. About 50 loggers are working on the sale, including more than two dozen timber fallers. Logging began March 7 on the salvage sale, roughly 2½ years after the 2002 Biscuit fire burned through nearly half a million acres in the region. The agency plans to harvest some 370 million board feet of fire-killed trees on about 19,500 acres, representing about 4 percent of the burned area. The actual harvest is expected to be less because of deterioration of the dead wood since the fire. The Fiddler salvage sale is among those outraging environmentalists who, while noting they aren't opposed to all salvage, object strenuously to any logging in old-growth or roadless tracts. Nearly 50 have been arrested during protests on the road to the old-growth sale. While the loggers say they have no animosity toward the protesters, a small logo painted on the door of one of their vehicles displays the silhouette of a figure urinating on the words "Tree Huggers." The woods humor notwithstanding, the loggers say they are focusing on their jobs, not the protesters. The work is dangerous enough without any distractions, Parrett will tell you. He broke his left leg two decades ago while working as a choker setter. A log swung around and snapped the bone, he explained. "Back then you ran in for your job and out for your life," he quipped, then added, "We're a lot more safety conscious today." Towering over the work site is a giant yellow yarder with a boom rising 63 feet high. A nearly one-inch-diameter cable trails from the yarder down into the canyon below, stretching almost 2,500 feet to the block anchored at the bottom. The fire-blackened logs are brought to the landing where a "chaser" runs in to release the chokers, allowing a logger operating a computerized cutting machine to remove limbs and buck the logs to desired lengths. In addition to Parrett, the crew includes three in the brush - two choker setters and a hook tender - and four loggers on the landing. The latter comprises three machine operators and a chaser. During a break from the heavy metal dance, log loader operator Gary Stornetta, 59, of Azalea, talked about the logging woods he entered when he was 16. "I've been meaning to get out but can't seem to leave her," he said. "It kind of gets in your blood. You don't know any better so you just keep going. "But logging has been good to me, helped me raise a family," he added. "I'm not complaining." Yet Stornetta, a white-haired fellow with a quick wit, agreed the work can be hazardous. "I got a tree on me about three years ago - broke my pelvis in seven places," he said, adding, "Trees are heavy, let me tell you." After spending six months recuperating, Stornetta returned to the woods. Like the other loggers, Stornetta doesn't much care for working with fire-killed trees. The ash that is little more than sludge now will turn to dust come the dry season, he said. "When it turns hot, this ash will be bad stuff," he said. "The guys on the ground will have it the worst. It'll get in your throat - be there all summer." He also expects periodic protests all summer. "But this is a free country - they can do what they damn well please," he said before returning to work. "They are a little bit of a nuisance, that's all." Some of the logs Stornetta is stacking on the log deck are being hauled to Roseburg Forest Products mills in Douglas County; others are bound for the Rough and Ready Lumber Co. mill just south of Cave Junction. Oregon Oversea Timber Co. in Bandon also will receive some of the wood, although none of the logs will be sent overseas. The salvaged wood will be turned into lumber, siding or plywood. But the wood from the unit won't be worth salvaging if logging is delayed beyond the coming summer, said John West, 42, president of Silver Creek Timber Co. "This is it," West said. "If you brought me here at the end of the summer and asked if I wanted to buy this timber, I'd have to say I don't want nothing to do with it." But the condition of the wood, some of it deteriorated from rot and insect infestation, changes with each unit, he said. Wood on the cooler, wetter north slopes tend to better preserved, he noted. Hailing from Glendale, West is a second-generation timber industry worker; his father retired from a Glendale sawmill. West was a log scaler for a decade before going into the business end of logging 15 years ago. He has an associate's degree in forestry from a community college and nearly completed his bachelor's degree in forestry from Oregon State University before a high-paying job in the woods called him away from the classroom. Some of the timber fallers are from Grants Pass and Medford but others are from Klamath Falls with at least one hailing from Idaho, he said. "It's hard to get people to work in the woods now," said West, who is also a subdivision developer. "After the mills and logging went down, a lot of them retrained and got new jobs." It's too early to tell how the company will fare on the Fiddler salvage project, he said. The firm paid $1,060,790 for the sale, meeting the Forest Service's advertised price. It was the sole bidder. "I need to see the percentage of defect," he said. "I had to make a ballpark figure when we bought it. "Our prediction is the wood in a lot of other units will hold up better," he added. "If it all looked like that log there, we'd be in serious trouble." He pointed to a nearby log about a foot in diameter. Roughly four inches of its exterior was rotted. If a logging firm nets $10 to $20 per thousand board feet from a sale, it can stay in the black, West said. "But that's after every single cost - rock on the road, loggers' pay, truckers' pay, for slash disposal, all those things that go along with it," he said. "The rule of thumb is when you make an investment like this, you should make $50 per thousand," he added. "I've got logs here where I'm losing $50 per thousand but I've also got logs where I'm making $100 per thousand. It all averages out." Like Parrett, he shrugs off the protesters. "They have the right to voice their opinion," he said. "It's when they step across the line - chain themselves to trucks, block the road or dig it up - their rights don't give them that. They hurt themselves with that." The loggers offered to give food and water to the protester who spent at least one night in a tree within the salvage sale, West said. "We weren't going to hurt him," he said. "But we came back the next morning and he was gone." Bill Meilicke, 52, West's business partner, said he had a amiable chat with the fellow who called himself "Chance." "He told me he didn't have anything against logging but that we were taking too much," said Meilicke, a Medford resident. "I told him we were taking only a few trees." The logger figures it's better to log fire-killed trees instead of green trees. "All I see is waste if we don't," Meilicke said. Like the other loggers, he came to the profession through family ties. "My father was a logger - he was killed," he said. "My stepfather was a logger." Meanwhile, his youngest son is now operating a log loader for the outfit. "It's continuing," the senior Meilicke said of the family tradition. "I love being in the mountains. I like to hunt and fish but I love to log. "If I hunted and fished as much as I logged, I'd get burned out," he added. "But I could do this every day." So could Parrett, who has done everything from setting chokers to slinging rigging - hooking up the cable systems. Parrett, who is married with children, is also a second-generation logger. His father is a former logger who now works for a mill in northeastern Oregon. "Two of my kids have gone in the lumber market - working in the mills," he said as he kept an eye on the logging operation. "I like working outdoors - I'd hate to be cooped up in an office," he said. "I like the physical part of it, keeping in shape. That's why I'm still getting out and going over the bank to set chokers." He gets up each work day at 3 a.m. to arrive at the logging site by 6 a.m. After working nine hours, he heads home to rest and prepare for another day. But logging has changed over the years, he said. "In some ways it's been for the better," he said. "We're more environmentally conscious as far as protecting the streams and that kind of stuff. "We try to teach everybody how their job can impact the forest, about keeping sediment out of the streams and utilizing all the wood we get," he added. Another change is the on-going press coverage, he said with a shake of his head. "I wouldn't have dreamt it 10 years ago, surely not 20 years ago," he said. "This is Grand Central Station up here now." As he talked, three quick whistles sounded from the yarder, followed by three toots and then two more. "Three whistles means they are picking up the logs," he said before heading back to work. "Three and two means the carriage is coming up the hill." Comment by poster: Great article! These guys are just going about their jobs and focusing on their work. It's tough-as-nails, dirty and physically-demanding work. It's also tough for the inspectors, as well. It's just not right to survey things from the landing. You have to go down into the unit and watch operations from there, as well. I HAVE seen guys who'll just bullshit with the truck drivers and have their mug of coffee while logs are skidded, trucks are loaded and stuff is happening. To me, it's ESPECIALLY important to make sure that the logger ALWAYS sees you inspecting. There's also times when you actually hide from their folks and see what they do when they think you're not watching. One of these days, I'll look up the old Russian quote from the Reagan era that means "trust, but verify". Larry, not the logger's friend

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