SPEARFISH, S.D. – It’s been more than a year since two tornadoes ripped through a portion of Spearfish Canyon and crews are now working on cleaning up the hazardous wildfire fuel in the area.
A multitude of local, state, and national agencies have come together to plan and implement the Spearfish Canyon Fuel Reduction project.
This project involves two aspects; handwork and machine work. Crews on handwork go up the steeper slopes that machines can’t access and manually trim trees into piles. Machine work stays on flat surfaces collecting and piling the fallen trees.
Their goal is to dispose of all that dried out debris so it doesn’t fuel any future wildfires.
Disposing of the dried trees means eliminating the fuel that would allow a wildfire to spread and grow, meaning, the work they do is not to prevent potential wildfires but to be able to control them.
Work on the project started earlier this month and officials say they hope to be done by the end of the year.
