LOS ANGELES (AP) — Months before a wildfire burned 280 square miles at the edge of Los Angeles, a little-known group was awarded a $178,000 grant to clear flammable brush and tree limbs to protect a mountain neighborhood in the Angeles National Forest. The work proposed for 90 acres in Big Tujunga Canyon was never done, and the grant was rescinded two days before the massive blaze ignited Aug. 26. Sixty homes were burned in the rugged canyon, by far the greatest concentration of property damage in the huge wildfire. The ferocity of the fire makes it difficult to say how many homes, if any, might have been spared if the work had been completed. —-Contact The Daily Reveille’s News Staff at [email protected]
Wildfires grant rescinded after group fails to clear flammable brush
September 19, 2009