Nw Forests Severely Damaged By Storms

Recent storms that dumped ice and snow and brought high winds to the Pacific Northwest have caused millions of dollars of damage to area forests.

“It’s one of the worst things that’s happened around here for decades,” said Jerry Gutzwiler, a Weyerhaeuser Co. timberlands manager in southwest Washington.

Thousands of acres of Weyerhaeuser land in Grays Harbor, Pacific and Lewis counties, containing timber worth millions of dollars, were affected by the storm, Gutzwiler said. While little mature timber was blown down, trees that will come to maturity in the first part of the next century were devastated, he said.

“The hemlocks seemed to just flatten on the ground under the weight and the firs just broke. Both yield the same result in terms of destroying new stands of trees,” Gutzwiler said.

Rob Michie, timberlands manager for Simpson Timber Co. in Shelton, told a similar story.

Simpson, which has about 272,000 acres of timberland in Mason, Grays Harbor, Thurston and Lewis counties, suffered severe damage in stands between McCleary and Shelton, Michie said.

The city of Montesano saw its forest, about 5,000 acres north of town, decimated as well.

City forester Ron Schillinger called it “disaster city.”

He said that without getting an aerial view or access into the whole forest, he couldn’t give a good estimate. But he surmised at least 1 million board feet of timber in about 5,000 trees suffered damage - and he feared the damage could be twice that.

“It isn’t necessarily just the wind power that contributes to blow-down,” Schillinger said. “It’s the series of weather: (The) freeze and then a lot of rain, makes the soil very, very soft. Then you have a high wind come along that wouldn’t normally knock over the trees.”