Thousands of burned trees force difficult decisions

After Brad and Brandy Sherwood moved into their Larkfield home in 2013, neighbors urged the couple not to take down the walnut tree in the front yard whose expansive branches had invited generations of local children to climb aboard or play beneath.

For four years, the Sherwoods gladly followed their neighbors’ advice. But Friday morning, their two young children and 10-month-old goldendoodle ran around that massive tree for the last time, just before an orange-vested arborist’s chainsaw began buzzing, taking with it another casualty of the October wildfires.

As the branches began falling, Brad Sherwood stood on the other side of Chelsea Drive, using his cellphone to capture the moment.

“It kinda hurts,” he said. “Only because we’ve tried to protect those limbs for the last four years.”

Just a few months before the devastating firestorm, the Sherwoods hired a professional pruner to maintain the century-old tree, which was older than their entire Larkfield Estates neighborhood. Longtime residents said the tree was a remnant from when the area was a walnut and prune orchard.

For a bit, it seemed the neighborhood fixture might survive. But after separate inspections by three arborists, the verdict was clear: The Sherwoods’ walnut tree was a safety hazard and had to come down.

The family can now count itself among scores of Sonoma County fire victims making difficult, often emotional, decisions about which burned trees they must fell and which they can leave standing.

In Larkfield-Wikiup and Mark West Springs, the blow hits particularly hard as residents of the unincorporated community north of Santa Rosa grapple with the idea that their rural roads and subdivisions once filled with towering trees will bear obvious scars from the Tubbs fire long after the first homes are rebuilt.

“The neighborhood will just never be the same with the established trees and stuff like that,” said Windsor resident Greg Mohr, who grew up down the street from the property now owned by the Sherwoods.

“It seems like a majority of the people are staying in the neighborhood and are gonna rebuild, but it’s just not gonna seem like home.”

Mohr, 47, has fond memories of summer days playing games with other Larkfield Estates kids beneath the shade of the huge walnut tree on Chelsea Drive. Mohr can recall about five kids who broke or sprained bones while climbing on the tree, and he said they’d even have “walnut fights” when the nuts began falling.

Mohr also remembered a child of a prior homeowner who would sell walnuts from the tree to teachers at Mark West Elementary School. When the Sherwoods moved in, they developed their own tradition of giving walnuts as holiday gifts to family every year.

But the firestorm did away with all that. The Sherwoods won’t put a huge decorative spider on the tree for Halloween this year or wrap lights around it during Christmas. Brandy won’t see any of the squirrels, all of whom she lovingly nicknamed George, scurrying around the branches.

Yet as they rebuild their home, Brad, who works a spokesman for the Sonoma County Water Agency, is intent on planting another walnut tree.

“Abso-frickin’-lutely. Because we’re fighters and we don’t want this fire to beat us,” he said. “Maybe in another 50 years, we’ll have another beautiful walnut tree to look at.”

Farther along Mark West Springs Road from the Larkfield lowlands, where homes were once nestled in a heavily-forested environment on the edge of the Mayacamas Mountains, the Tubbs fire fundamentally altered the entire landscape. Scores of trees are now black, barren or felled.

“People are concerned our neighborhood has changed in so many ways, not only the fact that all the homes were destroyed, but also the place looks completely different,” said Barry Hirsch, whose Michele Way home burned down in October. “A lot of people lived out there because they liked that it’s very private and you can’t see your neighbors. Now, you can see everything.”

Further complicating the issue, PG&E crews felled a number of trees in his neighborhood months ago and have yet to remove them, Hirsch said. Numerous large logs remain on the ground off Michele Way marked with green paint to signify they were taken down by PG&E. Some property owners are concerned the utility cut down too many trees, and others simply want the remains cleared out. PG&E is in conversations with Sonoma County roads officials regarding the safest way to remove about 50 to 60 trees it felled along Mark West Springs Road, said Deanna Contreras, a spokeswoman for the utility. The effort couldn’t proceed during rainier weather, and will require temporarily closing one lane on Mark West Springs Road, she said.

After the fires, the utility cut down or pruned about 30,000 burned trees, including around 11,000 in Sonoma County, Contreras said.

While PG&E had to take down burned trees threatening power lines, the responsibility for actually removing them from the site may fall on customers if they own the land where the tree grew, she said.

Sonoma County officials also are still sorting through their own decisions about which burned trees to remove in or near public right of ways, including in the Mark West Springs corridor.

Another 10,700 trees have been designated for removal countywide, about 60 percent within the public road right of way and 40 percent on private property, said Johannes Hoevertsz, director of the county’s transportation and public works department.

The trees’ removal needs are categorized into varying levels of urgency, with 275 of them designated as “extreme,” or posing the most risk of falling into the roadway and causing injuries. A tree removal contract is expected to come before the Board of Supervisors as soon as next month, according to Hoevertsz.

Many individual private property owners, especially those like the Sherwoods whose homes bordered rural areas, have already had to make their own tough calls about which trees they can afford to keep. For Brandy Sherwood, it meant saying goodbye to one of her favorite things about her Larkfield Estates home.

“You can’t get a tree like that ever again,” she said. “It’s gone forever.”

For the Sherwoods, however, it’s not a final farewell. Also present at the tree-cutting Friday was a woodworker who plans to salvage part of their old tree as a dining room table, coffee table and fireplace mantle.

The wood has to season for two years first, but once the project is finished, the Sherwoods plan to gather around those tables inside their rebuilt home on Chelsea Drive - and, maybe someday, enjoy some walnuts from the new tree growing out front.