photo credit: Courtesy Marin Wildfire Prevention Authority
Shaded fuel breaks rob wildfires of enough fuel to slow explosive growth, giving firefighters a better shot at containing a blaze.

When forests turn tinder dry and an errant spark ignites a wildfire, humidity, wind speed and direction become critical.

Conditions on the ground matter too.

Recognition of that fact led to an agreement. Announced earlier this year, federal and state agencies are joining private landowners---mainly forestry companies---to prepare for, and defend against wildfires that seem to be gaining in intensity and frequency.

The agreement seeks to coordinate the building and maintaining of shaded fuel breaks--a tool perhaps more important than air tankers.

In the first in a series of stories on shaded fuel breaks, KRCB's Marc Albert spoke with Matt Dias, president and CEO of Calforests, a trade association representing forestry products and logging companies that own and manage 3.5 million acres of California.

Dias says member companies are very much interested.