Oregon Public Broadcasting

A project to clean up thousands of trees blown over in Oregon’s storms has won a national honor from the Society of American Foresters. Kristian Foden-Vencil reports.

This time last year Vernonia was hit by massive winds and inundated by floods -- leaving 800 families without power or heat.

Portland forester, Bob Alverts, put the problem of cold people and downed trees together and came up with ‘Project Woodcut.’

Rod Nichols of the Oregon Department of Forestry says Alverts organized dozens of timber workers and got permission from Bureau of Land Management, Weyerhauser and other landowners, to turn fallen trees into firewood.

Rod Nichols: “It really did help some people who were hard hit by the flooding in Vernonia because here they were without electricity and compounding it all, their firewood for the winter had floated away.”

Nichols says so many trees were knocked down in the storm that wildfire was a concern. Clearing the fallen trees helped alleviate the problem.