California’s largest wildfire, the August Complex, is working its way toward the cannabis-growing enclave of Post Mountain-Trinity Pines. Law enforcement officers went door to door encouraging the farmers to evacuate, but many won’t leave their farms. Here’s the area:
The Trinity Pines area is home to up to 40 legal farms plus many more illegal growers. Each legal farm has crops worth half a million dollars or more. Some plants are as tall as 16 feet and currently budding, within days or weeks of harvest.
The farmers are hesitant to evacuate fearing that even if the fires don’t claim their crops, thieves would. The fire crews are doing their part to help save the weed. They dug a 40-foot-wide dozer line around the area and are planning to also use nearby Highway 36 as a containment line. Residents have hung signs along the back roads pointing to the areas of their concern to help the fire crews.
It’s estimated that as many as 1,000 people have remained in Post Mountain and Trinity Pines despite the looming fire threat.