What is ladder fuel?
Our foresters and contractors informed the Committee that technically-speaking, there are four categories of fuel types commonly referred to in wildfire discussions: ground fuels, surface fuels, ladder fuels and canopy fuels. In discussions at CMR, surface fuels (litter layer, downed woody materials and dead or live plants to the 6 foot height) and ladder fuels (those fuel materials that provide a vertical connection between the surface or understory and the forest canopy) are lumped together for our discussions. At CMR the most common ladder fuel includes dead or live foliage with low-moisture or high pitch contents, draped dead limbs and branches (particularly those with an abundance of small twigs or dry pine needles), hanging or broken branches, and standing or partially fallen dead or diseased trees. An important wildfire defensive objective is to prevent a more manageable/defensible ground or grass fire from climbing and creating a more severe canopy wildfire that typically have
