The North Lake Tahoe Fire Protection District’s board of directors tentatively agreed Wednesday to the terms of a joint hand crew between their district and the North Tahoe Fire Protection District.

The board agreed unanimously to approve the 20 member hand crew, which will be funded by both districts, on the condition legal details be hammered out by board counsel Geno Menchetti, chairman Wayne Fischer and NLTFPD Chief Mike Brown.
The hand crew is funded for 104 days worth of fuels reduction work on the North Shore’s California side, and North Tahoe Fire Chief Duane Whitelaw said he is excited about the move.

“We see this as an asset to our district” Whitelaw said. “Incline does a great job and are proven in the field of fuels reduction.”

Whitelaw said his district previously hired private defensible space contractors to do thinning, but said last summer’s Angora fire caused the district to re-examine its fuels reduction program.

Greg McKay, NLTFPD assistant fire chief, said the crew will help both sides of the California/Nevada divide by providing another hand crew for the Basin.

The crew will stay in the Basin, Whitelaw said, and not respond to out-of-area fires but will respond to any fires in the Tahoe area.

“This hand crew will stay in the Basin and that is great, they can keep their thinning operations going and drop everything if there is a local fire and respond to it. It seems like the wise way to go,” Whitelaw said.

The crew will be selected and commanded by personnel from the NLTFPD, since the Incline-based district has previous hand crew experience, McKay said.

Whitelaw said the crew is expected to be active sometime in May and could lead to North Tahoe starting its own hand crew.

“We’re going to see how this works out in the first year and eventually would like to get to the point where we could have our own crew,” Whitelaw said.

The contract between the two districts must also be approved by North Tahoe’s board of directors before the crew can be activated.