Rim Fire trees sailing to China, domestic mills “pretty much at capacity”

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From Reed Fujii, staff writer with the The Record, Stockton, California:

If there’s a silver lining to last year’s Rim Fire, California’s third-largest recorded wildfire, scorching more than 257,000 acres around and in Yosemite National Park, it may be in the piles of logs now being stacked up at the Port of Stockton.

MDI Forest Products, an Oakland-based timber and lumber export company, is staging the logs at the port for shipment to Far East lumber mills.

The logs will be stripped of bark, then loaded into shipping containers and moved via the port’s Marine Highway barges to Oakland and from there on to China, primarily, and perhaps Japan and Korea, said Gary Liu, MDI chief executive and managing partner.

Fire-damaged or weakened trees need to be salvaged quickly, before insects or diseases further reduce their value.

“The Rim fire is bringing a lot of private timber onto the market,” Liu said.

And there is demand for logs from Asian lumber mills.

“There just hasn’t been an alternative,” he said Monday. “The domestic mills are pretty much at capacity.”

Read the entire story here.

Here’s some more posts about the Rim Fire from the NCFP blog archives.

NOTE: Since Gil DeHuff has previously questioned my attempts to research, obtain and use links to provide NCFP readers with additional context and information about frequent topics on this blog, I’d like to point out that the links to more posts about the Rim Fire were obtained by simply typing in the words “Rim Fire” to the search box on the homepage of this blog. Therefore, any credit or conspiracy or fault as to what’s included – or not included – in the archives should be directed towards the creator of WordPress’ search engine program. Thank you.