Dozens Try To Prevent Slides

Jay Eversole hammered a wooden stake into a 25-foot tube of mesh-covered straw, anchoring it to a burned hillside. The 18-year-old construction worker was among nearly 70 volunteers who helped rehabilitate the Foothills on Saturday.

Without their work, a heavy rain could bring torrents of mud and debris rushing toward the North End and downtown Boise.

Eversole and others helped position straw wattles - long tubes of straw bound in netting - along slopes burned in the Eighth Street Fire. The straw wattles - like the fallen logs used in contour felling efforts in the forest - will help catch debris and slow the water flow when it rains.

“None of this is designed to stop water, because you can’t stop it,” said Gene Ottonello, an interagency operations chief.

“It’ll give the water a chance to percolate down into the soil. That’s what natural vegetation would do.”

On a nearby hillside, in a drainage north of the Hulls Gulch, another group of volunteers built dams with bales of straw.

Keith Jeffrey, a counselor at the Nampa Boys Home, accompanied a group of teenage boys who volunteered to help.

“Now I can give back to the community that gave me so much,” said Jeffrey, a former Boise State University football player.

Jeffrey and the boys helped build a straw check dam, which consists of three bales wrapped in chicken wire and wedged along intermittent streams.