California firefighters run to protect giant sequoias | Smart News

California is raging last week KNP complex fire encroached on a grove of famous trees in Sequoia National Park. Firefighters rushed to wrap ancient trees in fireproof paper and cleared away flammable vegetation in the area. Authorities say the park’s most famous sequoias were sheltered from the fire yesterday.

“So far, none of our trees have been damaged”, noted Fire Information Officer Mark Garrett.

More than 7,500 wildfires have burned approximately 3,600 square miles of California so far this year, according to the Associated Press. Almost half of that land was burned by the Dixie Fire, which is the second largest fire on record in the state. Sequoia National Park has been closed to the public, and King Canyon National Park is still open despite the poor air quality. The KNP complex fire is a combination of lightning-ignited fires earlier this month and has since become 28,000 acres. From On Monday, the fire was zero percent contained.

The blaze sparked heightened concern last week when it entered an area of ​​the park called the Giant Forest, which is home to around 2,000 redwoods, including a famous group of trees called the Four Guardsmen. The grove of giant sequoias that attracts many tourists to the park includes the General Sherman Tree, which is considered the world’s largest by volume. Redwoods, which grow in some areas of the Sierra Nevada mountain range, can reach over 200 feet tall and live for thousands of years.

“Protecting communities is our primary focus and always will be, and that’s where most firefighting efforts are focused,” Clayton Jordan, Superintendent of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, told CNN. “But we have a special team of resource managers led by park staff who are focused on protecting the redwoods while the firefighters face the primary threat of the blaze.”

Firefighters wrapped the base of the trees in a fireproof blanket to protect them from the invading flames. The reflective material, which is also used in emergency shelters, is a fiberglass fabric that protects the trunk of the tree where damage from past fires could make it vulnerable to invasive embers.

“It’s like a big reel,” says Garrett, according to Christine Hauser for the New York Times. “They just unwrapped the roll and went around the base of the tree.”

Firefighters also use water and aerial drops of fire retardant to slow the fire, in addition to digging lines of fire. More … than 900 people are currently fighting the fire.

“We basically told the fire crews to treat all of our special redwoods as if they were buildings and wrap them all up, pick up all the rubbish and roll the heavy logs,” Christy Brigham, head of resource management and science for the Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, tells CNN.

Another tactic used by firefighters to control the intensity of forest fires in the area is prescribed burns, a ancient indigenous practice which involves lighting small, controlled fires to eliminate vegetation that could become fuel for forest fires. Fire management officials have used prescribed burns to mitigate the risk of forest fires in the Giant Forest and near Redwood Canyon, according to the Associated Press.

“But like the Giant Forest, this one has also seen prescribed burn treatments for several decades since the late 1960s, so the grove is also well equipped to turn a high intensity fire into a low intensity fire.” , Garrett explains.

Scientists attribute California’s historic wildfire season to severe drought, which has decimated livelihoods and threatened communities in the western United States. As climate change lengthens fire seasons, makes them warmer and drier, firefighters may need to rely more on fire mitigation strategies like those used to protect the giant trees in Sequoia National Park.