Firefighters help to save 1,400yearold redwood
Firefighters and state natural resources crews on Tuesday guided the Walbridge Fire that has been blazing through wooded hillsides in Sonoma County largely around the towering redwoods in Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Reserve.
Some trees sustained damage in their cavities, but the Colonel Armstrong tree — the oldest tree in the grove, estimated to be 1,400 years old — was not damaged by the blaze. The historic Colonel Armstrong tree was “happy” on Tuesday, said Brendan O’Neil, who oversees the reserve as a natural resources manager for California State Parks SonomaMendocino Coast
District.
The blaze largely burned the forest floor, which allows for nutrient cycling and allows redwood seedlings to germinate, O’Neil said. The fire activity will also be a benefit for the park because it “reduces the potential for future catastrophic wildfires,” O’Neil said. There hadn’t
been a fire in the reserve in 97 years, he said.
“We’ve been working cooperatively (with Cal Fire) too, as carefully as possible, to help guide the fire through the forest to minimize damage to the irreplaceable resources that we have there,” O’Neil told The Chronicle on Tuesday night.
The Walbridge Fire, part of the LNU Lightning Complex, was behaving in a “lowintensity” manner by the time it reached the Armstrong Redwoods. O’Neil said the blaze has moved in a slow crawl from McCray Ridge, a peak north of the park, “like an animal moving through the park,” snaking its way through the area.
O’Neil said that while firefighter crews and state parks officials were not explicitly defending the historic, centuriesold redwoods in the park, they were “tending the fire carefully around the tree to make sure it didn’t damage it.”
He said the lowintensity blaze essentially cleaned up some of the dead fuels on the forest floor, which creates “sterile soil conditions that will allow for regeneration of redwood.” In other words, “good stuff,” O’Neil said. The fire’s cooperative behavior was largely due to the direction of the fire, which was running downhill, not uphill.
The slowermoving flames contrasted those of the flames from the same Walbridge Fire that burned in the Austin Creek State Recreation Area, where O’Neil said there was a higher tree mortality rate than in Armstrong Redwoods.
“It’s the same fire, but just different days, different direction, and wind blowing it up a hill in one case,” O’Neil said. “This one is going downhill, with the wind blowing into it. That really dramatically affects the fire behavior there.” He said the scorching of the forest floor is good for the health of the park for the long term, saying that the conditions officials navigated “made me feel good about Armstrong Redwoods’ future.”
O’Neil said it’s important for people to understand that the beloved Armstrong Redwoods is “still in good condition.”
But the forest is not out of the woods, O’Neil said. He said that “there are still fingers of that fire all over the place. There is fire that is burning in other parts of the woods.”
O’Neil said firefighters and natural resource advisers like him are using “lines of convenience” like creeks, roads and rivers to control and compartmentalize the blaze, but it was still actively burning in the area.
“We’ve been working ... to help guide the fire through the forest to minimize damage to the irreplaceable resources.”
Brendan O’Neil, California State Parks SonomaMendocino Coast District