CREWS WRAP GIANT TREES WITH FIREPROOF BLANKETS
World’s largest trees, some 3,000 years old and seen by millions of visitors, are in wildfire’s path
Fire crews prepared to make a stand Thursday to defend one of California’s natural wonders, the most prominent grove of giant sequoia trees at Sequoia National Park, in the latest potentially catastrophic chapter of the extreme fire summer gripping much of the American West.
At the park’s Giant Forest — a breathtaking expanse of more than 2,000 ancient sequoias in the southern Sierra Nevada including five of the largest trees in the world — firefighters positioned engines, hurried to thin flammable brush and raked away combustible material from around the huge trees.
Crews wrapped the bases of some of the massive trees with fire proof aluminum blankets, including the General Sherman Tree, which is 275 feet high and 102 feet around at the base and is considered the largest tree in the world.
“They are taking extraordinary measures to protect these trees,” said Christy Brigham, chief of resource management and science at Sequoia & Kings Canyon national parks.
Since the 1970s, parks crews have conducted thinning and prescribed burns in the famous grove to reduce brush and remove smaller trees such as firs and incense cedars, increasing
the chances that wildfire would stay closer to the ground and not burn intensely enough to kill the big trees.
“Even though we have done all of this prescribed fire and
feel like the fire behavior when it gets in there — if it gets in there — will be fairly moderate, we just really want to do everything we can to protect these
2,000- and 3,000-year-old trees,” Brigham said.
Two other prominent giant sequoia groves in Sequoia and the adjacent Kings Canyon National Park — Grant Grove and Redwood Mountain Grove — also have had extensive thinning, she said. But many of the 40 groves of giant sequoias elsewhere in the parks have not had such treatment and could be at risk if the fire continues to spread.
“The high tourist areas are in pretty good shape,” said Tim Borden, sequoia restoration and stewardship manager at Save the Redwoods League, a San Francisco environmental group. “But they aren’t completely out of the woods for being at risk because we can always have weather patterns that create extreme fire weather, like stronger winds.”
But in some of the other groves, “there is no recorded fire history in more than 100 years,” he said.
Thursday afternoon 356 firefighters were battling two fires that had been advancing toward the Giant Forest and had merged into one, a blaze known as the KNP Complex Fire. Both fires were about 1 mile away from Giant Forest grove, named by Sierra Club founder John Muir in 1875.
The fire to the west, known as the Colony Fire, was 1,683 acres. The other,
advancing from the south, was the Paradise Fire, which was 7,257 acres. Both fires began on Sep. 10, ignited by lightning strikes, and were 0% contained Thursday afternoon, merging together near the Generals Highway.
Crews were fitting an emergency sprinkler system on the Giant Forest Museum, a wooden building listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
The fires closed Sequoia National Park earlier this week and prompted the evacuation of rangers and other staff who live there, along with the town of Three Rivers to the west. A third fire, the Windy Fire, was burning about 30 miles south in Sequoia National Forest and the Tule River
Indian Reservation. It was 3,924 acres with 0% containment Thursday afternoon.
Although Sequoia National Park doesn’t draw as many visitors as Yosemite, its neighbor to the north, it occupies a famed chapter in America’s natural heritage.
It was the nation’s second national park, established by President Benjamin Harrison in 1890, after Yellowstone. Its stunning Sierra Nevada landscapes include Mount Whitney, the tallest mountain in the continental United States, and thousands of incomparable giant sequoias — enormous trees that soar to more than 270 feet high and can live 3,000 years.
Coast redwoods are the world’s tallest trees, growing higher than 300 feet. But sequoias are the largest by volume. Like coast redwoods, they have thick, fire-resistant bark. Low-intensity fires help them by opening their cones and releasing seeds and removing dead needles and brush around them, biologists say. But intense fires can kill them by burning high into their canopies and at extreme temperatures that can cook their roots.
“These trees have survived hundreds of fires over thousands of years,” Brigham said. “But there have been a couple major changes — a century of fire suppression combined with climate change-driven hotter droughts. That has meant fires that are burning hotter with taller flame lengths.”
Last year, the Castle Fire killed between 7,500 and 10,600 of the trees, an estimated 10% to 14% of all the sequoias in the world, mostly in Sequoia National Forest. Biologists are now studying whether to replant some of those areas with giant sequoia seeds and saplings.
Brigham and Borden said far more work needs to be done to reduce fire risk in the massive groves, which are often steep and inaccessible and expensive to thin. That work can be slowed by paperwork required under the National Environmental Policy Act, funding shortfalls and complaints over smoke from prescribed fires from nearby communities, Borden said.
“We really appreciate the love and support for these trees,” Brigham said. “We are doing what we can during the fire, and we hope we can all work as a community after the fire to protect the untreated groves.”