Firefighters in Central California worry that an ancient grove of giant sequoia trees might be endangered by the state’s largest wildfire.
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By Friday, flames had devoured almost 32,000 acres of rugged terrain, more than double the acreage left blackened the previous night, although a force of 1,500 firefighters had managed to carve containment lines around 10 percent of the blaze’s perimeter, fire officials said.
The trees can endure fire, Isolano said, but many of them are stressed after four years of drought and authorities don’t want to take any risks now that the flames are within five miles of the grove.
The largest of them, known as General Grant, was measured to stand 83.8 meters (275 feet) tall in 2012 – as high as a 26-storey building, according to the US National Park Service.
The Rough Fire burning in California’s Sierra Nevada has consumed over 110,000 acres of forest.
Cal Fire pulled back the mandatory evacuation order just before 5 p.m. on Friday, but cautioned residents should be ready to leave at a moment’s notice.
It is unclear exactly how many residents have been forced to flee their homes, as firefighters are working at maximum capacity to secure the area and tame the fire.
A wildfire in Northern California grew explosively Friday, forcing hundreds of people to evacuate from rural communities as it destroyed six homes, threatened thousands more, and prompted a state-of-emergency declaration from the governor.
Besides the Sequoia groves, lions, tigers, and other cats at the Cat Haven sanctuary have been evacuated as wildfire approaches, officials said. But officials then decided to make that a staging area for the battle against the blaze, and the evacuation center was moved to Valley Springs about 20 miles from its original location.
“This fire definitely has a risky rate of spread, and our goal right now is to protect structures”, said Mike Yeun, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
So I was saddened by the photo in the September 8 Bee of the road through Kings Canyon surrounded by burned-over moonscape hillsides caused by the Rough Fire.
The cause of the fire was under investigation.
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“The plan is to try to get this thing out”, she said.
