By Saturday morning, the Washburn fire in Yosemite National Park had ballooned to about 703 acres and was threatening some 500 giant sequoias. “I desperately want them to save the sequoia trees.”
They had been near the park’s famed Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias. They saw a fire “this big,” the mother said, stretching her arms wide, indicating a few feet. They ran for a few seconds and looked back. Two trees were on fire. Twenty seconds later, she said, more trees than she could count.
“Because of that combination, we are having these fires that are large and intense and last longer than what anybody’s seen in any part of their experience,” said Nancy Phillipe, a Yosemite fire information spokesperson. On Saturday, Gilbert appointed himself comforter-in-chief to the many tourists who had traveled from around the world to see Yosemite’s wonders and were blocked by the fire.“You still have a chance to see the giants,” he told them.
About 95% of Yosemite National Park is wilderness and fire plays a natural role in its ecosystem, so officials often manage fires for resource benefits rather than immediately extinguishing them. This blaze is different because of the threat it poses to Wawona and the Mariposa Grove, so crews are taking an all-out suppression approach that includes using bulldozers to create a barrier around the community, Phillipe said.
“What we’ve discovered is that as we’ve received unwanted fires, when they come into the prescribed burn areas, it does slow down that rate of spread and really helps us work toward containment,” Phillipe said. “The fires that we’re getting now are incredibly intense and destructive and they’re killing large mature trees for the first time on record,” she said. “In any recorded history we have through tree rings, we don‘t see this kind of mortality until now.”
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