Sequoia National Park is shut down, its namesake gigantic trees potentially threatened by two forest fires burning in steep and dangerous terrain in California’s Sierra Nevada.
The Colony and Paradise fires, named for locations where they started, were ignited by lightning last week and are being battled collectively under the name of the KNP Complex. Their combined sizes grew to more than nine square miles (24 square kilometers) late Tuesday, with fire jumping over the Generals Highway, which has been closed.
Due to the active fires, services and facilities in Sequoia National Park are closed, including roads, visitor centers, lodges, and campgrounds. There is no access to the General Sherman Tree or the Giant Forest for the duration of this closure.
Firefighters have wrapped the base of the General Sherman Tree, the world’s largest tree in a fire-resistant blanket, along with some of the other sequoias, the Giant Forest Museum, and other buildings in the park, in an attempt to save them.
According to ABC News, fire spokeswoman Rebecca Paterson said aluminum wrapping can withstand intensive heat for short periods. The Colony Fire is expected to reach the Giant Forest, a grove of 2,000 sequoias, at some point Thursday.
Federal officials say they have been using the material for several years throughout the U.S. West to protect sensitive structures from flames. Homes near Lake Tahoe that were wrapped in protective material survived while others nearby were destroyed.
Growing up in California, this journalist visited the grove of giant sequoias a number of times over the years, and seeing the General Sherman Tree was always nothing less than a breathtaking experience.
The General Sherman Tree is the world’s largest tree, measured by volume. It stands 275 feet (83 meters) tall and is over 36 feet (11 meters) in diameter at the base. Sequoia trunks remain wide high up. Sixty feet above the base, the Sherman Tree is 17.5 feet (5.3 meters) in diameter.
Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks Superintendent Clay Jordan stressed the importance of protecting the massive trees from high-intensity fire during a morning briefing for firefighters.
Sequoias actually rely on fire for such processes as releasing seeds from cones and making clearings in the forest that allow seedlings to grow. The record of burns in the rings of trees thousands of years old demonstrates their relationship to fire.
Mark Ruggiero, fire information officer for Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks, noted that our changing climate has intensified forest fires and their impact. “Sequoia trees are a fire-adaptive tree,” Ruggiero said. “It’s important to have fire to have sequoias thrive, but when we get such intense fires even the sequoias can’t stand up to them.”
California has had more than 7,400 wildfires so far this year, scorching more than 3,500 square miles (9,065 square kilometers). The state’s second-largest fire on record, the Dixie Fire, remained 75 percent contained after burning 1,500 square miles in the northern Sierra and southern Cascades region. Near Lake Tahoe, containment of the 342-square-mile (885-square- kilometer) Caldor Fire increased to 68 percent.