A shift in the weather fanned flames in Sequoia national park in California’s Sierra Nevada on Friday, with the flames reaching the westernmost tip of the Giant Forest, where it scorched a grouping of sequoias known as the Four Guardsmen and the General Sherman Tree, which is the largest tree on earth by volume.
Winds were expected to increase throughout Sunday, shifting from the west to the northwest by the afternoon, requiring a Red Flag warning to be issued. These shifting, gusty winds of up to 40 mph could cause challenges for firefighters.
“Once you get the fire burning inside the tree, that will result in mortality,” said Jon Wallace, the operations section chief for the KNP Complex, reports SFGate.
The fire began on September 10, sparked by lightning. On Friday, high winds exploded the blaze, which went from under 18,000 acres on Saturday to 21,777 acres, or 28 square miles (72 square kilometers) by Sunday morning. There is no containment.
The General Sherman Tree has lived and watched over thousands of years of California history. It’s believed to be at least 2,300 years old. While it’s not the tallest tree on earth, it is the largest if you calculate its volume. According to the National Park Service, the tree is 275 feet tall and over 36 feet in diameter.
On Friday, firefighters wrapped the base of the General Sherman Tree in fire-resistant aluminum of the type used in wildland firefighter emergency shelters and to protect historic wooden buildings. It wasn’t immediately known how the Four Guardsmen, which received the same treatment, fared, fire spokeswoman Katy Hooper said.
The fire also had reached Long Meadow Grove, where two decades ago then-President Clinton signed a proclamation establishing its Trail of 100 Giant Sequoias as a national monument.
Last year, the Castle fire killed an estimated 7,500 to 10,600 large sequoias, according to the National Park Service. That was an estimated 10 to 14 percent of all the sequoias in the world.
The historic drought in the western United States has been tied to climate change and is making wildfires harder to fight. Scientists say climate change has made the West much warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive.
