YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. — Yosemite National Park’s largest grove of giant sequoias remained closed Saturday, a day after hundreds of people were ordered to evacuate as a wildfire burning through dense forest became the latest to threaten the largest trees in the world.
A crew was dispatched to Mariposa Grove to wrap some of the massive trunks in fire-retardant sheeting to protect them as the blaze burned out of control, said Nancy Phillip, Yosemite fire information spokeswoman. More than 500 mature sequoias were threatened, but there were no reports of serious damage to named trees, such as the 3,000-year-old Grizzly Giant.
The cause of the fire was under investigation and the rest of the park remained open, although park cameras showed thick smoke hanging in the air around some of the park’s most iconic sights.
The fire grew overnight but did not threaten new areas, Philip said. It proved difficult to contain, with firefighters using “every tactic you can imagine,” she said. That includes aerial drops of fire retardant, as well as the planned use of bulldozers to create fire lines, a tactic rarely used in a desert environment like Yosemite, Philip said.
The bulldozers will primarily be used to put in fire lines to protect the community of Wawona, which is surrounded by the park and is home to several hundred people, she said. Evacuation orders were issued Friday for the community as well as Camp Wawona, where about 600 to 700 people were staying in a camp, cabins and a historic hotel.
Giant sequoias, found in only about 70 groves along the western slope of California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains, were once considered impervious to flames, but have become increasingly vulnerable as wildfires fueled by undergrowth build-up from a century of fire suppression and drought, exacerbated by climate change has become more intense and destructive.
Wildfires sparked by lightning in the past two years have killed up to a fifth of the estimated 75,000 big redwoods, the largest trees by volume.
There was no apparent natural spark for the fire that broke out Thursday near the park’s Washburn Trail, Phillip said. The smoke was reported by visitors walking in the grove, which reopened in 2018 after a $40 million renovation that took three years.
The grove, which is located at the southern entrance to the park, was evacuated and no one was injured.
The fire had grown to about 1.1 square miles (2.8 square kilometers) by Saturday morning.
A violent windstorm tore through the grove a year and a half ago and toppled 15 giant sequoias along with countless other trees.
The downed trees, along with the huge number of pine trees killed by bark beetles, provided ample fuel for the flames.
The park has used prescribed burns to clear brush around the redwoods, which helps protect them if the flames spread further into the grove.
“When unwanted fires hit these areas, it slows the rate of spread and helps us achieve some control,” Philip said.
In the Sierra foothills, 80 miles (128 kilometers) northwest of the Yosemite fire, some evacuation orders were lifted as containment grew to 72 percent of the Electra fire, which broke out near Jackson on Monday. That temporarily forced about 100 people celebrating the Fourth of July holiday by a river to seek shelter at a Pacific Gas & Electric Co. facility.
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