(CNN) — The growing wildfire threatening the famed giant sequoia grove in California’s Yosemite National Park has doubled in size over the past day, prompting officials to issue evacuation orders to a nearby community. The Washburn Fire started July 7 and had grown to 1,591 acres as of Sunday morning as it burned near the bottom of Mariposa Grove, park officials said. A total of 360 firefighters are working to contain the blaze from the ground and air, and park officials said the grove will remain closed until further notice. “The fire is burning in difficult terrain with continuous heavy fuels in and around the fire,” fire officials told InciWeb, a fire response coordination site. “Significant tree mortality from 2013-2015 left significant dead standing and dead fallen fuels. It also poses significant safety hazards to firefighters.”
The weather is expected to warm up during the week. However, fire scars from past fires about 1 to 3 miles from the Washburn Fire’s perimeter will help slow it down, officials said.
As the fire grew, park officials urged people at Yosemite’s Wawona Campground and the community to evacuate.
Mariposa Grove is home to more than 500 giant redwoods that can grow to over 250 feet tall. And while the grove was founded in 1857, the trees have been around long before that, with some believed to be more than 2,000 years old.
Firefighters have placed a sprinkler system around the Grizzly Giant, the famous Sequoia in Mariposa Grove, to protect it from the flames.
Yosemite is one of the most visited national parks in the US, attracting more than 3.3 million people in 2021. It covers nearly 1,200 square miles in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of eastern California. Meanwhile, California crews are also battling the Electra Fire, which has burned more than 4,400 acres in Amador and Calaveras counties, also in the Sierra Nevada, according to Cal Fire.
The fire prompted the state’s first nighttime water-dropping operation by helicopter on Wednesday, when about 12,000 gallons of water were dumped on the flames, California Fire Battalion Chief Isaac Sanchez told CNN.
“The helicopter was brought in to assist in the cooling and containment of a shooting that took place earlier this afternoon,” Sanchez said. “While assigned to this operation, the helicopter identified additional areas where the fire was creeping above the containment lines and was able to assist in fully extinguishing and containing them.”
The western United States has been ravaged by wildfires in recent years, exacerbated by drought conditions linked to climate change. In California alone, more than 2.5 million acres were destroyed in nearly 9,000 fires last year, according to Cal Fire. Last month, officials in Southern California said they were bracing for another challenging summer and fall amid a shortage of firefighting crews and increased workloads.
The threat is not limited to California. Robert Garcia, fire chief for the Angeles National Forest, said the summer months are off to a “disturbing” start. Firefighting resources have been mobilized since March in Arizona and New Mexico, where the Black Fire just became the state’s second-largest wildfire on record.
“Southern California typically has a fire season historically in late June and then into the fall,” Garcia told CNN last month. “But now we’re seeing year-round activity.”
CNN’s Stephanie Elam, Melissa Alonso and Eric Levenson contributed to this report.
Add Comment