Fire crews in California are mounting an all-out effort to protect a grove of ancient giant sequoias from the Garnet Fire.
As AccuWeather reports, the fire was sparked by lightning on August 24 and has scorched nearly 55,000 acres in the Sierra National Forest east of Fresno. The blaze is just 14% contained, according to CAL Fire.
Flames reached McKinley Grove early Monday, a stand of about 165 sequoias, some more than 2,000 years old and over 230 feet tall, Joe Zwierzchowski, a spokesman with the U.S. Forest Service, told News 4. Firefighters had already surrounded the grove with sprinklers running day and night and cleared underbrush to raise humidity and reduce fuel. Despite those measures, embers landed in the branches of several trees, forcing firefighters to retreat for safety.
Specialized “smokejumpers” are now being deployed to climb the massive trunks and extinguish embers lodged high in the canopy, Zwierzchowski said. These crews are typically parachuted into remote fire zones, but in this case, will access the grove by vehicle because of their unique ability to scale trees.
Giant sequoias, the world’s largest trees, evolved to survive low-intensity fire, which helps them release seeds. But recent megafires have overwhelmed even these natural defenses. Since 2020, wildfires have killed as much as a fifth of all mature sequoias, according to the New York Times. Ben Bloom of the nonprofit Save the Redwoods League warned that McKinley Grove, which has not burned in nearly a century and has been stressed by drought, “remains highly at risk” despite firefighters’ efforts.
The fire’s impacts are being felt far beyond the grove. The National Weather Service office in Reno issued a Dense Smoke Advisory through Tuesday morning for Mono, Mineral and southern Lyon counties in Nevada, warning that smoke from the Garnet Fire was reducing visibility to less than a mile at times and creating unhealthy air quality. Officials urged residents with respiratory conditions to stay indoors and noted that travel could be hazardous along U.S. Highway 395.
The Garnet Fire has been burning for more than two weeks. While no sequoias in McKinley Grove had fully ignited as of Monday afternoon, officials said the next several days will be critical in determining whether these ancient trees — living testaments to California’s natural heritage — can survive another season of catastrophic wildfire.
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