Firefighters used fire extinguishers on Thursday to battle the blaze as the flames approached an iconic grove of age-old, massive trees in Sequoia National Park.
The fire, one of dozens erupting early in a fire season that is plaguing several western states, pressured the closure of Sequoia National Park early this week and left a thick layer of smoke in the area early Friday.
Tiny flames to protect giant redshirds
The KNP Complex Fire consisting of the Paradise Fire and the Colony Fire has burnt 9.365 9.365 hectares so far.
‘Crews are preparing the Giant Forest before the fire reaches that area, by removing fuel and applying structure wrap on some of the iconic monarch sequoias that characterize the most famous area of Sequoia National Park,’ s most famous area in structural sheeting,’ the National Park Service said in a statement.
The flames threaten the giant wood, a grove of about 2.000 redwoods, which contains five of the biggest trees on the planet, some as old as 3.000 years.
Firefighters in California wrap fire resistant aluminum ceilings around the bases of different massive trees in the Sequoia Mountains National Park, including the 275-foot General Sherman, the world’s largest.
When fires climb steep ground, they are often placed on the other side of a ridge, so any embers end up in an area where dry grasses and brush have already burned.
