The 2,044-acre Washburn fire doubled in size over the weekend, entering Yosemite’s Mariposa Grove, home to more than 500 giant sequoias.
“The fire has entered the grove,” response spokesman Robbie Johnson told CNN Sunday night. “But the good news is because of the prescribed burns and the clearing of the material on the ground, it’s clear in the Mariposa Grove.”
The redwoods in the grove, established in 1857, can reach heights of more than 250 feet or more than 20 stories. The trees have been around long before the park was established, with some believed to be over 2,000 years old.
Fire crews deployed protective measures from both the ground and air over the weekend, including installing a sprinkler system to moisten the ground around the park’s 209-foot Grizzly Giant Sequoia.
Fire crews also removed dead trees, logs and brush near the redwoods and did a prescribed burn to clear a protective “doughnut hole” around the area, Johnson said.
A structure inside the perimeter, the historic Galen Clark Cabin, was wrapped in protective film, according to Scott Gediman, Yosemite’s chief spokesman.
The cabin belonged to Yosemite’s first “keeper,” who convinced lawmakers to include Mariposa Grove as a protected area, according to the National Park Service. The grove in Yosemite Valley was first set aside for public use by President Abraham Lincoln in 1864, eventually becoming a national park in 1890, Park Service records show.
The Washburn fire was first reported on July 7 and drew a crew of 545 firefighters to the steep and heavily wooded area, according to the fire management site InciWeb. The cause of the fire is still under investigation.
Part of the fire has been successfully contained at its point of origin near Mariposa Grove, but the fire continues to spread northeast, officials say.
On Sunday, the fire was burning about five miles south of the community of Wawona, which could be at risk from “spots” that occur when embers travel through the air and ignite other trees, Gediman explained. An evacuation order was issued Friday for the community and Wawona Campground in the park.
Hot and dry conditions will continue through the rest of the week, and the fire is expected to continue to spread actively, although its intensity may be reduced by scars left by previous fires, according to InciWeb.
The park’s south entrance is closed to visitors and park officials have evacuated and closed Mariposa Grove and the south part of Wawona Park. The rest of the park remains open, but visitors should be aware of how the ongoing fire will affect their visit, Gediman told CNN.
“Now that the south entrance – one of the busiest entrances – is closed, it means the other entrances are extremely busy. So we have long queues of vehicles waiting to enter. So we ask people to be patient,” he told CNN on Sunday.
Gediman also warned visitors about potentially unhealthy air quality in some parts of the park, including Yosemite Valley, due to the smoke.
“We’re asking people to just be responsible and if someone has, for example, respiratory problems, to be very careful about transitioning and choosing activities,” he said.
The San Francisco-area air quality agency encouraged residents Sunday to take precautions such as staying indoors and closing windows to stay away from smoke drifting into the region.
“Smoke from the Washburn fire is expected to be transported into the Bay Area and is expected to affect the North Bay and East Bay regions,” the Bay Area Air Quality Management District said. However, the county stressed that “contaminant levels are not expected to exceed the federal health standard.”
Intense fires threaten historic forests
While fire is a natural part of Yosemite’s ecosystem, severe burns like the Washburn fire threaten the forest, Gediman said.
“Fire is important, it’s actually critical for giant sequoias, to get their seeds out of the cones, to regenerate the soil, to provide habitat for animals… But it’s these high-intensity fires that are causing the damage,” he said, referring to the devastating Creek Fire, which consumed nearly 400,000 acres of California’s Sierra National Forest over several months in 2020. As the climate crisis has led to an increasing number of wildfires in the western United States in recent years, national parks have been affected by fires, while also suffering from other extreme events such as floods and drought. Climate scientists are concerned that the crisis could make the parks inaccessible to people and uninhabitable to wildlife if global fossil fuel emissions are not significantly reduced.
Last week, officials in Southern California announced that the region is bracing for a particularly challenging wildfire summer and fall as a prolonged drought has left vegetation fragile and dry.
State fire officials are warning that California’s wildfire season, which typically runs from late June through the fall, is becoming a year-round event, even as some firefighting crews are experiencing a shortage of workers.
CNN’s Taylor Romine, Paul Verkamen, Hannah Sarison, Chuck Johnston, Michelle Watson and Rachel Ramirez contributed to this report.
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