Authorities Protect Yosemite Sequoia from Washburn Fire with Sprinklers

Dangerous temperatures are also present in other parts of the world. Firefighters in Yosemite National Park are fighting to save giant sequoias by putting out the fire with sprinklers.

Grizzly Giant

The Grizzly Giant tree is more than 2,000 years old, over 200 feet tall, and have branches that are several feet wide.

The Washburn fire, which has destroyed more than 3,000 acres of brush and timber in the southern part of the national park and forced the evacuation of the town of Wawona, California, over the past few days, has put the Grizzly Giant in danger.

Garrett Dickman, a forest ecologist with Yosemite National Park, said that they were exerting every effort to keep the old tree safe.

The Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias, the largest and most well-known of the park's three clusters, with more than 500 mature trees, is being protected with the assistance of Dickman.

The past few years, he continued, have been a real wake-up call, and they never imagined the giant sequoias would burn.

Intermittent Watering

The authorities have installed a sprinkler system that runs sporadically and pumps between 15 and 20 gallons of water per minute at the base of the tree to increase humidity in order to protect the Grizzly Giant.

He added that they were removing trash from the ground and cutting down smaller trees that might ignite the historic sequoias.

Previous Fires

Firefighters have wrapped trees in flame-resistant foil, pumped foam onto them, and doused them in pink fire retardant in other recent fires.

Mr. Dickman claimed he had also given misters a try near trees that were in danger.

He explained that in other cases, arborists had scaled the enormous trees to look for embers or to cut off their burning limbs.

Smoke jumpers, firefighters who typically parachute into an active fire zone, spent about two days climbing a smoldering tree during last year's Windy fire, which scorched more than 1,700 acres in the Giant Sequoia National Monument.

Scientists claimed that the Mariposa Grove is probably less at risk than some other giant sequoia groves due to the National Park Service's decades-long practice of prescribed burning, which they believe has adequately prepared it to withstand the worst effects of a wildfire.

According to Stanley Bercovitz, a US Forest Service spokesman, the fire was 22% contained on Tuesday and was moving north.

More than 600 firefighters have been working to put out the fire, The New York Times reported.

A portion of the grove's floor has already been slowly burned by the fire.

According to scientists and the authorities, preventing it from reaching the tree canopy is the top priority. Sequoias can withstand a certain amount of heat and scorching on their trunks, but if flames reach the crown, they can be burned like a giant matchstick.

Nate Stephenson, scientist emeritus in forest ecology for the United States Geological Survey, explained that once a giant sequoia's leaves are mostly gone, it may lose its ability to photosynthesize and pass away.