Los Angeles: Firefighters battling to guard the world’s biggest tree from wildfires ravaging the parched us said Friday they’re optimistic it are often saved.
Flames are creeping closer to the majestic General Sherman and other giant sequoias, as man-made global climate change worsens California’s fearsome fire season.
“We have many firefighters there giving it their all, giving extra care,” Mark Garrett, communications officer for the region’s local department , told AFP, of the operation in Sequoia park .
Crews are battling the spreading Paradise and Colony fires, which have thus far consumed 4,600 hectares (11,400 acres) of forest since they were sparked by lightning every week ago.
The blazes are threatening Giant Forest, a grove of around 2,000 sequoias that has five of the most important trees on the earth — some up to three ,000 years old.
The biggest of all of them , the overall Sherman stands 83 meters (275 feet) tall.
On Thursday, General Sherman was wrapped in fire-proof blankets — aluminum foil intended to guard its giant trunk from the worst of the flames.
By Friday, managers felt that they had the whip hand , thanks partially to clearing of undergrowth and controlled burns that starve the hearth of fuel.
“I think the foremost challenging part is that the terrain here,” said Garrett.
But “we haven’t seen explosive fire behavior; it really bogged down and gave us an opportunity to urge before it.”
Around 600 personnel are involved within the fight.
“We have folks up within the Giant Forest protecting structures and preparing everything.
“The fact is that they have been prescribed burning for the past 25 or 30 years so it’s really prepared.”
Millions of acres of California’s forests have burned during this year’s ferocious fire season.
Scientists say heating , stoked by the unchecked use of fossil fuels is making the world ever-more susceptible to bigger and more destructive wildfires.
The enormous trees of the enormous Forest are an enormous tourist draw, with visitors traveling from everywhere the planet to marvel at their imposing height and extraordinary girth.
While not the tallest trees — California redwoods can grow to quite 300 feet — the enormous sequoias are the most important by volume.
Smaller fires generally don’t harm the sequoias, which are protected by a thick bark and sometimes only have branches 100 feet above the bottom .
But the larger, hotter blazes that are ruin to the western us are dangerous to them because they climb above the trunks and into the cover .
