Firefighters holding line against massive California wildfire

n">(Reuters) - Firefighters battling a colossal California wildfire that has eaten away at the Yosemite National Park backcountry managed overnight to largely stem the spread of the flames, authorities said on Sunday.

The fire sent heavy smoke on Saturday into the popular touristic Yosemite Valley, an area famed for towering granite rock formations, waterfalls and pine forests, obscuring views of popular landmarks on a holiday weekend at the end of the summer tourist season.

Despite footage from cameras posted on the park's website showing continued smoky conditions in the park, no further road closures within Yosemite were reported, and containment lines held steady at 40 percent.

"We have been able to hold the line. It's just trying to figure out how to wrap this thing up and put a bow around it," said fire incident spokeswoman Leslie Auriemmo, adding that there were no fresh closures in the park.

The Rim Fire had charred nearly 223,000 acres by early on Sunday, mostly in the Stanislaus National Forest which spreads out from Yosemite's western edge although the blaze has blackened about 6 percent of Yosemite's wilder backcountry.

The Yosemite Valley has been open to visitors since the fire broke out two weeks ago, but smoke began spreading to the area on Friday ahead of the Labor Day holiday weekend that in the past years has seen the park fill with visitors.

The smoke from the fire, whose footprint now exceeds the area of Dallas, was expected to at least partially clear on Sunday afternoon as winds shift, fire managers said.

Some 4 million people visit Yosemite each year, most going during the peak months of June through August. Some 620,000 normally visit the park in August alone, but due to the fire, attendance has dropped.

Close to 5,000 people are working to put out the fire, including firefighters from agencies across California and nearly 700 specially trained California prison inmates.

Among the landmarks potentially in the path of the blaze are two groves of the park's famed sequoia trees.

"We are working very hard to protect that. All the lines are in place so it doesn't go into those groves," Auriemmo said.

Firefighters have carried out controlled burns around the groves to clear away debris that could otherwise fuel a fire to such an intensity that it dangerously licks at the trees' crowns.

Lower-intensity fires, on the other hand, play a vital role in the reproductive cycle of the tough-barked sequoia, many of which bear the scars of past wildfires, by releasing the seeds from their cones and clearing the soil in which they germinate.

The blaze has edged out the 1932 Matilija wildfire in Ventura County to become the fourth-largest California wildfire on record, according to figures from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

The cause of the fire remains under investigation.

(Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Sandra Maler)

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Firefighters gain an edge on wildfire in Yosemite National Park

By Laila Kearney

Mon Sep 2, 2013 5:01pm EDT

n">(Reuters) - Firefighters in California gained ground on Monday against a massive wildfire burning part of Yosemite National Park, although complete containment may be weeks away, officials said.

Crews working through the night got an edge on the so-called Rim Fire, a 350-square mile (906-square km) blaze that has charred the California park's Northwest, said Andrea Capps, spokeswoman for the Rim Fire command center.

They connected containment lines near the fire's northwestern and western borders, where most of the 4,500 homes threatened by the blaze are located, she said.

The fire was 60 percent contained by early Monday, a 15 percent increase from the night before.

"Last night is when it all really tied together," Capps said. "It's looking really good over there right now. They're calling that containment line secure."

Despite the jump in containment, Capps said fire analysts estimate that it could take until September 20 to contain the Rim Fire fully. Steep terrain and high, unpredictable winds will likely pose the main challenges in digging and burning containment lines around the blaze.

"The majority of the containment lines will probably be really strong by the middle, end of this week, but they just want to give themselves enough time to make sure it's fully contained," Capps said.

Wet weather expected in the area on Monday raised hopes, but the possibility of thunderstorms kept officials wary.

"Rain is good, but the winds that come with the pressure changes with the thunderstorms could lead to some unpredictable (fire) behavior," Capps said. "We have had a few sprinkles this morning, and so we're all waiting to see what happens."

While the majority of the fire was burning on Stanislaus National Forest, 60,214 acres, or about 27 percent, of the fire has crossed the Yosemite National Park border.

The massive blaze has scorched an area larger than many U.S. cities and is the fourth-largest on record in California, burning more than 220,000 acres over the past two weeks.

Over the past several years, wildfires in the U.S. West have become increasingly frequent and at times deadly. Earlier this year, 19 firefighters were killed in a blaze in Arizona, and wildfires have raged in several states, including Nevada, Alaska and New Mexico.

(Editing by Barbara Goldberg, Ellen Wulfhorst and Cynthia Osterman)

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California wildfire threatening Yosemite is now size of Dallas

By Jonathan Allen

Sat Aug 31, 2013 3:11pm EDT

n">(Reuters) - A massive wildfire that has charred the northwestern edge of California's Yosemite National Park is heading towards two groves of the park's famed sequoia trees, National Park Service Director Jonathan Jarvis said as firefighters battled the blaze on Saturday.

The so-called Rim Fire, which now has an overall footprint that exceeds the area of Dallas, has burned about six percent of Yosemite's wilder backcountry but the vast majority of the park was still unaffected, Jarvis said.

The sequoias are expected to survive if the fire spreads through the groves of the towering redwoods that are among the park's most famous features, Jarvis said in a telephone interview.

"This is not a catastrophe for Yosemite National Park," he said in a telephone interview after surveying the affected areas. "These trees are very old and it's not the first fire they've ever seen."

Firefighters have been carrying out controlled burnings at night around the groves to clear away debris from the forest floor that could otherwise fuel a fire to such an intensity that it dangerously licks at the trees' crowns.

Lower-intensity fires, on the other hand, play a vital role in the reproductive cycle of the tough-barked sequoia, many of which bear the scars of past wildfires, by releasing the seeds from their cones and clearing the soil in which they germinate.

The so-called Rim Fire has continued to spread, having now consumed nearly 220,000 acres by Saturday, according to a U.S. Forest Service spokesman. Most of the damage is in the Stanislaus National Forest that spreads out from Yosemite's western edge.

Firefighters have contained about a third of that area.

"We're very, very cautious about the potential today," Timothy Evans, the spokesman, said. "Yesterday was very hot, there was some wind, and the same was somewhat predicted for today."

The blaze is now approximately tied with the Matilija wildfire in Ventura County of 1932 as the fourth-largest California wildfire on record.

Jarvis estimated that firefighting efforts had so far cost state and federal agencies about $54 million. He criticized a decline in federal funding for fire-prevention work, including the practice of controlled fires that make the chance of a wildfire of this intensity less likely.

Nearly 5,000 people are working to put out the fire, including firefighters from agencies across California and nearly 700 specially trained California prison inmates.

Tourism-dependent businesses around the park have bemoaned a slump in visitors at the peak of the late-summer tourist season. Jarvis said there was no need to for visitors to stay away.

"Yosemite Valley is open to the public and is gorgeous," he said, referring to one of the park's most scenic and visited areas, adding that it is more than 20 miles from the edge of the fire.

The cause of the fire remains under investigation.

(Reporting By Jonathan Allen; Editing by Scott Malone and Sandra Maler)

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Failure to thin brush may have worsened California wildfire

By Jonathan Kaminsky

Sun Sep 1, 2013 11:40am EDT

n">(Reuters) - A cluster of controlled fire and tree-thinning projects approved by forestry officials but never funded might have slowed the progress of the massive Rim Fire in California, a wide range of critics said this weekend.

The massive blaze at the edge of Yosemite National Park in the Sierra Nevada mountains has scorched an area larger than many U.S. cities - with some of that land in the very location pinpointed by the U.S. Forest service for eight projects aimed at clearing and burning brush and small trees that help fuel wildfire.

The projects, which were approved by the U.S. Forest Service but never funded by Congress, would have thinned the woods in about 25 square miles (65 square km) in the Groveland District of the Stanislaus National Forest, much of which was incinerated by the Rim Fire.

About 9,000 acres were suitable to be deliberately burned as fire prevention buffer zones in 2012, the Forest Service said in a document provided to Reuters.

But reductions in funding for fire prevention efforts by Congress in recent years coupled with stringent air quality standards that limit the timeframe for such burns have hampered efforts to carry them out on a larger scale.

Last year, the Forest Service had funding to burn 449 acres in the Groveland District but did not reach that target, said District Ranger Maggie Dowd.

The wildfire is the sixth-largest on record in California. It burned over 220,000 acres over the past two weeks while penetrating Yosemite National Park and threatening to befoul the Hetch Hetchy reservoir providing the lion's share of water to San Francisco.

"This is a colossal unfunded backlog of critically important fuel reduction work," said John Buckley, executive director of the Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center and a former Forest Service fire fighter. The projects "would have inarguably made the Rim Fire far easier to contain, far less expensive and possibly not even a major disaster."

Over the past several years, wildfires in the U.S. West have become increasingly frequent and at times deadly. Earlier this year, 19 firefighters were killed in a blaze in Arizona, and wildfires have raged in several states, including Nevada, Alaska and New Mexico.

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Federal fire figures show an average of 7.6 million acres (3.1 million hectares) charred per year between 2004 and 2012, up from 3.6 million acres (1.46 million hectares) annually in the preceding 20 years.

Part of the problem, experts and many fire officials say, is that funding has been low for the controlled burns and forest-thinning work that makes it harder for a wildfire to spread.

In recent years, Jarvis said, the trend has been to shift money from fire prevention to firefighting.

"We've got to invest up front in terms of controlling and managing these fires," said Jonathan Jarvis, director of the National Park Service from his smoke-filled post in Yosemite National Park. "Just waiting for the big fire and then throwing everything you've got at it makes no sense."

The massive blazes are fueled by high temperatures, said U.S. Forest Service geographer Carl Skinner.

Mike Albrecht, co-owner of the logging company Sierra Resource Management, which operates on public land in the Sierra Nevada mountains said that the backlogged projects would likely have helped limit the Rim Fire.

The "one-two punch" of thinning the forest through logging and prescribed burns is essential for stemming the tide of catastrophic wildfires across the American West, he said.

Craig Thomas, conservation director for the environmental coalition group Sierra Forest Legacy, said such a course would help reduce the intensity of wildfires enough to spare the largest trees, while clearing space and providing nutrients for grasses and wildflowers.

In addition to perennial funding shortfalls for prevention efforts, Thomas faults federal and state air quality regimes that limit the timeframe for prescribed burns by counting the smoke they generate along with industrial and auto emissions - while not counting the smoke from an actual wildfire.

There is also skepticism over the relative importance of planned burning among some lawmakers, including Congressman Tom McClintock, a third-term conservative Republican in whose district the Rim Fire has burned.

More dire than a backlog of Forest Service controlled burns, McClintock says, is the precipitous, 25-year decline in logging of bigger, money-making trees on public lands.

"If we were harvesting the same amount of timber we once did, we'd have fewer fires but also a revenue stream for the treatment of many thousands of acres (hectares) that we're not treating today," he said.

Dowd, the Forest Service Ranger, said that with containment lines built around less than half of the still-burning Rim Fire, it is too early to know how much the prevention projects might have helped.

But she said that the several dozen acres of prescribed burns carried out in her district over the past two years, are insufficient.

"It's not enough," Dowd said.

(Additional reporting by Jonathan Allen; Editing by Sharon Bernstein and Sandra Maler)

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