8:03 a.m. PDT Oct. 6, 2021
On the KNP Complex of fires in Sequoia National Park in Southern California, the smoke, which has limited the use of firefighting aircraft for days or weeks, cleared by mid-morning Tuesday more than it had in recent days which allowed the use of some aviation resources both on the north and south ends of the fire. An increase in relative humidity has slowed the spread for the last two days, allowing firefighters to construct direct fire line near the fire’s edge where conditions permit.
The blaze was mapped Tuesday evening at 81,473 acres, an increase of more than 20,000 acres in the previous 48 hours.
Approximately 550 acres have burned north of Generals Highway one mile southeast of the community of Wilsonia. Tuesday evening Operations Section Chief Chad Rice said hand crews and dozers are constructing line around that large slop over, tying in to old fire lines, fuel treatments, and roads where they exist. That should be complete “in a few shifts,” Mr. Rice said.
A large number of firefighters are working in Grant Grove and Wilsonia to make them easier to defend if the fire spreads into those areas.
The incident management team has not released information about the mortality of the giant sequoias in the Redwood Mountain Grove after the fire spread rapidly through the area on October 4. It is the largest grove on Earth of the trees and contains the world’s tallest giant sequoia, 312 feet (95 meters). The huge trees with bark up to a foot thick are normally fire resistant and can live for more than 3,000 years old if climate change was not creating multi-year droughts and extremely low fuel moistures. Last year the Castle Fire, just to the south, destroyed an estimated 7,500 to 10,600 large sequoias with trunk diameters of more than four feet, which was 10 to 14 percent of all large sequoias across the tree’s natural range in the Sierra Nevada.
Near Stony Creek Lodge and Cabin Creek on the northeast side of the fire there is a 200-acre slop over across Generals Highway that firefighters are working on.
On the south side, the fire has crossed Mineral King Road in several places, which in that steep topography raises the level of difficulty in stopping the spread in that area. It has not yet crossed the East Fork of the Kaweah River, but Operations Section Chief Chad Rice said he expects it will cross to the south side. The terrain, fuels, fire behavior, and the one-lane road so far have made it unsafe for fire crews to work in some locations on the south edge of the fire, Mr. Rice said. For several hours on Tuesday a boulder the size of a car rolled down onto the road, blocking it until the boulder could be removed.
There are no reports of any residences being destroyed. Resources assigned to the fire include 38 hand crews, 111 fire engines, and 16 helicopters for a total of 1,866 personnel.
Evacuation details are available on a map and at the Tulare County Sheriff’s Facebook Page.
Lightning started two fires on September 9, the Paradise and Colony Fires, which later merged to become the KNP Complex of fires. It is burning in the Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park and Sequoia National Forest and is being managed as a full suppression fire.
