Sierra wildfire threatens famed giant sequoia grove in California
By Steve Gorman LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A rapidly spreading wildfire spurred evacuations of thousands of mountain homes in California's gold-rush country on Friday as flames from a larger Sierra Nevada blaze edged close to a famed grove of giant sequoia trees in Kings Canyon National Park. Ground crews mounted an all-out defense of Grant Grove, a stand of ancient redwoods that includes the General Grant tree, one of the largest and tallest of all giant sequoias, as flames crept within a mile (1.6 km) of the area, said Paul Garnier, a spokesman for the fire command. Giant sequoias are naturally flame-resistant, and most of the area's trees show scars from past wildfires, though officials hoped to keep the latest blaze out of Grant Grove - a premier park attraction - to ensure it remains intact, Garnier said. More than 2,200 firefighters were on the front lines of the blaze, dubbed the Rough fire, still fiercely burning six weeks after it was ignited by lightning just outside park boundaries in the adjacent Sequoia National Forest. Ranking as the largest active fire in California, the Rough has scorched more than 119,000 acres (48,000 hectares) and forced evacuations of park staff and visitors from a large swath of Kings Canyon, including the Grant Grove and Cedar Grove areas. Containment was listed at 29 percent on Friday, though hundreds of homes in the park's vicinity have been evacuated, Garnier said. The park officially remained open, but all roads leading into the Kings Canyon have been closed since Thursday, said park spokeswoman Dana Dierkes. A considerably smaller blaze posed a greater immediate danger to private property on Friday about 100 miles (160 km) to the north in the same mountain range. The so-called Butte Fire has destroyed six homes and two outbuildings since it erupted on Wednesday near the former gold mining town of Jackson, east of Sacramento. Growing quickly in the midst of a heat wave baking the region in temperatures over 100 Fahrenheit (38 Celsius), the fire threatened some 6,000 dwellings on Friday, most of them placed under evacuation orders, said Mike Yeun of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Flames had devoured nearly 32,000 acres (13,000 hectares) by Friday, more than double the area left blackened the previous night, although a force of 1,500 firefighters had managed to carve containment lines around 10 percent of the blaze, fire officials said. The fire's cause was under investigation. (Reporting by Steve Gorman; Editing by Dan Grebler and Eric Beech)
