Photo: ERIC PAUL ZAMORA / Getty Images
The KNP and Windy Complex fires, contained in a 20 and a 80% respectively, oblige the authorities of the Redwoods and Kings Canyon National Parks to improvise to prevent more giant trees from dying from the flames, reported Los Angeles Times .
Christy Brigham, chief of resource management and park science, told the Californian media that traditional options to keep fires at bay weren’t working at all, so they had to “experiment” .
Brigham chose to coat the ancient trees with polyacrylamide gel, which is much thicker than the traditional retardant used by firefighters against fires. forest, but it has better adhesion properties and that if it dries it would only need a little water to reactivate its viscous conditions.
The application of the gel is the most recent method that the authorities in the southern Sierra Nevada have used to save the giants. In his opinion, it is better to try new ideas than more “irreplaceable 2 redwoods, 000 years of age to be charred ”by forest fires.
On September 9, several electrical storms in the Northeast California started several fires that created the KNP Complex and Windy. Between them, have calcined more than 180, 000 acres and killed 20 redwoods ever since.
Although experts indicate that redwoods are prepared to withstand fires, recent droughts in the state have weakened them significantly and the intense fires to which they are exposed are a fatal combination for the giants.
“ Admittedly, we are in a kind of trial and error phase ,” Garrett said. Dickman, Yosemite National Park Botanist to LAT .
The authorities are working to prevent a repeat of what happened with the Castle fire in 2020, which killed 10% of the population national redwoods, which translates in more than 7, 10 trees incinerated while active .
The Windy fire and those of the KNP Complex are contained in a 85 and a 20% respectively, but still damage assessments are just beginning, so they cannot give an exact figure of how many trees have burned in the last few days.
When the KNP Complex fires threatened General Sherman, the largest tree on the planet, firefighters and national park authorities coated its bark with aluminum and the giant sequoia survived, but Mark Garrett, a spokesman for the complex fire response team, said this technique is not always effective.
“Flames can creep under the fire blanket, catch nd the heat underneath and that would have cooked them “, he expressed to the Los Angeles media .
Windy, the KNP Complex and the other active fires are being much more aggressive than usual. common due to weather conditions and severe droughts in California. This situation, says Dickman, has forced crews to experiment with new methods to safeguard redwoods.
“ We are against the sword and the wall ”, he concluded.
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