FIRE. 70 kilometers of vegetation have already gone up in smoke in California where the megafire “Oak Fire” has been raging for four days. Will the 2,500 deployed firefighters be able to prevent the flames from reaching Yosemite National Park?
[Mis à jour le 26 juillet 2022 à 12h10] 16%. The mega fire Oak Fire is only contained up to 16% this Tuesday, July 26, announced the Californian firefighters. While the causes of the fire that broke out on Friday July 22 in the small town of Midpines have not yet been identified, experts agree to call it the biggest Californian forest fire of the season. Helped in his progress by a particularly arid terrain, he has already traversed – and burned – 7000 hectares of vegetation in the space of four days. To fight against this nightmarish fire, 2,500 firefighters, 300 trucks and 17 helicopters have already been deployed. The concern of the local authorities relates above all to the thousands of homes threatened in small rural localities in the county of Mariposa: while 55 houses have already burned down, the governor of California Gavin Newson has declared a state of emergency.
Particularly vigorous, the fire “advances very quickly” and the “reaction window” to evacuate people is “limited”, as explained on CNN Jon Heggie, a Californian firefighter official. Monday, July 25, the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, however, was optimistic at the end of the day: “It was a very successful day for aircraft and firefighters with minimal magnification fire.”, could we read in his report published in the evening. As 3,000 people wait to find their evacuated homes, some wonder what will happen to the famous Yosemite National Park. Can he be reached by the violent Oak Fire?
If the causes of the start of the fire are under examination, the climatologists are formal: it is fed by dead trees and dry bushes, plagues which tend to multiply in this region victim of chronic drought. John Heggie, the California fire chief who called the blaze a mega-fire, believes it is a “direct result of climate change”: “You can’t have ten years of drought in California and expect things don’t change,” he said. In fact, the Oak Fire, while very impressive, is really just one of the countless scars of the heat waves that hit America this month. With 37°C recorded on July 25, it was difficult to extinguish the flames.
This finding is shared by Jonathan Pierce, a spokesman for the California fire department who believes that low humidity and high temperatures are currently fueling the fire. He also referred to the high “tree mortality” in Mariposa County, where the many “standing dead trees” leave potentially flammable items on the ground. The lengthening of the fire season therefore produces weather conditions that are particularly favorable to flames.
This park has become one of the most famous in the world thanks to its giant sequoias, thousand-year-old trees that the region strives to protect from bad weather. Already threatened by flames on several occasions, and in particular during the fire of July 10, when the flames had almost licked the branches of these immense trees, it was able to be protected by prescribed fires carried out for decades in its groves to reduce the fuel present on the ground. This time, the heat and the scale of the flames which reach more than 30 meters high may not spare it… Unless the effort of the firefighters who work tirelessly “using bulldozers, manual crews and aircraft,” as reported by Cal Fire, the department responsible for managing fires in the state of California, does not end up paying.