FRESNO COUNTY, Calif. (KFSN) — It’s been more than one month since the Garnet Fire was sparked by lightning.
Since then, thousands of firefighters from across the country traveled to help battle the blaze that destroyed almost sixty thousand acres in the Sierra National Forest.
On Saturday, officials say the blaze is 99% contained.
“The majority of the efforts revolve around continuing to mop up and patrol and ensure that we keep the fire its current footprint,” said Tulare County Fire incident commander, Danny Wristen.
Crews are also focused on making sure there’s no hazards for people once the area is open to the public.
“There’s significant handlines, significant dozer lines put in to protect the communities in the area of the fire and to basically stop the fire. So, all of those sort of have to be put back the way they were before,” said Wristen.
The incident command post in Clovis has a more scaled down operation on Saturday compared to the last month.
The challenge of working in steep terrain continues for fire crews.
Officials said one other major concern, the Sequoias that were threatened by the Garnet Fire.
“When you have a tree that’s a thousand years older or more, it’s gonna take a thousand years to replace it, right? They really are irreplaceable treasures,” said U.S. Forest Service Natural Resource Officer, Jon Regelbrugge.
Officials said most of the giant Sequoias, in the lower grove of the McKinley Grove area are expected to survive and suffered little to no damage.
But younger trees did not make it.
“A lot of them were killed by the relatively severe fire. Fortunately, we didn’t have a running crown fire go through that area, it was a hot surface fire,” said Regelbrugge.
Officials explain, it’ll take six months to a year to understand the severity of damage done to the Sequoias.
As the firefight continues, officials don’t anticipate any serious weather-related issues in the coming days, but they are constantly monitoring just in case.
