As the Labor Day weekend approaches, the state of California closed one of its main roads into Yosemite National Park on Wednesday as the Rim Fire continues to grow, charring more than 187,000 acres of land since it erupted on Aug. 17.
The wildfire is already the largest in state history since 2007,
but it showed no signs of dying down as it burned deeper into
Yosemite National Park and reached the shores of San Francisco’s
primary water supply.
Last week, the Rim Fire forced the closure of a stretch of
Highway 120, which is the San Francisco Bay area’s main route to
access the west side of the park.On Wednesday, the
state was also forced to close the second of four routes into the
park. Tioga Road, which is also part of Highway 120, will close
on noon local time and likely remain off limits
throughout Labor Day weekend. Another part of the highway, from
Buck Meadows to Crane Flat, was temporarily closed on
Tuesday as firefighters battled the blaze.
“That will limit the access for visitors to and from the east
side of the park, quite possibly over Labor Day weekend, which
will have a significant economic impact on the area and an
inconvenience for visitors,” Yosemite spokesman Tom Medema
told Reuters. On average, 4 million people visit the national
park each year, with the Labor Day holiday marking one of the
busiest weekends of the summer.
But park superintendent Don Neubacher emphasized the necessity of
the road closures to allow firefighters to battle the blaze from
sections of the highway located closest to the edge of the Rim
Fire.
“The work that will be performed over the next few days is
instrumental in suppressing the Rim Fire within Yosemite,”
Neubacher told the San Francisco Chronicle. “The safety of our
firefighters working along the road is our paramount
concern.”
Two Yosemite National Park campgrounds will also be shut down
over the holiday weekend, thereby affecting the vacation plans of
travelers who hoped to spend the weekend hiking, fishing or
camping in California’s mountainous region.
The Rim Fire has already destroyed the entire Berkeley Tuolumne
Family Campon Sunday, which is located near the San
Francisco Bay area’s primary water supply, the Hetch Hetchy
Reservoir. The blaze licked the shores of the reservoir this
week, littering the man-made lake with ash and soot. The San
Francisco Public Utilities Commission said in a statement that
water quality remains healthy, and that a filtration system can
get rid of any ash or soot before the supply reaches customers’
homes and businesses, Reuters reports.
The fire also damaged power and utility lines in the area near
the reservoir, forcing the utility company to purchase $600,000
in outside electricity.
It has also worsened the air quality as far as Nevada, which is
more than 100 miles away from the Rim Fire. In Reno and Carson
City, schoolchildren were kept indoors and people were
hospitalized for eye and throat irritation, the Associated Press
reports.
“I can’t run. I can’t breathe. It makes me sneeze,” said
bartender Renee Dishman, a 22-year-old Nevada resident.
But Alison Hesterly, spokeswoman for the California Department of
Forestry and Fire Protection, told Reuters that hot and dry
temperatures on Wednesday with a minimum of 15 percent humidity
could only add fuel to the fire and make containment a more
difficult task.
“If we reach the maximum temperature [of 94 degrees
Fahrenheit] and the minimum humidity, we’re expecting continued
erratic fire behavior,” she said. About 23 percent of
the fire’s perimeter has been contained as of Wednesday morning,
but the blaze is continuing to grow. There have been no deaths
attributed to the fire, but the firefighting effort has already
cost $33 million and about 4,500 homes were threatened by the
blaze on Tuesday. The cause of the destructive blaze still
remains unknown.
Republished from: RT