Firefighters in the US are battling to protect the world's largest trees as a wildfire is ravaging the dense Sequoia National Park in California.
According to a news report, the massive wildfire was caused after lightning struck on September 9 and burned 11,365 acres of land so far. It then prompted Sequoia National park to close its doors to visitors.
The park is home to over 2000 sequoia trees, the biggest of them all, General Sherman stands 83 meters (275 feet) tall, and over 36 feet in diameter at the base, making it taller than the Statue of Liberty from its base to the torch.
Some of the sequoia trees in the forest are over 3000 years old. The forest itself is the house of at least the five oldest trees on earth.?
Firefighters are doing everything possible to protect the sequoia trees from burning by removing fire fuel, wrapping tree trunks in foil paper and dropping fire retardant gel by helicopter on the groves.
The Forest officials said that they have instructed firefighters to consider these trees as buildings and take as many precautionary measures as possible to save them.
"We basically told the fire crews to treat all our special sequoias like they were buildings and wrap them all up, and rake all the litter away and roll away the heavy logs," Christy Brigham, chief of resource management and science for the Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, told CNN.
By Friday, the forest official felt they be would be able to manage the flames and protect precious trees, thanks in part to clearing of undergrowth and controlled burns that starve the fire of fuel.
And even though giant sequoias adapt to periodic fire, the bark usually protects the trees against significant damage and can insulate them against a fire's heat, The National Park Service told CNN.?
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