CA Fires Latest: 2.3M Acres Burned; KNP Complex Swells

CALIFORNIA — As wildfires continued to swell across the Golden State, four famous giant sequoias called "The Four Guardsmen" survived a raging wildfire that's been burning on the western side of California's Sierra Nevada for almost two weeks.

Fire agencies were able to save the iconic trees from the approaching KNP Complex fire by clearing out nearby vegetation and wrapping the base of the trees in fire-resistant material. That fire had burned more than 28,328 acres in sequoia country as of Wednesday morning.

“As of right now we don’t have any damage to any of our trees,” said fire information officer Mark Garrett.

The KNP Complex sparked from two lightning-sparked fires that eventually joined on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada. The complex fire spurred the evacuation of the park last week and on Sunday much of Kings Canyon National Park. Those who were visiting areas that were open were warned of poor air quality as smoke billowed from the nearby fire. The blaze was zero percent contained as of Monday.

For decades, Giant Forest has been subjected to prescribed fires that are carefully set and controlled to burn away vegetation that could otherwise become fuel for a fire like the KNP Complex and allow it to become established.

The next closest sequoia grove is Redwood Canyon, but it is at least 6 miles away and the fire would have to travel up and down terrain to get there, according to Garrett.

“But like Giant Forest, that one has also seen prescribed burn treatments for several decades since the late ’60s so that grove is also well-equipped to transform a high-intensity fire into low-intensity fire,” he said.

To the south, another forest fire in sequoia country was showing minimal movement.

The Windy Fire in the Giant Sequoia National Monument area of Sequoia National Forest and on the Tule River Indian Reservation has burned more than 31,388 acres and was 7 percent contained as of Wednesday.

On Wednesday, more than 9,400 firefighters continued to battle 11 major fires and one extended attack wildfire on California. Firefighters quickly contained at least 20 new fires on Tuesday alone, Cal Fire reported.

Despite cooler morning temperatures Tuesday in many reaches of the state, hot and dry conditions continued to hamper fire suppression efforts all over, Cal Fire reported.

In Northern California — where most major fires are still raging on — dry and windy conditions were in store for the Cascade-Sierra crest and Modoc Plateau eastward. Conditions were expected to remain breezy for the Sacramento Valley and west slopes of the Cascade-Sierra range from Tuesday to Thursday evening.

In Southern California, temperatures were expected to rise 10 degrees above normal today as a strong high pressure centered over the desert southwest. A slow cooling trend, along with a gradual rise in humidity will occur Thursday and persist into next week, Cal Fire reported.

Historic drought tied to climate change is making wildfires harder to fight. It has killed millions of trees in California alone. Scientists say climate change has made the West much warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive.

Some 7,595 wildfires in California this year have damaged or destroyed more than 3,000 homes and other buildings and torched well over 2.3 million acres since the beginning of the year. In comparison, to the same time last year, there were 8,278 wildfires, which burned more than 3.6 million acres.

See Cal Fire's chart of all major fires burning across the Golden State on Wednesday.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.