Firefighters Race to Save a Treasured Sequoia Grove in California

California fire crews are scrambling to save a grove of giant sequoias that is being threatened by a forest fire in the Sierra Nevada, going so far as to surround the trees with sprinklers and dispatch specialized firefighters to climb trees and extinguish embers.

Giant sequoias have been killed in stunning numbers in recent years, with devastating wildfires destroying roughly a fifth of all mature sequoias since 2020. The revered trees, which grow only in California on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada, are the world’s largest and can live for thousands of years.

Early Monday morning, the Garnet fire, which has been burning in the Sierra National Forest for two weeks and now reaches across nearly 55,000 acres east of Fresno, reached a grove that is home to roughly 165 giant sequoias, said Joe Zwierzchowski, a spokesman with the U.S. Forest Service. Some of the trees in the 100-acre grove are estimated to be 2,000 years old, with the tallest rising more than 230 feet, according to the nonprofit Save the Redwoods League.

A week ago, firefighters installed a sprinkler system at the site that has been running day and night, Mr. Zwierzchowski said. It has significantly increased the humidity in the grove, making it much more difficult for the fire to burn the trees, he said.

Crews have also removed underbrush, pine needles and other debris that could help fuel the fire. Gino Degraffenreid, an operations chief on the fire, said in a briefing on Sunday that firefighters working near the grove were trying to keep the fire at “the lowest intensity possible to save those trees.”

But embers from the advancing blaze later lodged in the branches of several sequoias, and crews fought the flames until it became unsafe to do so early on Monday, Mr. Zwierzchowski said. No trees were fully on fire as of Monday afternoon, he said.