SAN FRANCISCO, Aug 29: Yosemite National Park, faced with the spread of a massive California wildfire, closed a second key route into the park that could keep some visitors from reaching one of the nation’s top outdoor destinations over the Labor Day weekend.
The closure of Yosemite’s east entrance and the entire length of Tioga Road through the middle of park comes as the so-called Rim Fire burned deeper into the park and crept closer to the tourist hub of Yosemite Valley.
The blaze, which stands as the sixth largest on record in state history after charring an area larger than Chicago, on Tuesday reached a reservoir that serves as the primary water supply for San Francisco, some 320 km to the west.
Crews were attacking the eastern flank of the fire as it spread toward Yosemite Valley as well as the western edge of the blaze, where some 4,500 homes in a string of small communities stood in the path of the flames, California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection spokesman Dennis Matheson said.
He said that treacherous, often inaccessible terrain was hindering firefighters’ efforts to carve additional containment lines around the blaze and estimated it would take another week to fully encircle it.
“I think it’s very safe to say that we’re looking at least at the first week of September,” Matheson said. “A lot of it is footwork, creating containment lines by hand.”
Since erupting August 17, the Rim Fire has blackened about 192,500 acres (77,902 hectares) Of dry scrub and timberlands, mostly in the Stanislaus National Forest west of the park. As of Wednesday, 43,000 acres of the total area burned was inside Yosemite, nearly double the figure from Monday.
By late yesterday, containment lines had been established around 30 percent of the fire’s perimeter, up from 23 percent early in the day, according to fire officials.
The flames last week forced the closure of a stretch of Highway 120 that leads into the west side of the 750,000-acre (300,000-hectare) park and is the main entrance from the San Francisco Bay area. (AGENCIES)
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