CBS News published July 11, 2022: Wildfire threatens iconic sequoias in Yosemite. The Washburn fire in Yosemite National Park is threatening the park's famous giant sequoias. The fire grew five times larger over the weekend and has scorched more than 2,300 acres. CBS News correspondent Jonathan Vigliotti joins CBS News' John Dickerson to discuss.
CBS47 KSEE24 published July 12, 2022: Humans caused Washburn Fire, Yosemite superintendent says. Additional equipment and reinforcements headed up to Yosemite National Park as crews went into battle against the Washburn Fire for the sixth day.
The blaze threatens historic landmarks and some of the world’s oldest and largest trees.
During a community meeting on Monday night, the park’s superintendent said the fire is under investigation but was human-caused.
Mercury News
written by Jason Green, Bay Area News Group
Monday July 11, 2022
OAKHURST – The Washburn Fire burning in Yosemite National Park’s southern edges was caused by a person, officials said.
“There was no lightning on that day, so it’s a human-start fire and it’s under investigation,” Yosemite Superintendent Cicely Muldoon said at a community meeting Monday evening. “That’s all I can really say about that right now. We’re looking at that real, real hard.”
As of 6:35 a.m. Tuesday morning, the wildfire had burned 3,221 acres and was 22% contained.
Evacuations remained in place for the Mariposa Grove, which is home to the park’s oldest grove of sequoias, as well as the community of Wawona and the Wawona Campground.
The fire is burning on the outskirts of the grove, but “overall it’s in a very good place,” said Matt Ahearn, an operations section chief with California Interagency Incident Management Team 13. Ahearn said hand lines and other measures were in place to protect the natural resource.
Muldoon noted that the grove of 500 or so trees was first protected by Abraham Lincoln in 1864, predating the creation of Yosemite National Park and the National Park Service.
“It’s really the root of the whole national park system — a very important place to us,” Muldoon said.
Crews were also standing guard in Wawona.
“Currently, the fire is not right up against the community,” Ahearn told concerned residents. “We have crews and fire engines going through the community assessing structures, looking for areas that need to be cleaned up and putting hose lines where appropriate.”
The fire was not moving quickly, but it was “producing extreme heat,” Ahearn said.
Officials also sought to reassure residents they were committed to fully suppressing the blaze.
“We’re not just sitting back and watching this thing,” said Bass Lake District Ranger Jennifer Christie. “We’re in there and … we’ve got things under control so far.”
“We’re putting this one out,” added Josh Boehm, an incident commander with Team 13.
Boehm said his Southern California-based Type 2 Incident Management Team was summoned to the fire Thursday night and had taken command by 7 a.m. Saturday.
“We’re already showing 22% containment,” he said. “We’ve done a tremendous amount of work in that short amount of time.”
Nearly 700 personnel are “attacking (the fire) in every way possible,” according to Muldoon.
“The only benefit of having this fire so early in the season is there aren’t a lot of other fires going on, so there are a lot of resources available,” she said. “That’s why you’re seeing so many aircraft overhead now and so any trucks rolling through your community.”
The rest of Yosemite remains open, but many visitors have opted to cut their trips short, including Madison Swaley. She drove out from Utah with friends to spend four days camping and hiking in the park.
“When we got into the park it ended up being a lot smokier that we’d thought,” the 23-year-old said. She now plans to depart Tuesday. “You can feel it in your lungs.”
Same climate change psychopath eco-terrorists
KPIX CBS SF Bay Area published July 8, 2022: Bay Area climate activists target SUVs, deflate tires. Some climate activists appear to have crossed the line as they try to send a message about gas consumption. They're letting the air out of SUV tires. Da Lin reports.
San Francisco Gate
written by Sam Moore
Friday July 8, 2022
“ATTENTION – Your gas guzzler kills. We have deflated one or more of your tires. You’ll be angry, but don’t take it personally. It’s not you, it’s your car.”
The letters placed on windshields, along with said deflated tires, are what greeted several Bay Area drivers on the morning of July 5. The letters contained a message written by an international group that deflates the tires of SUVs and other larger vehicles in the name of fighting climate change.
“We did this because driving around urban areas in your massive vehicle has huge consequences for others,” the leaflet says. “We’re taking actions into our own hands because our governments and politicians will not.”
The incidents took place in Vacaville and soon went viral through Facebook and Reddit posts. This is the first known instance of members from Tyre Extinguishers, the group responsible, deflating tires in California. The U.K.-based group made their U.S. debut over the past few weeks by deflating tires in Chicago, New York City and Scranton, Pennsylvania.
“As far as we know, this is the first action in the Bay Area - the first of many!” Marion Walker, a spokesperson for Tyre Extinguishers, said in an email to SFGATE. According to Walker, the group’s autonomous nature prevents other members from knowing who is deflating tires and where.
Lt. Katie Cardona with the Vacaville Police Department said the department received one report on July 5 of a tire on a resident’s Honda Pilot SUV being deflated overnight.
“We are aware that there are reports of additional tire deflations on social media, but those have not been reported to us,” Cardona told SFGATE. She added that the incident involving the Honda Pilot is being investigated as a case of vehicle tampering, which is a misdemeanor offense punishable by up to a year in jail and a maximum fine of $1,000.
Despite the Tyre Extinguishers claiming to target SUVs in urban areas — “You will have no difficulty getting around without your gas guzzler, with walking, cycling or public transit,” the leaflet says — the group’s first Bay Area deflations took place in a largely unwalkable suburban neighborhood.
“We encourage people to target rich urban areas, but SUVs are a menace everywhere. This is an emergency,” Walker said. Users on Facebook and Reddit were livid over photos posted of the leaflet, which garnered thousands of comments across the two platforms.
“If they do this to my car which I need to drive a whole 45 minutes to work and 45 minutes back from work at 10 p.m. when no public transit are working, well … [I’m] willing to take a week off to hunt them down and make sure whatever they’re using to puncture tires will be impaled somewhere on their body where the sun don’t shine,” a disgruntled Reddit user commented. (Police said there were no reports of vandalism to tires, and Tyre Extinguishers’ website only instructs people how to deflate tires, not to slash or damage them.)
The Tyre Extinguishers posted on their website yesterday that 12 SUVs had tires deflated in Vacaville, and encouraged members to avoid “cars clearly used for people with disabilities, traders’ cars (even if they’re large), minibuses and normal-sized cars.”
“We want to make it impossible to own an SUV in the world's urban areas. Deflating tyres repeatedly and encouraging others to do the same will turn the minor inconvenience of a flat tyre into a giant obstacle for driving massive killer vehicles around our streets,” Walker said.
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