The initial news accounts sounded so similar to past years that they were almost repetitive: A wildfire had broken out in a national park and was burning in heavy brush and forest thick with dead and downed trees.
California has experienced more than its share of such blazes in the last few years, usually with horrible results. Trees weakened by drought finally succumbed to voracious bark beetles whose appetites killed pine trees, which went from healthy green to sickly red and stood like silent zombies. Add to that a century of firefighting, in which the main purpose was to put out blazes as soon as possible, and the result was millions of acres covered in undergrowth that, when dried out from drought, became perfect fire-starter material.
Only this time the national park in question is none other than Yosemite. A fire broke out last Thursday along the Washburn Trail near the Mariposa Grove, the famous stand of 500 sequoias inside Yosemite.
