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As of Saturday, the York Fire burning in the Mojave National Preserve is just over 93,000 acres with 93% containment, according to the National Park Service. The fire crossed over into Clark County, Nevada and has burned a little over 9000 acres there.
Currently there are 325 firefighters and personnel assigned to the York Fire.
According to the National Park Service’s press release – firefighters are successfully working to extinguish any remaining heat on the fire’s perimeter using minimal impact suppression techniques – or MIST. Crews focused their efforts patrolling for hot spots and monitoring cooled areas.
York Fire Public Information Officer Sasha Travaglio called into Z1077’s Up Close show on Friday, where she gave some insights on how the MIST firefighting technique is minimizing the harm to the iconic Joshua Trees that dot the Mojave National Preserve –
“So there’s definitely going to be some Joshua Tree Loss because of the York Fire but the great news is that crews are using a technique called MIST and that minimal impact suppression is the technique that wildland firefighters especially use to be light on the land – and make sure that the suppression efforts that they’re putting into a fire impacts the resource as little as possible, so they aren’t damaging the resource as they are trying to get full suppression.”
Ranger Travaglio says the cause of the fire is still unknown and under investigation.
The York fire is currently the largest wildfire in Calfornia, and the cause of the fire is unknown and still under investigation.
Fires like the York fire and the Dome Fire in 2020 are different than desert fires in years past – here again is Ranger Sasha Travaglio –
“There are a few factors that contribute to fires in the desert – one of them is a changing climate. Weather patterns have become very different and unpredictable. Things are getting hotter and dryer. Sometimes when you have those monsoon systems come in – while they provide humidity, they don’t have as much rain as they have in years past and we get a lot of dry lightning strikes.
“I’d say the climate is a big contributor to desert fires being larger scale and fast spreading.
“The other big contributor to the change in desert fires recently is definitely invasive grasses. In the past, there wasn’t a lot of vegetation to spread the fire from plant to plant. Fires were pretty small and were extinguished pretty quickly.
Now that we have these invasive grass they provide fuel that carries the fire from larger plants like Joshua Trees or creosote along the desert, allowing them to get bigger.”
You can hear the full interview with Sasha, along with biologist Michael Vamstead and Joshua Tree National Park Superintendent Jane Rodgers right here:
