Redwood Fire confine and contain suppression operation

In August and September of 2023, fire managers utilized a confine-and-contain firefighting strategy to suppress the Redwood Fire in Sequoia National Park. This strategy allowed the park to limit the duration of the wildfire and mitigate risks, while still allowing the fire to perform essential work on the landscape.

The Redwood Fire was ignited by lightning within designated wilderness. Per the parks’ fire and fuels management plan, the confine and contain strategy may be used when it does not pose an unacceptable risk. This fire was discovered less than 1/8 of a mile uphill from the giant sequoias of Redwood Meadow Grove, and near Little Redwood Meadow Grove and Granite Creek Grove. Due to a century of fire exclusion these groves were identified in 2022 as critically at risk. The high tree density and accumulated dead and down vegetation mirrored conditions formerly seen in areas such as the southern Redwood Mountain Grove and Board Camp Grove, which burned so severely under the drought conditions of 2020 and 2021 that vast stands of mature giant sequoias were killed outright, an unprecedented occurrence in the trees’ long history.

Park leadership recognized that without proactive fuels reduction, these three groves were at serious risk of meeting the same fate in future drought years. In October of 2022, NPS crews began work on a multiyear fuels reduction project. The project includes understory thinning, piling of excess fuels, pile burning, and broadcast prescribed burning which removed fuels within a designated unit.

The Redwood Fire presented an opportunity. Preexisting barriers, including the KNP Complex Fire scar, active creeks, trails, and rocky areas, provided a containment area that required minimal reinforcement. Impacts to wilderness typically seen in fire suppression operations were significantly reduced using this strategy, as construction of new hand lines was unnecessary. Live fuel and 1,000-hour fuel moistures were well above the seasonal averages, and these conditions allowed fire managers to moderate fire intensity with backfire operations, ensuring fire effects in sequoia groves would be favorable.

This indirect firefighting strategy and the hard work of field crews resulted in successfully reintroduction of low-intensity fire into 1,957 acres of mixed conifer forest, including 152 acres within the three giant sequoia groves. These groves and surrounding mixed conifer forest are now more resilient and better prepared to survive and moderate the growth of future high-intensity wildfires.