Never believe anything you read in the Times. The burned photos are of trees that are already dead. Live redwoods don't burn easily. Their bark can be up to a foot thick, and is extremely fire resistant. There have been a lot of fires up there in the last 1500 years.
Thank you for giving me hope for the redwoods!
I tried to look up articles about the redwoods burning up in CA and it was quite difficult to find anything factual. On the west coast before white men arrived (is it racist to say it that way...haha) either Indians (is it okay to call them that) would do controlled burns as it helped grow the wild foods they ate, or good ol’ Mother Nature burned the forest. That way the undergrowth and dry dead fuels burned, but the mature trees did not. So the western forests in those days were completely different from the forests now. Wide spaces with huge gigantic trees. That were virtually fireproof.
Now the fires are infernos because there is so much unburned fuel - leaf litter, dead branchies, small bushes especially manzanta that burns as thought that were its life’s mission, small trees or worse small dead trees (they die due to lack of sunlight because of the huge high forest canopy) etc. The infernos on the west coast are 100% the fault of rotten forest management controlled by environazis. And toss in a few arsonists but most are lightning.
When we moved on our property (fir forest mostly with some oaks and madrones) there were probably several dozen trees about 100-150 years old and many under that age, property had been logged around 1950 I think. HUGE stumps, old growth. Many of the old stumps and old pieces of bark were blackened here and there from a forest fire that had gone through but had not killed the big trees.
Mother Nature knows how to do it right. ANd if the forest service and timber companies who own large tracts of forest land did it her way, infernos would be no more and the forests would be much healthier. Controlled burns plus taking care of slash, forest debris etc by chipper shredding, lopping and laying or whatever it’s called to compost, , thinning unhealthy trees, etc.