The world’s largest tree recently got a blanket, to help protect it from a raging wildfire. Photos of the sequoia named General Sherman — with a base measuring a massive 36 feet in diameter — set off a flurry of interest in why and how a blanket might work against flames. The KNP Complex fire has now burned 23,743 acres and is 0% contained,the park said in an update Monday morning . The fire has grown by thousands of acres in each recent day. General Sherman looms over the north end of Giant Forest in Sequoia National Park. Firefighters and park officials have been on alert in recent days, as the KNP Complex fire neared the area. Intent on saving the General Sherman and other high-priority trees, firefighters wrapped sequoias in aluminum-based blankets, sheathing the trees’ foot-thick bark with a man-made material to help them survive. There are signs that the strategy worked: the famous Four Guardsmen, sequoias that stand at the edge of the forest, were saved over the weekend . Blankets have already been used to protect houses The sequoias are “wrapped with house-wrapping material, kind of an aluminum-foil fabric that goes around the base of the […]
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