The fire has already ravaged 17,000 acres of land.
The first signs of progress in battling the Oak fire raging just outside California’s Yosemite Park came Monday, with the state’s main firefighting agency reporting the flames are now 10 percent contained.
Lynda Reynolds-Brown and her husband, Aubrey, evacuated Friday to a nearby elementary school, saying the fire bore down on them quickly. When they spoke with“It was scary when we left because we were getting ashes on us but we had such a visual of this billowing,” said Lynda. “It just seemed like it was above our house and coming our way really quickly.”
The sequoias, which became the first federally protected natural area by President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, are no longer an imminent worry by Cal Fire, however, as the blaze’s spread has slowed. While devastating, Pierce pointed out that the Oak fire is not nearly as large as recent wildfires to ravage California. At this time last year, the Dixie fire raged over more than a million acres in total—more than 60 times the area the Oak fire has burned.