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BIG BASIN — The Douglas fir came crashing down just a couple dozen feet from the famous “Mother of the Forest” tree Friday, and the impact shook the earth, blowing another smoldering hot spot into live flames. The fire-damaged fir was taken down with chainsaws in a controlled fall, to prevent it from toppling on its own and damaging one of the old-growth giants still standing a stone’s throw away.
It’s the first step in the disaster response for one of California’s flagship state parks, where the mission is to protect the ancient redwood trees that made it through the devastation of the CZU Lightning Complex Fire ravaging Santa Cruz County. The majority of the iconic trees — including the cherished Mother and “Father of the Forest” — survived the blaze, this news organization confirmed Friday. But there are many big redwoods whose bases were burned to the heart, and which could be toppled by a falling fir, huge numbers of which were severely damaged because the species fares poorly in flames.
“If we can do it controlled, we can get these down without them falling on the redwood trees that are still standing,” said William Christianson, whose tree-service company is working for Cal Fire to cut down Douglas firs that could fall on redwoods or roads.
Already, there are enough downed redwoods that you can spot one fallen — often smashed into jagged red pieces — from almost any vantage point. Many of those are smaller trees, just a few feet in diameter. But beside the road just before the headquarters complex, a titanic redwood, 14 feet across at the base, lies horizontal on the ashy forest floor, the only truly huge tree that appears to have come down in the area around the park’s headquarters.
“That was my favorite,” said Christianson, a resident of nearby Boulder Creek, the nearby town that was also heavily impacted by the fire.
Next to the rubble of the headquarters, the “Auto Tree” — where visitors posed with their cars in front of the cavernous bole burned out in past fires — still stands, the interior newly scorched and the top blasted off by the latest firestorm. But, like other large redwoods, it was protected by thick, flame-resistant bark, and is nearly certain to remain alive, said California State Parks environmental scientist Ryan Diller.
Parts of the forest “got hammered,” Diller said, but “there are parts that saw really, really healthy fire.”
Cavities burned into trees’ bases provide important habitat for forest creatures including swifts, bats and rodents, he added. And after a tree’s top is blown off by fire and blasting wind — as happened with so many Big Basin redwoods in this fire — it’s likely to grow a big limb up high that provides habitat for endangered marbled murrelets.
On Friday, the notoriously noisy blue Steller’s jays that were absent in the days after the fire had begun to return, along with the red-topped acorn woodpeckers. Frogs trilled in an ash-filmed creek, and deer and turkeys grazed in an unscathed green field at the otherwise-incinerated Camp Hammer, a Christian facility at the edge of the park.
Still, very little park infrastructure made it through the fire. Six of seven employee-housing structures burned to the ground. Many wooden bridges over creeks are damaged. Wooden stairs and steps have been torched to coals. Ablutions blocks look like they’ve been bombed. Big trees are still thundering to the ground regularly on their own, and countless others are partially burned and will pose a deadly threat until they’re taken down. Small fires still burn in stumps and fallen trees. Steep hillsides are bare of vegetation and will be vulnerable to landslides. A utility building was cloven virtually in two by a felled fir. Power poles burned and lines are down into the park.
And an oft-photographed attraction, a sawn section of an ancient redwood, with tags pointing to growth rings from the tree’s birth in 544 AD log through the birth of Mohammed in 570 and the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, has vanished into blowing ash.
It appears the practice of preventing fires in parks such as Big Basin — where ecosystems are adapted to rely on fire — contributed to the devastation, Diller said. “It creates jackpots of fuel that lead to catastrophic wildfires,” he said.
Asked when the park could reopen, California State Parks ranger Alex Tabone rolled his eyes.
“We’re still in the crisis,” he said, hauling broken tree limbs away so the small fire kicked up near the Mother tree would burn out. “A lot of things need to be done.”
Park officials said in a statement last week that Big Basin would be closed indefinitely. The news deals a heavy economic blow to the tourism-dependent towns in the San Lorenzo Valley that are gateways to the forest.
Surveying the devastation for the first time Friday, Santa Cruz County Sheriff Jim Hart pronounced himself, “really bummed out, man.” He’d heard the damage was extensive, he said, “but I didn’t realize it was this bad.”
“It’s such a big piece of our community and it’s just gone. It’s hard to believe it till you see it,” he added. “I’m trying to wrap my head around it. It’s really upsetting.”
