L.A. Now Live: Rim fire takes an environmental toll

Join us at 9 a.m. when we discuss the environmental effects of the Rim fire near Yosemite National Park with Times reporter Bettina Boxall.

The extent of the damage from the blaze won’t be known until after it dies out and crews survey the burn area. But given the intensity of the fire and 200-foot-tall walls of flame shooting up canyons, John Buckley and others expect nothing to be left on big patches of mountain chaparral areas and timberland.

“It’s making these incredible hot runs where it’s literally wiping out the forest,” said Buckley, an ex-firefighter for the U.S. Forest Service and head of the Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center, which has worked for more than two decades to protect the region’s ecosystem.

As of Monday evening, the Rim fire was the 11th-largest wildfire in recent California history, at nearly 161,000 acres. Most of the fire is burning in the Stanislaus National Forest, but about 21,000 acres have been blackened in the western portion of Yosemite National Park, south of the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir.

Winds and this year’s dry conditions have helped the fire grow by leaps and bounds. It is slightly larger than the last conflagration that roared through the area, the Stanislaus Complex. That fire 26 years ago also occurred in a dry year.