A wildfire threatening Yosemite National Park in eastern California has almost doubled in size in the space of three days and left two firefighters injured, having already claimed the life of one of them. The US Department of Agriculture announced, on Friday 20 July in a statement, that the fire, named ‘Ferguson’, was only 7 per cent contained on Friday and covered nearly 10,000 hectares – twice the size it was on Tuesday – without specifying how long it would take to bring the blaze under complete control.
More than 2,700 emergency personnel were mobilised to contain the fire, which broke out a week ago in the Sierra Nevada forest. Two firefighters were injured, just days after one of their colleagues, aged 36, was killed whilst on duty fighting the blaze. The fire was fuelled in particular by dead wood, leaves and grass dried out by the heat: 27 million trees died last year and 62 million in 2016 following several years of record-breaking drought.