A National Park Bounces Back After California’s Biggest Single Fire

Above, Lassen's "Devastated Area" no longer looked devastated in 2017. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

A massive fire is devastating to plants and structures in its path.

Lassen Volcanic National Park in Northern California suffered extensive destruction by the Dixie Fire in 2021. But nature has a way to make stunning comebacks following such destruction.

I visited Lassen in 2017 during my Great American Eclipse trip. At the time of my visit, I stopped first at Crater Lake National Park in Oregon. Wildfires were raging in and around the park. When I later visited Lassen, I saw areas that were decimated by past fires. But there were signs that life in those areas were returning. I also saw areas that were devastated from Lassen Peak's 1915 eruption. The park's "Devastated Area" no longer looked devastated 100 years later.

Good News Network has posted an article on how beauty and wonder are returning to Lassen Volcanic National Park.

It begins with:

The Dixie Fire of 2021 was the largest single blaze in California’s history, but even this human-accelerated firestorm couldn’t tamp down the resilience of nature.

In August, it devastated Lassen Volcano National Park in Northern California, leaving parts of it reminiscent of “Mordor” yet in a feature piece from The Guardian, it’s clear nature is just a few steps behind restoring what was torched.

As the Dixie Fire came closer and closer to this remote National Park that receives only around 500,000 visitors a year, rangers, Forest Service employees, and firefighters strategized how to protect small communities living near the park as well as the park’s infrastructure.

A variety of controlled burns—used for centuries by Native Americans to reduce the risk of wildfires having too much dead and dry wood and scrub to burn—were set in vulnerable forests. Earth-moving equipment left bare earth surrounding the Kohm Yah-mah-nee visitor center.

In the moments before the Dixie Fire arrived, firefighters lit their own fires around key areas, perhaps hoping to consume the oxygen in the area just before the immense flames could use it to spread.

Their efforts paid off—the historic towns of Mill Creek, Mineral, and Old Station were all unscarred, and so was the Kohm Yah-mah-nee visitor center.

As for the rest of the park, the devastation that saw whole forests reduced to blackened stumps and toothpicks shocked visitors; but not the staff. Lassen Volcano was enshrined as the nation’s 17th national park after the eruption of the volcano in 1915 which saw incredible destructive forces unleashed on the forests there.

To read more, go here.