Yosemite National Park closed another key route into the park yesterday that could keep some visitors from reaching the premier outdoor destination over the Labour Day weekend, according to a park spokesman.
The shutdown of Tioga Road comes a day after the so-called Rim Fire burned deeper into the park and reached the shores of a reservoir that serves as the primary water supply for San Francisco some 320 kilometres to the west.
The blaze has charred over 75,800 hectares – an area larger than the land mass of Chicago – since it erupted on August 17. Containment lines have been established around 23 per cent of the fire’s perimeter.
It ranks as the biggest California wildfire since October 2007 and the sixth-largest in state history, according to the records of Cal Fire, a state government site.
The fire is burning mainly in the Stanislaus National Forest west of Yosemite, but it has scorched more than 40,000 acres of the park, and firefighters were making an extra push to stop it from spreading inside Yosemite.
It will have a significant economic impact
The fire last week forced the closure of a stretch of Highway 120 that leads to the west side of the 300,000-hectare park and is the main entrance from the San Francisco Bay area.
Tioga Road, the second of the four access routes into the park, was closed to allow fire crews to build containment lines along the road before the blaze approaches, said Yosemite spokesman Tom Medema.
“That will limit the access for visitors to and from the east side of the park, quite possibly over Labour Day weekend, which will have a significant economic impact on the area and (be) an inconvenience for visitors,” he said.
Some 4 million people visit Yosemite each year, most of them during the peak months of June through August.
Firefighters plan to burn containment lines from the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in the remote northwestern section of the park south to Tioga Road to stop the fire from moving further east into the park, Medema said.
By yesterday afternoon, any remaining campers from the Yosemite Creek Campground and Tamarack Flat Campgrounds were evacuated, he said. The park also closed the Crane Flat Campground, according to Medema.
The cause of the blaze remained under investigation.