When I was in CA recently, I visited one of my favorite places, Big Basin State Park. I haven't been there since some cousins and I went camping there (in July 2018, when I was on sabbatical). (It looks like I never posted pictures, though, oh well.)
In August 2020, the park burned in a huge fire (also see the wikipedia post above). I talked to the rangers last week (well, not real rangers, they told me, but the two women who were in charge of the parking area), and they said 98% of the park was affected by the fire, but 97% of the redwoods survived.
I was expecting to see just charred remains, which is what I've seen in previous visits to burned areas, but was pleasantly surprised to see that things were looking pretty good.
Here's a picture of the same tree, first higher, showing the growth up there, and then lower, showing that the base of the tree is damaged. The not really rangers told me that redwoods to fine if the interior is burnt some, so long as the outer part lives. And that's how it looked. There were a LOT of partly burnt trees with green way up, and a bunch of little trees growing out of the root area. The little trees looked bigger than I'd think two years or even three would grow, so I don't know if they just survived, or if they grow super fast when they're released by the extra light post fire or whatever.
At any rate, I was really happy to get a chance to visit and take a short walk, hug a tree, and smell the redwoods.
The not really rangers told me that there's no back country camping yet because all the buildings and such (like latrines) were destroyed, but that there's hope to rebuild a new visitor center and new camping infrastructure in the next couple of years. If so, I hope I can go camping there again someday.
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