Lion Fire in Central California

Lightning ignited a large fire in the Golden Trout Wilderness, located on the Sequoia National Forest, earlier this July. The Lion fire now spans 17,436 acres wide, according to the U.S. Forest Service’s Incident Information System.

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard the Terra satellite captured the fire on July 28, 2011 at 18:35 UTC (10:35 a.m. PST) The red area indicates heat from the fire as detected by the MODIS instrument.

So far no damage has been reported related to the fire, and the Inciweb system reports it as 15 percent contained. Thirty horses and mules are transporting supplies to the 55 firefighters at the fire site, according to the Visalia Times-Delta. The absence of motorized equipment and other modern fire prevention methods aim to limit any harm to wildlife in the national forest.

NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team. Caption: NASA/Goddard, Melissa Quijada