Yosemite-area wildfire grows to 282 square miles, biggest in
Sierra’s recorded history   The fire had ravaged 282 square
miles by Tuesday, the biggest in the Sierra’s recorded history
and one of the largest on record in California. Containment
increased to 20 percent but the number of destroyed structures
rose to 101 and some 4,500 structures remained threatened. The
types of lost buildings were not specified. Firefighters were
making stands at Tuolumne City and other mountain communities.
Federal forest ecologists say that historic policies of fire
suppression to protect Sierra timber interests left a century’s
worth of fuel in the fire’s path. “That’s called making the
woodpile bigger,” said Hugh Safford, an ecologist with the U.S.
Forest Service in California.  Two years of drought and a
constant slow warming across the 350-mile-long Sierra Nevada
also worked to turn the Rim fire into an inferno. For years,
forest ecologists have warned that Western wildfires will only
get worse.  Also Tuesday, a fire a