Arrest Made In Sequoia National Forest Fire

A California woman has been arrested on suspicion of starting a fire that’s now reached 50,000 acres in and around the Sequoia National Forest.

Forest Service officer Brian Adams says the 45-year-old woman was arrested at her Bakersfield home. Her name has not been released.

Adams says authorities tracked her down from witness descriptions. He says the woman went into a store Sunday and said she needed help because she had been cooking hot dogs and her campfire had blown out of control.

The U.S. Forest Service has said a campfire started the blaze. Flames from the wildfire are raging out of control in the Sequoia National Forest in California, and have reached within a mile of a grove that is home to some of the world’s largest trees.

Packsaddle Grove is home to the Packsaddle Giant, which has the fourth largest ground perimeter of any sequoia. Crews are using bulldozers to try to make firebreaks.

The fire, burning about 140 miles southeast of Sonora, is completely uncontained and is expanding in three directions. The blaze began Sunday and has grown by thousands of acres each day since.