As Wildfire Closes in on Gov-Owned Building, Feds Break Out Secret “Wrap”

In Southern California, a major wildfire known as the Railroad Fire has scorched swaths of both the Yosemite National Park and Sierra National Park. It’s triggered evacuations for dozens of residents, according to KFSN-TV, as well as consuming 12,000 acres of forest as of Friday.

In Sierra National Forest, one of the threatened areas involves two historic log cabins owned by the government — and as you can imagine, there’s not a whole lot of fireproofing in the building materials on those. That’s why the U.S. Forest Service have broken out a special, fire-retardant “wrap” to try to make sure that they don’t go up in flames.

“Two historic cabins located in the Nelder Grove Historic Area are wrapped for protection by the Resource Advisors (READ) Team,” the Forest Service announced in a Facebook post.

“Their job is to advise fire fighters of natural, cultural and heritage resources in the field to be sure they are protected during firefighting efforts. The photos below depict this type of work,” the post reads.

“The two historic cabins located here in Nelder Grove were originally built in the late 1800’s by early pioneers at Biledo Meadow, six miles North of Nelder Grove Historic Area,” the post notes.

“These are the second and third oldest cabins in The Forest. Through the historic preservation program of the National Historic Preservation Act, the Sierra National Forest moved the cabins here in the 1980’s to preserve them for the future generations to appreciate and enjoy.”

According to a KFSN-TV report from 2014, the wrap used by the Forest Service is essentially a type of foil wrap that shields the buildings from the heat and embers from forest fires, although it’s not entirely fireproof.

“It’s pretty simple, you just wrap the house in a shingle-type fashion so it’s overlapping going down so the stuff that goes down doesn’t get into the cracks,” Forest Service archaeologist Ward Stanley said.

It may be simple, but it looks like it’s protected these cabins, at least for the moment. One can only hope it stays that way — and that all of those affected by this fire are so lucky.

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