Yosemite Firefighters' Plan: Set More Fires

The giant Rim Fire near Yosemite is still growing—it's now the sixth-largest in California history—but it's also slowing, and firefighters expect to have the 301-square-mile blaze fully contained by Sept. 10, the Los Angeles Times reports. How will they do it? By setting more fires inside containment lines, which will burn vegetation in the fire's path, helping to slow or stop its spread. Cool temperatures, high humidity, and slowing winds have already helped crews gain better control of the flames, now 30% contained.

No one has died in the blaze, but it did put a damper on David Hermanson's 10-day trek through Yosemite earlier this week. He tells CNN he knows Yosemite well, but what he thought was a brewing thunderstorm near Dorothy Lake turned out to be a massive cloud of smoke. "It looked surreal," he says. "We were just engulfed with smoke." The truck he and his companions returned to was a burnt shell, but otherwise the group was unharmed. The llamas they had with them? "They were sneezing a lot," Hermanson says. "I think they may have been bothered by the smoke." (Click to read about how a Predator drone is helping firefighters.)