decided we were willing to do to protect trees if we could. reporter: and what they were willing to do called for innovation in the face of fire. from literally throwing what they could at the threat, like sprinkler systems that sprayed trees 35 to 40 feet in the air, and dropping fire retardant gel from aircraft into hard-to-reach groves, to extreme tree hugging, swaddling some of the world s largest trees, like general sherman and general grant in structure wrap. we had hand crews going in and doing this raking and fuel removal around individual trees in groves. we did backfiring operations to change fire behavior. reporter: but the loss of any sequoia, such rare and majestic beauties, is one too many to lose. it is dead. that tree is dead. it is not coming back. this tree that is at a minimum 1,000 years old and has survived many, many, many previous fires