Center of Tree Trunk Burned Out: Is This Common?

Clearly I should have searched first!

https://edition.cnn.com/videos/us/2017/10/13/hollow-tree-fire-california-orig-trnd-lab.cnn

I still don't understand the mechanism. I'm guessing that because the tree was still alive when it was struck by lightning the sap layer protects the outer bark.

Not necessarily, but alive and growing, could have had a disease also, or even dead in the core from earlier lightenstrikes. When we were logging (on the farm). We would cut what looked like a healthy tree, only to find the inside was hollow and deteriorated with dry, combustible material, along with nests from animals that make a home out of it.

that can easily be lite up.

Sounds like a good explanation. Expanding sapwood creates a longitudinal break for air to fan an inner fire, and at same time is preventing outer bark from burning. All examples I've see have been older trees, so I guess younger ones get blown to bits as they are mostly sapwood.

I've often wondered if this is how people originally discovered the advantages of a chimney.

With the choices available, I think they learned this the hard way...

The Baobab seems to somehow do this as part of it's natural cycle.

Most likely kids!

I see that it is near a residential area, looks like an old, dead, dry trunk.

It was just too tempting!

Thanks everyone.

Undefined: <...we...>.

How is the forum supposed to know whom to ask (rhetorical question - NNTR)?

Nature does leave us some intriguing mysteries. I think they mentioned a Redwood out in Cali was still burining from last years fire, I wonder if this could be similar. I know farmers would try to "burn them down" sometimes.

At our house in Florida we had a live oak that had completely died inside but had grown an exoskeleton around the original trunk. It was hollow up the center and big enough kids could hide inside it.

It sat on a corner and the city would come every year and assess if it needed to be taken down. When we sold the house it was still standing.

I would venture to guess that the lightening strike took out a vertical stripe of bark. Leaving the innards of the tree exposed to the parasites of nature. The parasites consume the flesh of the tree....leaving the bark.