“I thought they would throw an army in there to stop it from getting to Tahoe, but it became real Sunday night, you know?” “I didn’t think it could happen,” Rick Wright, 60, said. Standing near three tents set up at the edge of the evacuation center’s parking lot, Rick and Lee Wright, who are both ski instructors at Heavenly Mountain Resort, said they had never been evacuated from their home before. Just over the state line in Nevada, officials placed many residents under evacuation orders Tuesday afternoon, spurring new concerns that the fire might cross state lines.Īt the Douglas County Community Center in Gardnerville, Nev., ash fell from a yellow sky onto dozens of cars and RVs owned by residents who were recently forced to evacuate. The evacuation order covers nearly all of the Lake Tahoe Basin in El Dorado County, from the California-Nevada state line on the lake’s southern end to Tahoma on its western shore. But by the afternoon, the traffic had eased and the towns were empty. Mandatory evacuations were ordered Monday for the South Lake Tahoe area, causing hours of traffic jams. “But this is a new world with climate change, and that basically is no longer a viable last line of defense.” “They have long looked to that granite wall as what’s going to keep fire out,” said Crystal Kolden, a fire scientist at UC Merced, referring to a stony ridge atop the Tahoe Basin. Not only would an urban conflagration in that area threaten lives and homes, but it also would move faster, burn hotter and be significantly harder to fight, according to experts. If it does, experts say it could be profoundly destructive. Officials still hope the fire won’t hit the city of South Lake Tahoe. “Unfortunately, these factors contribute to the resistance to control that we are seeing with the Caldor fire,” he added.Ĭal Fire chief Thom Porter noted that the Caldor fire and the nearby Dixie fire were the first to burn from one side of the Sierra to the other.Ĭalifornia As Caldor fire closes in on Lake Tahoe, crews scramble to prevent worst-case scenarioĪ wildfire in South Lake Tahoe would not only threaten lives and homes it would also move faster, burn hotter and be significantly harder to fight, experts say. “These terms are no longer appropriate given the clear trends associated with drought, changing climate and unresilient forest stands.” “Historically, we’ve used terms such as ‘anomaly,’ ‘unprecedented’ or ‘extreme’ to describe the wildfires that we have seen burn throughout the state over the past 10 to 20 years,” Anthony said. “This fire does stuff I’ve never seen before,” he said.Ĭalifornia Department of Forestry and Fire Protection spokesman Chris Anthony echoed that sentiment during an operations update. A few days ago he was reassuring his mother that the fire could never reach this far. Lauchner’s parents own a cabin just two miles up the road. The Caldor fire has also changed the view of fire risk in Lake Tahoe.įor many on the fire crews here, the fight is not just professional, it’s personal too. California ‘Unprecedented’ Caldor, Dixie fires are the first to burn from one side of the Sierra to the other
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