South Tahoe braces as fire nears
More evacuated amid ‘extreme rates of spread’
SOUTH LAKE TAHOE — All residents on the California side of Lake Tahoe’s south shore were warned Sunday night to be ready to leave their homes in the face of the monstrous Caldor Fire as crews fought to beat back the blaze and new mandatory evacuation orders were issued outside the city of South Lake Tahoe.
The entire Desolation Wilderness was ordered evacuated, and Sunday night’s warning included all areas surrounding the south side of Lake Tahoe up to the Nevada border, including the city of South Lake Tahoe. Some areas south of the city were previously ordered to evacuate.
The 2-week-old blaze has frequently resisted all efforts to control it. On Sunday, a combination of critically dry vegetation and strong winds helped it cast flames as far as 1 mile ahead at times, officials said.
The Caldor Fire was 13% contained as of Sunday evening, down from 19% that morning. The 168,387-acre fire has destroyed 472 homes, and more than 21,000 structures were threatened.
Firefighters will face more
punishing conditions early this week. The National Weather Service issued a red flag warning for extreme fire danger from 11 a.m. Monday to 11 p.m. Tuesday, warning of winds moving as fast as 35 mph, with anticipated low humidity.
Though the fire had not entered the Tahoe Basin as of Sunday evening, its rapid advance caused authorities to tell some people living near South Lake Tahoe to leave their homes. Residents in the Meyers and Christmas Valley communities, south of the Lake Tahoe Airport, were given mandatory evacuation orders late in the afternoon.
The fire burned Sunday with “a lot of extreme rates of spread,” also leading to new evacuations in neighboring Alpine and Amador counties, said Eric Schwab, Cal Fire operations section chief.
Bulldozers circled homes on both sides of Highway 50 as firefighters defended the community of Strawberry on Sunday after the northernmost tip of the blaze managed to cross Strawberry Creek the previous day, said Tim Ernst, operations section chief for Cal Fire.
On the west side of the fire, south of Pollock Pines and east of Somerset, crews struggled to contain the blaze in the Butte Creek area, Schwab said.
Overall, firefighters faced extreme and dynamic fire weather with spot fires burning outside of existing containment lines Sunday. That threat was a key concern, prompting the digging of backup lines for reinforcement, Cal Fire said.
The first priority for fire crews was to evacuate people quickly and defend properties from destruction, Schwab said.
Sunday was a “challenging and difficult day,” said Dusty Martin, Cal Fire unified incident commander.
Isaac Lake, Cal Fire division chief, said Sunday was the hottest and driest day since the Caldor Fire ignited two weeks ago. The increasing winds, along with rising temperatures signaled a tough fight ahead, officials said. Monday highs were forecast in the 90s across most lower elevations and 80s for valleys near the Sierra.
“Those are going to be some hurdles for us,” Lake said. He noted however that “A lot of good work was done,” during a calmer period overnight Saturday into Sunday. “The troops got in there.”
As of Sunday, more than 25,000 people were evacuated in El Dorado County, according to Cal Fire.
Air quality readings around the south shore of Lake Tahoe, which is east of where the fire is burning, exceeded 200 in many places, with some spots topping 300. Similarly polluted levels hovered over Placerville and other communities west of the fire. Any score beyond 100 is considered unhealthy.
In Placerville on Sunday, the activist groups Rural Resistance Placerville and Black Lives Matter El Dorado County were distributing 1,200 N95 respirator masks from Mask Oakland, a group that has provided masks to Bay Area residents during past fires.
Organizer Ali Jones estimated she had handed out hundreds to local farmworkers, fire evacuees and others in downtown Placerville, and 100 masks to a group helping homeless people.
“It’s a really important thing right now,” Jones said. “Local government agencies aren’t really supplying masks to the public in huge waves like this.”
Smoke drifting south from the Northern California fires prompted a continued Spare the Air alert for the Bay Area, warning of unhealthy air quality and banning wood burning.
The gray blanket of smoke over Tahoe’s south shore improved a little on Sunday so the lake’s waters returned to their classic blue color at El Dorado Beach, but skies grew darker in the late afternoon. Orange and dark gray smoke billowed across the sky from the south, casting the sun through a red filter and making Caldor’s advance clear.
In South Lake Tahoe, Hillary Lawson and Paul Jenkins were hunkered down in their home Sunday near the Tahoe Keys, trying to avoid the smoke.
The two work at local hospitals and were married Aug. 14 near Alpine Meadows in front of a rock-topped mountainside surrounded by green trees — not realizing as they took their vows that the Caldor Fire had started the very same day, near Grizzly Flats.
They returned from their honeymoon last week, and instead of spending time in their beloved outdoor environment hiking and walking their two American Labradors, “We’ve walked the dogs once in the last week,” said Lawson, sitting at her kitchen table. Hoping they could remain at home, the couple said they would leave if their neighborhood falls under an evacuation order.
On another street nearby, Noel Manalo stood atop his roof early Sunday evening sweeping up pine needles and anything else that could ignite should Caldor embers reach the area. Though his neighborhood was not among those evacuated yet, Manalo, who has lived in the area since 1974, said he wanted to be ready.
“I feel anxious,” he said. “But what are you gonna do?”
Meanwhile the Dixie Fire east of Chico — the second largest blaze in state history — held steady at 48% containment, though the weather forecast suggested conditions could quickly turn menacing.
Meteorologists expected low humidity and winds up to 25 mph to push flames into steep terrains in the western area of the wildfire, with crews attempting to hold lines near Janesville and Susanville. In the west zone more resources were brought in near the area of Genesee Valley to help slow western movement.
The 45-day-old blaze has destroyed 1,275 structures and chewed through 765,635 acres across five counties: Butte, Lassen, Plumas, Shasta and Tehama.