Caldor Fire: South Lake Tahoe prospects improve as blaze stays out of city
Wildfires are finicky, their paths seemingly random. A shift in the wind, a well-placed crew or a rock outcropping can decide who loses everything and who gets to go home.
It looked increasingly likely Friday that South Lake Tahoe would get lucky, as the Caldor Fire skirted the city and spared all homes and structures. Not so 30 or 40 miles west, where life began a return to normal for some, while the unlucky could only watch.
Evacuation orders were downgraded to warnings in parts of South Sly Park, Grizzly Flats West and Happy Valley. Firefighters hailed the prospect of lighter winds overnight.
In some communities, stores and restaurants reopened as evacuated families returned to
intact homes full of mementos and beloved objects they feared they may never see again.
At the Creekside Cork & Brew in Somerset (El Dorado County) south of Highway 50, employees were exuberant as they greeted one another Friday, relieved to be back at work. The restaurant’s owner, Malika Noreen, had reopened it a day earlier, almost immediately after the area’s evacuation orders were lifted.
Business was a little slow, but she expected it to pick up amid a “celebratory atmosphere” once the weekend begins.
“People are relieved, and (will be) shaking off the disaster,” Noreen said.
There was a growing sense of hope that the 22,000 residents of South Lake Tahoe would be able to say the same thing once they are allowed to return to the area in the next week or so. The city was completely evacuated on Monday.
By Friday, no homes or other structures had burned as the fire continued to travel through less-populated areas adjacent to the city and toward the Heavenly ski resort. Weather conditions helped slow the growth of the destructive blaze, which had charred nearly 213,000 acres since it started on Aug. 14. It was 29% contained Friday afternoon.
“This fire’s looking real good,” said Beale Monday, operations section chief of the National Incident Management Team and Cal Fire, during the Friday evening fire briefing.
The fire grew just over 2,000 acres overnight into Friday, a relative crawl compared to days earlier when swirling, erratic winds pushed the fire forward 165 feet per minute, making 10-mile runs on some days.
While there was a general sense of cautious optimism amid a growing stack of victories, fire officials were quick to note that this fire has humbled them.
It has defied decades of firefighting experience, climbing up the western side of the Sierra Nevada and then, for only the second time in state history, running down the other side. The first time was just weeks ago with the giant Dixie Fire, still burning to the north.
The Caldor Fire rolled across rocky terrain with no vegetation in sight. It burned fiercely in the evenings, when nighttime moisture should have slowed it.
Still, it appeared firefighters could sense a shift in their favor, as the wind blew the right way for once and they were able to save homes. They were starting to share stories of success, Anthony Scardina, deputy regional forester with the U.S. Forest Service, said Friday.
He cautioned against overconfidence.
“One thing we’re not going to do is oversell (success) right now,” Scardina said during a Friday afternoon media briefing. “We are not out of the woods and we’ll continue to have a firefight on our hands.”
The fire remained most active on its eastern edge near Heavenly, but had skirted the east side of South Lake Tahoe, with firefighters herding it around any residential areas in its path.
All signs pointed so far to a full return for all residents — they just don’t know when.
It was hard for Julie Velebit not to feel some resentment.
She and her husband were among the first of nearly 1,000 families who have lost a home or cabin in the blaze so far.
The Caldor Fire started not far from her community of Grizzly Flats (El Dorado County) and tore through town, burning nearly every building and house, including the school and post office. At the time, about 200 firefighters were assigned to the blaze, a number that increased to nearly 4,500 this week.
“It’s still surreal,” she said Friday in Greenwood, as she packed up her few belongings for the third time since evacuating, heading from a loaned RV to a cousin’s home in Roseville (Placer County).
Her voice choked as she recalled items left behind: her beloved clarinet, saxophone and steel drums, photographs, her grandmother’s dining room table — irreplaceables.
“Thinking about the people getting to go back, I’m happy for them,” she said. “I’m really sad and disappointed that we didn’t have time to get more out that we wanted.”
Velebit said it’s hard — but perhaps understandable — to see so much focus put on South Lake Tahoe; a federal disaster declaration was declared Thursday as the fire threatened the town.
“For those of us who’ve been without our home for two weeks already, it’s like a slap in the face,” she said.
The devastation was also visible in the landscape along Highway 50.
On the edge of the Tahoe Basin near Meyers, fire crews were tending to smoldering hot spots and hazards like downed trees across roadways instead of guarding homes.
Near the towns of Phillips, Twin Bridges and Strawberry, cracks of blue sky and sunshine illuminated scorched terrain and skeletal bare tree branches, as well as blue jays and chipmunks scampering over blackened tree roots and fallen rocks.
Outside a row of cabins leveled by the fire earlier this week along the highway in Phillips, smoke swirled out of open gashes in the earth. Only a few chimneys loomed over mounds of crumpled metal, mangled kitchen appliances and shards of glass.
The fire remained active but under control about 15 miles down the highway near Kyburz. Dozens of fire engines and support crews lined the roadway, and Caldor Fire spokesman Marco Rodriguez said crews carried out prescribed burns to clear out any possible fuel left behind by the fire.
As mandatory evacuations started lifting near Pollock Pines, in Somerset and other communities in the southwest area of the fire, vehicles turned to home.
But Evelyn Bross and her husband, evacuated exactly “two weeks and three days” ago, still waited for the allclear to go home. Last she heard, her home was still standing.
Married in June, the couple bought their house this summer and promptly had to get out of there. She still loves the home, but said it would have been nice if it were located on the other side of town, where people were allowed to return.
“I keep getting calls saying ‘I’m so elated for you, you get to go home,’” she said. “And I’m like ‘well, not yet.’”
Things were different for Joe Pimentel’s seven horses. For two weeks, they were forced to live in a cramped barn at the Amador County Fairgrounds, a makeshift animal shelter for evacuees. On Friday, they got to go home.
When he finally pulled up to his sprawling property in Fair Play (El Dorado County), one horse, Kodi, plopped down and rolled around in the dirt. Prancer dashed down the hill and neighed at the sight of her home.
Pimentel, 63, a retired Modesto police officer, grabbed a pile of feed and threw it to his horses as they ran around the pasture. It was a sight he didn’t think he’d get to see again when he first evacuated. He crossed his arms and took in the sight.
“We really dodged a bullet,” he said. “I’ve gone through earthquakes, floods. But this ...” He took a moment to collect his thoughts before finishing his sentence.
“I can’t even begin to describe it.”