Earth Protect Blog

By Sam Metz and Janie Har

The Associated Press

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, CALIF. » A popular vacation haven normally filled with tens of thousands of summer tourists was clogged with fleeing vehicles Monday after the entire resort city of South Lake Tahoe was ordered to leave as a ferocious wildfire raced toward Lake Tahoe, a sparkling gem on the California-Nevada state line.

Vehicles loaded with bikes and camping gear and hauling boats were in gridlock traffic in the city of 22,000, stalled in hazy, brown air that smelled like a campfire. Police and other emergency vehicles whizzed by.

Ken Breslin was stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic less than a mile from his home, with only a quarter-tank of gas in his Ford Escape. His son begged him to leave Sunday night, but he shrugged him off, certain that if an evacuation order came, it would be later in the week.

“Before, it was, ‘No worries ... it’s not going to crest. It’s not gonna come down the hill. There’s 3,500 firefighters, all those bulldozers and all the air support,’ ” he said. “Until this morning, I didn’t think there was a chance it could come into this area. Now, it’s very real.”

By Monday night, the fire had crossed state Highways 50 and 89 and burned mountain cabins as it churned down slopes toward the Tahoe Basin. Flames came within just a few miles of South Lake Tahoe and residents of communities just over the state line in Douglas County, Nev., were warned to get ready to evacuate.

Monday’s fresh evacuation orders — unheard of in South Lake Tahoe — came a day after communities several miles south of the lake were abruptly ordered to evacuate as the Caldor fire raged nearby. The city’s main medical facility, Barton Memorial Hospital, proactively evacuated dozens of patients, and the El Dorado Sheriff’s Office transferred inmates to a neighboring jail.

“There is fire activity happening in California that we have never seen before. The critical thing for the public to know is evacuate early,” said Chief Thom Porter, director of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire. “For the rest of you in California: Every acre can and will burn someday in this state.”

The threat of fire is so widespread that the U.S. Forest Service announced Monday that all national forests in California would be closed until Sept. 17.

“We do not take this decision lightly but this is the best choice for public safety,” Regional Forester Jennifer Eberlien said.

Overnight, the already massive Caldor fire grew 7 miles in direction in one area northeast of Highway 50 and more than 8 miles in another, Cal Fire officials said.

More than 15,000 firefighters were battling dozens of California blazes — including crews from Utah, Washington, Wisconsin and West Virginia — said Mark Ghilarducci, director of California’s Office of Emergency Services. About 250 active-duty soldiers were being trained in Washington state to help with the arduous work of clearing forest debris by hand.

Crews from Louisiana, however, had to return to that state because of Hurricane Ida, “another major catastrophic event taking place in the country and is a pull on resources throughout the United States,” he said.

Porter said that only twice in California history have fires burned from one side of the Sierra Nevada to the other, both this month, with the Caldor and Dixie fires. The Dixie, the second-largest wildfire in state history at 1,205 square miles, about 65 miles north of the Lake Tahoe-area blaze, prompted new evacuation orders and warnings Monday.

The Lake Tahoe area in the Sierra Nevada mountains is usually a year-round recreational paradise offering beaches, water sports, hiking, ski resorts and golfing. South Lake Tahoe, at the lake’s southern end, bustles with outdoor activities, and with casinos available in bordering Stateline, Nev.

On weekends, the city’s population can easily triple, and on holiday weekends — such as the upcoming Labor Day weekend — up to 100,000 people will visit for fun and sun. But South Lake Tahoe City Mayor Tamara Wallace said they’ve been telling people for days to stay away due to poor air from wildfires.

She said she thought the Caldor fire would stay farther away. Fires in the past did not spread so rapidly near the tourist city.

“It’s just yet another example of how wildfires have changed over the years,” she said as she gathered treasures passed from her deceased parent and her husband’s while they prepared to leave.

The last two wildfires that ripped through populated areas near Tahoe were the Angora fire that destroyed more than 200 homes in 2007 and the Gondola fire in 2002 that ignited near a chairlift at Heavenly Mountain Resort.

Since then, the dead trees have accumulated and the region has coped with serious droughts, Wallace said. Climate change has made the West much warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive, scientists say.

Wallace said traffic was crawling Monday, but praised the evacuation as orderly because residents heeded officials’ orders.