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California Wildfire: South Lake Tahoe orders to evacuate

Tuesday, August 31, 2021

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A vicious wildfire swept toward Lake Tahoe just hours after roads were clogged with fleeing cars when the entire California resort city of South Lake Tahoe was ordered to evacuate and communities just across the state line in Nevada were warned to get ready to leave.

This popular vacation spot haven normally filled with thousands of summer tourists emptied out Monday as the massive Caldor Fire rapidly expanded. The threat of fire is so widespread that the U.S. Forest Service announced that all national forests in California would be closed until September 17.

The vehicles loaded with bikes and camping gear and hauling boats were in gridlock traffic, stalled in hazy, brown air that smelled like a campfire. The police and other emergency vehicles whizzed by.

There is an additional strike teams arrived just after dark and many of the new firefighters were immediately dispatched to protect homes in the Christmas Valley area about 10 miles (16 kilometers) from South Lake Tahoe, said fire spokesman Dominic Polito.

As flames churned toward South Lake Tahoe, the residents just over the state line in Douglas County, Nevada were under evacuation warnings.

Monday’s fresh evacuation orders, unheard of in the city, came a day after communities several miles south of the lake were abruptly ordered to leave as the fire raged nearby.

South Lake Tahoe’s main medical facility, Barton Memorial Hospital, proactively evacuated dozens of patients, and the El Dorado Sheriff’s Office transferred inmates to a neighbouring jail.

Chief Thom Porter, director of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire said that there is a fire activity happening in California that we have never seen before. The critical thing for the public to know is evacuate early.

The Regional Forester Jennifer Eberlien said that they do not take this decision lightly but this is the best choice for public safety.

Overnight, the already massive Caldor Fire grew 7 miles (11 kilometers) in direction in one area northeast of Highway 50 and more than 8 miles (13 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.

The 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.

Porter said that only twice in California history have blazes 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 (3,121 square kilometers) about 65 miles (105 kilometers) north of the Lake Tahoe-area blaze, prompted new evacuation orders and warnings Monday.

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