Firefighters say the battle against a California fire that threatens South Lake Tahoe “continues to look better every day.”
SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, California – Firefighters are advancing in a California wildfire that threatens South Lake Tahoe, officials said Saturday, raising the hopes of tens of thousands of residents waiting this weekend to return to the tourist city.
Looser winds and higher humidity continue to reduce the spread of flames and fire crews quickly took advantage by bending the burning and cutting lines of fire around the Heat Fire.
Bulldozers with giant blades, crews armed with shovels and a fleet of planes that dropped hundreds of thousands of gallons of water and fire retardants helped keep the fire advancing to a couple of thousand acres; two weeks.
“The incident continues to look better every day,” Tim Burton, chief of operations for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Prevention, told firefighters at a briefing Saturday. “A lot of that is also due to your hard work. Like the time you cooperated last week more or less.”
The northeast section of the immense Sierra Nevada flame was still a few miles from South Lake Tahoe and the Nevada State Line, but fire officials said it had made no significant progress in several days and did not challenge it. the containment lines in long stretches of its perimeter.
With more than a third of the 336-square-mile (866-square-mile) flames surrounded, authorities allowed more people to return to their homes on the west and north sides of the fires Friday afternoon.
But there was no schedule to allow the return of 22,000 residents to South Lake Tahoe and other people on the Douglas County, Nevada state line who were evacuated days ago. The authorities made this decision every day.
“It’s all based on fire behavior,” said Jake Cagle, head of the fire operations section. “At the moment, things are looking good … we’re getting closer.”
The resort area can easily accommodate 100,000 people on a very busy weekend, but it was strangely empty (except for the occasional stray bear) just before the holiday weekend.
The fire dealt a major blow to an economy that is heavily dependent on tourism and was starting to pick up this summer due to pandemic shutdowns.
“It’s a huge success for our local businesses and workers who rely on a steady income to pay rent and put food on the table,” said Devin Middlebrook, mayor of South Lake Tahoe.
He said the closure will also hurt the city as it gets most of its revenue from paying police and fire services, as well as road maintenance, for hotel taxes and sales taxes.
Fire crews still had a lot of work to do on the prairies, wooden stalls and granite outcrops. And, despite the overall better weather, the winds could still be “staggered” and locally uneven, as they impact the region’s ridges and deep canyons.
The fire, which started on August 14, was named after the road where it started and irritated through densely wooded and steep areas, which has destroyed nearly 900 houses, businesses and other buildings. It was still considered a threat to more than 30,000 more structures.
This year’s forest fires have burned at least 1,500 homes and decimated several mountain villages. The Dixie Fire, which burns about 105 kilometers north of the Caldor Fire, is the second largest fire in the state’s history, with 3,585 square kilometers (1,385 square miles) and is 55% contained.
California has experienced increasing and deadly forest fires in recent years, as climate change has made the West much warmer and drier over the past 30 years. Scientists have said the climate will continue to be more extreme and forest fires will be more frequent, destructive and unpredictable. No deaths have been reported in this fire season.
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Nguyen reported from San Francisco.