To Save Lake Tahoe, They Spared No Expense. The Fire Came Over the Ridge Anyway.

To Save Lake Tahoe, They Spared No Expense. The Fire Came Over the Ridge Anyway.

San Marcos firefighters work to save a burning cabin in Strawberry, Calif. on Aug. 30, 2021. (Max Whittaker/The New York Times)
San Marcos firefighters work to save a burning cabin in Strawberry, Calif. on Aug. 30, 2021. (Max Whittaker/The New York Times)

 

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. — They sent thousands of firefighters, 25 helicopters and an arsenal of more than 400 fire engines and 70 water trucks. Yet the fire still advanced.

They dropped retardant chemicals through an ash-filled sky and bulldozed trees and brush to slow the march of the flames through the steep and rugged terrain of the Sierra Nevada. Yet the fire still advanced.

Bursting across a granite ridge into the Lake Tahoe basin, the Caldor fire now threatens tens of thousands of homes and hotels that ring the lake.

On Tuesday, the smoke-choked streets of South Lake Tahoe, the most populous city on the lake, were deserted, save for police patrol cars and an occasional convoy of fire vehicles. Thousands of residents and tourists had been evacuated the day before.

The lake, renowned for its bright blue hues and the evergreen forests that surround it, was smothered in a slate of sickly orange-gray haze. On the Nevada side of the border, which has not yet been evacuated, one industry was still limping along: A trickle of gamblers sat at slot machines to the whooshing sound of large air purifiers that attempted to keep out the pungent smoke. The air quality index was nearing 500, a level considered hazardous.

Battling the Caldor fire has been humbling and harrowing for California firefighters. Experts believe the challenge is a cautionary tale for future megafires in the West and lays bare a certain futility in trying to fully control the most aggressive wildfires.

“No matter how many people you have out on these fires, it’s not a large enough workforce to put the fire out,” said Malcolm North, a fire expert with the U.S. Forest Service and a professor at the University of California, Davis.

“You can save particular areas or particular homes,” North said. “But the fire is pretty much going to do what it’s going to do until the weather shifts.”

On Monday, propelled by strong winds, the fire crested a granite ridge that officials had hoped would serve as a natural barrier. Embers leapfrogged past firefighting crews and descended toward the valley floor just miles from South Lake Tahoe. By early Tuesday, the fire had taken hold in the Tahoe basin. Stands of pine ignited by flying embers were fully engulfed in flames, casting a bright orange glow into the night sky.

It was only the second time, officials said, that a wildfire that began on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada crossed into the eastern side. The first was also this summer: the Dixie fire, the second largest in California history. No deaths have been reported in either fire.

The authorities say about 27,000 firefighters were battling blazes across the country, about 15,000 of them in California. All national forests in California will be closed by Tuesday night. Hundreds of soldiers and airmen and several military aircraft have been sent by the National Guard. But the resources are no match for the ferocious blazes, which continue to outpace firefighters and explode across the state.

The blazes in Sierra forests have exposed the domino effects of climate change on firefighting challenges: Frequent heat waves and overall higher temperatures have desiccated West Coast flora, making it more vulnerable to large fires. Droughts have weakened trees, encouraging insect infestations that have contributed to the deaths of close to 150 million trees. This creates more fuel for fires.

Scientists say there is also a correlation between global warming and the increased wind conditions that have fanned fierce wildfires across the state. And they point to a need for better forest management, thinning out some of the thickest woods.

What characterizes the megafires of recent years, experts said, is their tendency to launch embers far ahead of the main fire front — sometimes by miles — and for the embers to land on parched terrain that is instantly combustible. This can rapidly expand the perimeter of the fire, which hops over one of the main containment tools: the bulldozed areas, known as fire breaks, that create a line of containment.

The Tubbs fire in October 2017 jumped over what would normally be considered a formidable fire break — a six-lane freeway — and went on to incinerate 1,200 homes in the residential community of Coffey Park.

“These spot fires are causing a lot of havoc,” said Craig Clements, a professor of meteorology and the director of the Wildfire Interdisciplinary Research Center at San Jose State University, a group that is modeling the spread of the Caldor fire.

“There’s just fire all around,” Clements added, “and that makes it very difficult to suppress.” As a measure of how combustible the landscape has become, other scientists have calculated that embers have a 90% chance of becoming spot fires once they land.

The chaotic way these megafires spread was on display in the hills above South Lake Tahoe on Monday. Kyle Hukkanen was leading a crew of 12 inmate firefighters armed with axes, shovels and chain saws. They bounded down a steep hillside of granite boulders and evergreen trees until they reached a spot where wisps of smoke were rising from the ground.

They dug and sprayed the smoldering fire with water before ascending back to their idling truck. “This is not good,” Hukkanen said as gusts of wind fed the spot fire on the hillsides. The radio crackled with reports of spotting farther down the mountain toward South Lake Tahoe, and Hukkanen and his crew disappeared down a smoke-shrouded road.

Fire specialists say some firefighting tools are appropriate on a smaller scale but outmatched by the huge fires of recent years.

In the hills and gullies where the Caldor fire has burned 190,000 acres over the past two weeks, helicopters dropped large buckets of water — thousands of gallons at a time — but they hardly seemed a match.

“That’s great for protecting a neighborhood, but when you think about the size of a 750,000-acre fire, that’s nothing,” North, the U.S. Forest Service expert, said of dropping water or retardant in large swaths of forest.

He and others added that the Sisyphean task of fire containment pointed to a desperate need for better mitigation.

Controlled burns that embrace Indigenous methods to use “good” fire to fight destructive megafires has become an increasingly accepted method in recent years, but experts say that the state has a lot of catching up to do.

Until then, attempts to suppress fire are inevitably required to save lives and property. In the past year, California spent more than $1 billion on emergency fire suppression efforts but slashed its prevention budget. This year’s budget includes more than $500 million for fire prevention, Gov. Gavin Newsom said in April.

Still, resources remain strained. The U.S. Forest Service has struggled to retain federal firefighters, who earn around half of their state counterparts’ pay at Cal Fire. When the Caldor fire ballooned to 6,500 acres in mid-August, just 242 firefighters had been assigned to it. Eventually, hundreds more were redeployed from the Dixie fire, which has so far razed more than 800,000 acres and was still less than half contained by Tuesday morning.

On the receiving end of the worsening fires are the residents who wonder where, if anywhere, will be safe from wildfire.

Among the evacuees from South Lake Tahoe on Monday were Darren Cobrae, a real estate investor, and his partner, Stephanie Cothern, who was driving the couple’s car toward the Nevada state line.

Inside were bags of clothing, two large parrots and three dogs, Banana, Freddy and Copper.

Cobrae said he moved to South Lake Tahoe from Southern California, where his home was nearly burned in a wildfire in 2007.

“I figured I would be safe in this city,” Cobrae said. “And now this,” he said, pointing to a sky thickening with smoke.

A tale of two governors: COVID outcomes in Florida and Connecticut show that leadership matters

A tale of two governors: COVID outcomes in Florida and Connecticut show that leadership matters

Executive power is often circumscribed by complex geopolitical dynamics, volatile financial markets, disruptive new technologies, and tragic natural disasters. But key leaders still can have a profound impact—positive or negative—on millions of constituents. A comparison of Florida’s and Connecticut’s governors in their contrasting approach to the resurgence of the coronavirus reveals the consequential potential of individual leaders.

This summer, tragic public-health news was exacerbated by historic levels of political grandstanding by several Southern state governors. The rapid spread of the COVID-19 Delta variant was driven by a surge of new cases in Florida, Texas, and Missouri—as these states accounted for an astounding 40% of new U.S. coronavirus cases despite representing only 17% of the nation’s population. Ignoring science and evidence, the governors of these three states have taken a rigid, cynical stance, forbidding vaccine mandates by employers and mandatory indoor mask usage—even in cases where such mandates were intended to protect young schoolchildren ineligible for vaccines.

In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis even threatened to cut off funding and educators’ salaries for schools that required protective masks in compliance with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines. Nonetheless, 10 school districts defied DeSantis by issuing mask mandates. Similarly, Disney, Carnival Cruise Line, and Royal Caribbean joined Norwegian Cruise Line in defiance of DeSantis’s ban on passenger vaccination passports, despite being threatened with fines of $5,000 for each such violation of his decree.

Florida’s hospital emergency rooms and intensive care units are now reaching capacity, with 90% of ICU beds occupied, the majority of them by COVID patients. More than 90% of these inpatients are unvaccinated; overall only one-third of Floridians between ages 12 and 64 are vaccinated.

DeSantis’s response to such wide swaths of the unvaccinated Florida population suffering from the highly contagious Delta variant has been to consult with anti-mask advocates who promote the horse parasite drug ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, unproven elixirs, instead of scientifically developed, safe, and highly effective vaccines.

In contrast, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont has been relying on a science-based approach from the outset of the pandemic. He pulled together globally renowned virologists, microbiologists, epidemiologists, and business leaders in March of 2020, just as the pandemic was declared, and kept such advisory panels working to solve problems by relying on science, evidence, and smart management, independent of ideology. Accordingly, he worked with both top Trump administration and later top Biden administration leaders to keep manufacturing flowing without a day’s interruption, ensuring the needed supply of protective material to open schools early. Lamont also catalyzed a new nationwide weekly meeting of the nation’s governors, favoring quiet, effective, bipartisan, cross-sector problem-solving instead of seeking the public limelight.

As Lamont recently explained, “Our reopen committee included the scientists and the big business leaders that we needed to help us, and I’ve tried to do that throughout state government—get a wider variety of people at the table.” He did not mock scientists, intimidate public officials, or threaten business leaders as foils for political grandstanding. This resulted in the nation’s highest or second highest vaccination rates for every age group, from 75% upward—including 90% of seniors—and one of the lowest COVID-19 death rates in the nation (Connecticut is 35th out of 50 by that measure).

This focused approach to problem-solving and collaborative leadership style allowed Lamont to call for vaccine mandates in schools, nursing homes, and for all state employees recently—astoundingly without protest from unions, partisan political leaders of either party, or business leaders. Lamont pointed to heat maps of Southern state infections with overflowing hospitals and declared, “Sadly, in many cases, they have hospitals in different regions who are overwhelmed or close to being overwhelmed. We’re not gonna let that happen in Connecticut, and that is not happening in Connecticut.”

Just glancing at the two contrasting CDC charts of public health outcomes for Florida versus Connecticut below—showing the impact of the same disease, in the same country, over the same time period—illustrates the difference leaders can make. Even though Connecticut was hard hit in the pre-vaccine phase of the pandemic, the post-vaccine outcomes are dramatically different. This difference is not explained by age patterns: The average age in both states is about 41 years old, but the health outcomes of Connecticut residents tower over those of Floridians in every age bracket.

Florida COVID deaths, year to date

Commentary-FL-outcomes
Florida COVID deaths

Connecticut COVID deaths, year to date

Commentary-CT-outcomes
Connecticut COVID deaths

 

Sourcehttps://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker. Note that the blue axis in the charts above is not normalized by population and the orange axis has a slightly different scale in the two charts.

As the Delta variant rages across the country, the divergence of health outcomes is especially notable between the Northeast and the South. The map below shows that the divergence between Connecticut and Florida is reflected in a wider region surrounding each state. A year and a half into the pandemic, we have accumulated a great deal of knowledge and experience in designing effective public health responses. The divergence of health outcomes across the country is the result not of differences in the prevalence of the Delta variant, population demographics, access to health care, or environmental conditions; it is attributable at this point principally to differences in leadership.

Commentary-US-heat-map
COVID heat map

 

Leadership matters. Leadership matters not only in determining the effectiveness of government’s response to the public health crisis, but in shaping both individual opinions and the sense of common purpose.

Ideological extremism has caused needless deaths in our country. It is tragic that political differences among the states have resulted in a sharp divergence with respect to health-protective behaviors—vaccination and masking among them. Ideological differences and bitter political rivalries exist in all democracies, and individual attitudes toward vaccination and masking vary widely within all regions of the world, but nowhere else are these attitudes as closely aligned with political ideologies as they have become in the U.S. The U.K., India, and Israel are just three examples: In each country, the pandemic remains a grave danger, but each country’s political cleavages, no less intractable than in the U.S., are largely unrelated to health-protective behaviors. In the U.S., the political reinforcement of resistance to public health measures has hardened individual attitudes, as shown in the chart below, worsening the pandemic and its impact on American lives and the economy.

Commentary-Vaccine-status-and-intent
vax status and intent

 

The contrasting leadership approaches between the governors of Connecticut and Florida are not explainable by educational sophistication: Each governor holds college and graduate school degrees from both Harvard and Yale. The differences are not explained by credentials but rather by competence and character. Ron DeSantis is a smart person cynically willing to play the role of an anti-intellectual for political gain, while Ned Lamont is trying to do his job to save the lives of his constituents, seeking the best scientific knowledge and evidence we have gathered on the pandemic.

As Walt Disney, one of the business leaders who shaped modern Florida, once said, “Courage is the main quality of leadership, in my opinion, no matter where it is exercised.”

Jeffrey Sonnenfeld is a senior associate dean and professor of management practice at the Yale School of Management, where he is president of the Chief Executive Leadership Institute. Anjani Jain is deputy dean for academic programs and professor in the practice of management at the Yale School of Management.

Trump Reveals His Master Plan for Afghanistan: We Should’ve ‘Let It Rot’

Trump Reveals His Master Plan for Afghanistan: We Should’ve ‘Let It Rot’

 

Donald Trump has had a lot to say about how Joe Biden has mishandled the withdrawal from Afghanistan—but, when given the chance to explain what he would have done differently, Trump’s master plan boiled down to leaving the country in smoldering ruins before leaving it forever.

The ex-president appeared on Fox Business on Tuesday morning to get some things off his chest a day after the last U.S. troops left Afghanistan. During a curious rant about how he believes unnamed shadowy forces are controlling Biden, Trump shared his alternative withdrawal plans.

“It’s something that’s rather incredible,” he said. “They [the people supposedly controlling Biden] do horrible things, vicious things. They cheat, steal, lie. But they can’t do a simple withdrawal from a country that we should never have gone into in the first place… We should have hit that country years ago, hit it them really hard, and then let it rot.”

The Nonexistent Afghanistan Plan That Might’ve Saved Biden’s Ass

The former president was repeatedly thrown softball questions about how he would’ve handled the situation if he hadn’t lost the election. However, he repeatedly failed to give any answers of substance, merely saying that he would’ve won the war in Afghanistan if only he’d had a few more months.

“He [Biden] handed them a country on a silver platter,” said Trump. “He ought to apologize and stop trying to, excuse the language, bullshit everybody into thinking that what he did was good. We should have withdrawn but we should have withdrawn in a totally different way, with great dignity. It would have been a tremendous win for us.”

Again, he didn’t elaborate on what “totally different way” would have resulted in the “tremendous win” despite being asked for details.

While Trump repeatedly tried to criticize Biden for the failings in the U.S. evacuations from Kabul, he also laid into the thousands of desperate evacuees. With zero evidence, Trump claimed Afghan evacuees who have arrived in the U.S. include “many terrorists” and “criminal rapists.”

We’re Giving Up On Afghanistan—and the Americans Still There

Needlessly linking the situation back to one of his presidential obsessions, Trump added: “The level of incompetence on this withdrawal is even far greater than the level of incompetence at the southern border.”

At the end of the interview, host Stuart Varney bizarrely threw in some questions about cryptocurrency, and Trump’s answers were equally strange. Varney asked if Trump “dabbled” in crypto, and his answers provided roughly the same level of detail that he gave when being asked for his alternative plans for the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

“I like the currency of the United States,” said Trump. “I think the others are potentially a disaster waiting to happen. I don’t know. I feel that it hurts the United States currency, we should be invested in our currency, not in… Uh… They may be fake, who knows what they are? They certainly are something that people don’t know very much about.”

FACT FOCUS: Trump, others wrong on US gear left with Taliban

FACT FOCUS: Trump, others wrong on US gear left with Taliban

 

Taliban special force fighters arrive inside the Hamid Karzai International Airport after the U.S. military’s withdrawal, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2021. The Taliban haven’t obtained $80 billion or more in U.S. military equipment despite claims this week from social media users and political figures including Sen. Marsha Blackburn, Rep. Lauren Boebert and former President Donald Trump. (AP Photo/Khwaja Tawfiq Sediqi).
The Taliban have seized both political power and significant U.S.-supplied firepower in their whirlwind takeover of Afghanistan, recovering guns, ammunition, helicopters and other modern military equipment from Afghan forces who surrendered it.

 

But the gear the Taliban have obtained isn’t worth the $80 billion or more being claimed this week by social media users and political figures including Sen. Marsha Blackburn, Rep. Lauren Boebert and former President Donald Trump.

While the U.S. spent $83 billion to develop and sustain Afghan security forces since 2001, most of it did not go toward equipment. Nor will the Taliban be able to use every piece of American gear that was supplied to Afghanistan over two decades.

Here’s a closer look at the facts.

CLAIM: Taliban fighters now possess U.S. military equipment worth between $80 and $85 billion.

THE FACTS: Those numbers are significantly inflated, according to reports from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR, which oversees American taxpayer money spent on the conflict.

In the last days of August, as U.S. troops completed their withdrawal from Afghanistan, social media users began claiming that the “Taliban’s new arsenal” was worth as much as $85 billion. Trump amplified the falsehood in a statement Monday, writing that “ALL EQUIPMENT should be demanded to be immediately returned to the United States, and that includes every penny of the $85 billion dollars in cost.”

Their $85 billion figure resembles a number from a July 30 quarterly report from SIGAR, which outlined that the U.S. has invested about $83 billion to build, train and equip Afghan security forces since 2001.

Yet that funding included troop pay, training, operations and infrastructure along with equipment and transportation over two decades, according to SIGAR reports and Dan Grazier, a defense policy analyst at the Project on Government Oversight.

“We did spend well over $80 billion in assistance to the Afghan security forces,” Grazier said. “But that’s not all equipment costs.”

In fact, only about $18 billion of that sum went toward equipping Afghan forces between 2002 and 2018, a June 2019 SIGAR report showed.

Another estimate from a 2017 Government Accountability Office report found that about 29% of dollars spent on Afghan security forces between 2005 and 2016 funded equipment and transportation. The transportation funding included gear as well as contracted pilots and airplanes for transporting officials to meetings.

If that percentage held for the entire two-decade period, it would mean the U.S. has spent about $24 billion on equipment and transportation for Afghan forces since 2001.

But even if that were true, much of the military equipment would be obsolete after years of use, according to Grazier. Plus, American troops have previously scrapped unwanted gear and recently disabled dozens of Humvees and aircraft so they couldn’t be used again, according to Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command.

Though no one knows the exact value of the U.S.-supplied Afghan equipment the Taliban have secured, defense officials have confirmed it is significant.

This is part of AP’s effort to address widely shared misinformation, including work with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to misleading content that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.

Aerial photos: Hurricane Ida’s devastation

Aerial photos: Hurricane Ida’s devastation

Colin Campbell and Yahoo News Staff         

 

Communities across Louisiana and Mississippi are taking stock of the damage brought by Hurricane Ida, one of the most powerful storms to ever hit the U.S. mainland.

The death toll ticked up to four on Tuesday, including two people killed Monday night when a highway collapsed in Lucedale, Miss. Highway Patrol Cpl. Cal Robertson told the Associated Press that vehicles landed on top of each other as they plunged into a hole created by the rural highway turning into a darkened pit.

In Louisiana, the entire city of New Orleans is without power due to damage inflicted on the area’s electrical grid after Ida made landfall Sunday. It may take weeks to restore power to hundreds of thousands of people there and in nearby areas.

A truck drives through the flooded streets of Indigo Estates after Hurricane Ida moved through Monday, Aug. 30, 2021, in LaPlace, La. (Steve Helber/AP Photo)
A truck drives through the flooded streets of Indigo Estates in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida on Monday in LaPlace, La. (Steve Helber/AP)

 

Rescue and repair crews continue to navigate flooded streets and buildings reduced to rubble, a product of 150 mph winds and heavy rainfall blanketing the area. Many buildings’ roofs were either destroyed or ripped off entirely. Boats are the preferred vehicles for some neighborhoods previously navigated by cars.

Sweltering conditions brought by the summer heat have added a further layer of complexity to rescue efforts. The AP reported that a heat advisory was issued for the New Orleans region, “with forecasters saying the combination of high temperatures and humidity could make it feel like 105 degrees Fahrenheit (41 degrees Celsius) on Tuesday and 106 on Wednesday.” In the many neighborhoods without electricity, air conditioners are unable to tame the heat. Many of the same areas lack refrigeration due to power outages, and still others lack running water.

Scientists say human-caused climate change is altering the makeup of storms like Hurricane Ida, with rising ocean temperatures leading to higher wind speeds, and rising air temperatures leading to more rainfall. Flash floods caused significant fatalities and devastation in Tennessee, Germany, India and China earlier this year, among other places across the globe.

A house with no roof is seen after Hurricane Ida hit Houma, Louisiana, the United States, Aug. 30, 2021. With stranded people waiting for rescue on damaged roofs, flooded roads blocked by downed trees and power lines, and over one million people without power through Monday morning, Hurricane Ida has wreaked widespread havoc since its landfall in southern U.S. state of Louisiana on Sunday. (Nick Wagner/Xinhua via Getty Images)
A house with no roof after Hurricane Ida hit Houma, La., is seen on Monday. (Nick Wagner/Xinhua via Getty Images)
In this aerial photo, RVs are flipped over in an RV park after Hurricane Ida on August 31, 2021 in Paradis, Louisiana. Ida made landfall August 29 as a Category 4 storm southwest of New Orleans, causing widespread power outages, flooding and massive damage. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
RVs flipped over in an RV park in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida on Tuesday in Paradis, La. Ida made landfall Sunday as a Category 4 storm southwest of New Orleans, causing widespread power outages, flooding and massive damage. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Homes and streets are overwhelmed by water on August 30, 2021 in Lafitte, Louisiana. (Michael Robinson Chavez/the Washington Post via Getty Images)
Homes and streets overwhelmed by water on Monday in Lafitte, La. (Michael Robinson Chavez/the Washington Post via Getty Images)
An aerial photo made with a drone shows damage caused by Hurricane Ida in La Place, Louisiana, USA, Tuesday. The Category 4 storm came ashore on 29 August causing heavy flooding, downing trees, and ripping off roofs. (Tannen Maury/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
Damage caused by Hurricane Ida is seen in LaPlace, La., on Tuesday. (Tannen Maury/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
An aerial photo made with a drone shows damage caused by Hurricane Ida in LaPlace, Louisiana, USA, 31 August 2021. The Category 4 storm came ashore on 29 August causing heavy flooding, downing trees, and ripping off roofs. (Tannen Maury/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
A building damaged by Hurricane Ida in LaPlace, La., on Tuesday. (Tannen Maury/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
Boats are seen lying on the earth in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, Monday, Aug. 30, 2021, in Lafitte, La. The weather died down shortly before dawn. (David J. Phillip/AP Photo)
Boats lying on land in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida on Monday in Lafitte, La. The weather died down shortly before dawn. (David J. Phillip/AP)
Roof damage is seen in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, Monday, Aug. 30, 2021, in Houma, La. (David J. Phillip/AP Photo)
Significant roof damage in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida on Monday in Houma, La. (David J. Phillip/AP)
A flooded city is seen in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, Monday, Aug. 30, 2021, in Lafitte, La. (David J. Phillip/AP Photo)
A flooded Lafitte, La., in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida on Monday. (David J. Phillip/AP)
Damge is seen in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, Monday, Aug. 30, 2021, in Houma, La. (David J. Phillip/AP Photo)
Structures flattened by Hurricane Ida in Houma, La., on Monday. (David J. Phillip/AP)
Damge is seen in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, Monday, Aug. 30, 2021, in Houma, La. (David J. Phillip/AP Photo)
Barns and buildings damaged by Hurricane Ida in Houma, La., on Monday. (David J. Phillip/AP)
The roof of an apartment building is seen torn off by Hurricane Ida in Houma, Louisiana, the United States, Aug 30, 2021. With stranded people waiting for rescue on damaged roofs, flooded roads blocked by downed trees and power lines, and over one million people without power through Monday morning, Hurricane Ida has wreaked widespread havoc since its landfall in southern U.S. state of Louisiana on Sunday. (Chine Nouvelle/SIPA/Shutterstock)
An apartment building with the roof torn off by Hurricane Ida in Houma, La., on Monday. (Chine Nouvelle/SIPA/Shutterstock)
An Airboat glides over a city street in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, Monday, Aug. 30, 2021, in Lafitte, La. (David J. Phillip/AP Photo)
An airboat glides over a city street in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida on Monday in Lafitte, La. (David J. Phillip/AP)

Caldor Fire: California, Nevada declare state of emergency

Caldor Fire: California, Nevada declare state of emergency

 

Firefighters in California continued to battle the swelling Caldor Fire, which had grown to more than 191,607 acres and was 16% contained on Tuesday morning.

 

The latest: Evacuation orders were issued Tuesday for Nevada’s Douglas County and California’s Alpine county. Douglas County’s Kingsbury community, where citizens have been ordered to evacuate, is about eight miles from South Lake Tahoe.

  • The National Weather Service extended its red flag warning for the region through Wednesday, as ferocious winds persisted.

Driving the news: The blaze is blowing embers miles ahead of it, creating so-called “spot fires” that allow it to jump containment lines as the blaze poses a threat of crossing state lines.

Zoom in: The fire jumped a major highway to reach Lake Tahoe Basin Monday night — hours after some 22,000 people were ordered to evacuate the city of South Lake Tahoe and surrounding communities, per the Sacramento Bee.

  • Traffic was gridlocked on Highway 50 Monday, as people fled the popular vacation destination. The evacuation order in El Dorado county, which includes South Lake Tahoe, covers more than 53,000 people.
  • Evacuation orders for communities in the nearby Amador County were issued Sunday night.

Zoom out: Extreme fire conditions in the state have prompted California’s Forest Service to close all national forests, effective just before midnight Tuesday through Sept. 17.

By the numbers: The wildfire is one of 13 large fires now burning in California.

  • This is only the second wildfire on record in California to cross the Sierra Nevada Mountains going from west to east. The other such blaze, the Dixie fire, is still burning.

What they’re saying: “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 Cal Fire, per AP.

  • “For the rest of you in California: Every acre can and will burn someday in this state,” he added.
  • Tim Ernst, Cal Fire’s operations section chief, noted that one of the complexities in this fire was that “firebrands can be picked up by winds” and carried a great distance. “So, firefighters all night long were doing structure prep and structure defense” in and near the Lake Tahoe Basin, he added.

Our thought bubble, via Axios’ Andrew Freedman: Climate change, along with decades of land management policies, is leading to larger wildfires in the West. It’s also creating more frequent extreme fire weather conditions that lead to wildfires that are nearly impossible to contain.

  • Nine out of 10 of California’s largest wildfires on record have occurred since 2010.
  • sweeping UN-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report published this month found that the connection between human emissions of greenhouse gases and global warming is “unequivocal.”

Tropical Depression 12 forms in far east Atlantic. It could be Hurricane Larry by Friday

Tropical Depression 12 forms in far east Atlantic. It could be Hurricane Larry by Friday

 

A new, powerful tropical depression formed in the far east Atlantic, and it could become Hurricane Larry as soon as Friday.

The latest forecast shows a track with a slight northern curve by week’s end, more toward Bermuda than the southeast coast of the U.S. At that point, the National Hurricane Center forecasts, it could be a Category 2 with 105 mph maximum winds.

The hurricane center said its forecast was “possibly conservative” for how strong the storm could get in this window and in the middle of model guidance that showed either a more westward track or northern track.

It’s too soon to know if this storm will take a Hurricane Florence-style path and make it to the U.S. coast, but right now the models don’t suggest that will happen.

As of the 5 p.m. update, tropical depression 12 was 335 miles southeast of the southernmost Cabo Verde Islands. It had 35 mph maximum sustained winds and was heading west-northwest at 16 mph.

Tropical depression 12 is forecast to power up into a hurricane as soon as Friday, but it’s still quite far from any land and most models have it on a northern track.
Tropical depression 12 is forecast to power up into a hurricane as soon as Friday, but it’s still quite far from any land and most models have it on a northern track.

 

The other tropical depression in the middle of the Atlantic, Kate, has much dimmer future prospects. It’s forecast to become a remnant low by Friday.

Forecasters also expect to see a disturbance form in the southern Caribbean Sea in the next few days. It could see some slow development by the end of the week if it remains over water, according to the hurricane center. The system is forecast to move west-northwest or northwest at 5 to 10 mph toward Central America.

It had a 10% chance of formation in the next two days and a 20% chance of formation through the next five days by the 2 p.m. update.

By the end of the week, forecasters said “land interaction with Central America and the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico will likely limit further development of this system.”

As for Tropical Depression Ida, the hurricane center issued its final advisory for it early Tuesday. The Weather Prediction Center will now provide updates on the system while it remains a flood threat.

The hurricane center is tracking two tropical depressions and one disturbance in the Atlantic basin.
The hurricane center is tracking two tropical depressions and one disturbance in the Atlantic basin.

Caldor Fire Threatens ‘Urban Conflagration’ in South Lake Tahoe

Caldor Fire Threatens ‘Urban Conflagration’ in South Lake Tahoe

​Flames surround the Sierra-at-Tahoe Resort.
Flames surround the Sierra-at-Tahoe Resort during the Caldor Fire in Twin Bridges, California on Aug. 30, 2021. JOSH EDELSON / AFP via Getty Images.

 

The Caldor Fire breached Echo Summit on Monday, crossing the Sierra Nevada and posing a direct threat to the population centers around Lake Tahoe, forcing more than 50,000 people to evacuate.

A wildfire has crossed over the Sierra Nevada just once before in recorded history: less than two weeks ago the Dixie Fire crossed the mountain range farther north. “We haven’t had fires burn from one side of the Sierra to the other,” Thom Porter, head of Cal Fire, told reporters Monday. “We did with Dixie, and now we do with the Caldor — we need to be cognizant that there is fire activity happening (here) that we have never seen before.”

Even at high elevation, high heat, strong winds, and dry foliage fuel the fire, which now threatens to incinerate 20,000 buildings and wipe out South Lake Tahoe. If the embers blown by high winds ignite in the valley, it could cause a catastrophic “urban conflagration,” UC Merced fire scientist Crystal Kolden told the LA Times. “It’s so dry that it is perfect kindling,” she said. In an area full of old, wooden homes, “You’ve got this potential for it to really start jumping from building to building to building, and it’s just a completely different beast and they can’t fight it.”

Mass evacuations clogged the roads not already closed by the flames.

Wildfires like the Caldor Fire — which had burned 186,568 acres as of Monday evening and was just 15% contained — are supercharged by heat, and drought made worse by climate change caused by the extraction and combustion of fossil fuels. Other climate impacts also make it harder to fight wildfires. A helicopter crew from the Louisiana National Guard that had been set to help firefighters battling the Caldor Fire was recalled to respond to Hurricane Ida.