Category: Environment

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Just last week, managers overseeing the fight against the massive wildfire scorching California’s Lake Tahoe region thought they could have it contained by the start of this week.

Instead, the Caldor Fire crested the Sierra Nevada on Monday, forcing the unprecedented evacuation of all 22,000 residents of South Lake Tahoe and tens of thousands of tourists who would otherwise be winding down their summers by the alpine lake straddling the California-Nevada state line.

That drastic move might never have been needed if authorities could have thrown more firefighters at the blaze when it was small. That didn’t happen because the Dixie Fire was simultaneously raging across the mountain range 100 miles (161 kilometers) to the north, on the way to becoming the second-largest wildfire in California history.

“I do think the Dixie and the way that it’s burned and its magnitude did impact the early response to the Caldor,” said Scott Stephens, a professor of wildland fire science at the University of California, Berkeley. “It really drew resources down so much that the Caldor got very few for the first couple days.”

By the time Caldor approached Lake Tahoe two weeks later, there were 4,000 fire personnel, dozens of water-dropping aircraft and hundreds of fire engines and bulldozers.

But all that manpower and equipment were overmatched by tinder dry conditions, whipping downslope winds and an overgrown forest ripe to burn, a half-dozen fire experts said. And with resources already stretched across the West and internationally, they said the long-term situation will only worsen as exhausted firefighters battle bigger blazes that start earlier and last longer.

“Mother Nature is calling the cards on our hubris that we can conquer and control wildfires during these extreme conditions,” said Timothy Ingalsbee, a former federal firefighter who now heads Oregon-based Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology, which advocates for working with wildfires instead of reflexively putting them out.

The Caldor Fire ignited from an unknown cause on Aug. 14 in the steep wooded foothills east of California’s capital city of Sacramento. In the first few days, about 240 firefighters were dispatched, compared to the 6,550 firefighters battling the Dixie Fire at the time.

It wasn’t until four days later that Cal Fire Chief Thom Porter said fire managers diverted 30 fire engines from the Dixie Fire to the Caldor Fire. Overnight, the number of engines and firefighters nearly tripled. But by then the fire had already burned through Grizzly Flats, destroying dozens of homes in the town of about 1,200 people.

“We are moving resources around as needed, sharing among the incidents,” Porter told reporters on Aug. 18. But he acknowledged that “we are having a very difficult time” because resources were so stretched across the West.

Officials couldn’t say how many firefighters would have been ideal and when, but Cal Fire was candid that there initially was a shortage, said Ken Pimlott, who retired as the agency’s director in 2018 and lives a few miles from the fire’s origin.

“Early on, this was not the highest priority because there were other threats on other fires that were higher,” Pimlott said.

As the fire marched toward Lake Tahoe and its crystal clear waters that attract visitors from around the world, it destroyed hundreds of homes and other structures and left a firefighter with serious burns.

Still, officials predicted as recently as last weekend that they could hold the fire outside the Lake Tahoe Basin. They feverishly expanded fire lines to take advantage of the barren granite that caps the mountain chain which has formed an impenetrable barrier to flames in the past. This time, their optimism merely lulled residents into a false sense of security, leaving many scrambling to pack their lives in bags when evacuation orders came Monday.

Chad Hanson of the John Muir Project said fire managers were foolish to think they could stop the flames based on the expected winds.

“It is 100% predictable that under those conditions the fire will continue to move in that direction. So it’s hard for me to imagine why anyone would conclude otherwise,” said Hanson, a frequent critic of forest management efforts.

Firefighters had thought they made good progress during favorable conditions going into the weekend, said Jason Hunter, a spokesman for Caldor Fire managers. But then came the changing weather pattern with “incredibly gusty winds” that pushed burning embers over the crest.

“The weather, is what it boils down to, is what changed,” Hunter said. Containment projections are a “constantly moving target” based on evolving conditions, he said. The Caldor Fire’s containment projection has since been pushed back to Sept. 13.

Experts agreed conditions are grim because drought has been worsened by consecutive climate change-driven heat waves that sap humidity before dry winds whip flames and ferry embers sometimes a mile or more ahead of the main blaze.

“These embers are leapfrogging over fire lines and rivers, ridges and roads and other things that typically stop wildfire spread, and so you have these fires kind of hopscotching across the landscape,” Ingalsbee said.

Firefighters were outflanked by a shift in localized winds that funneled flames into the Tahoe basin, said John Battles, a University of California, Berkeley professor of forest ecology.

Fire managers have become adept at projecting the weather and how fuels will burn, but still lack the ability to predict localized winds at fires — some caused by the fires themselves — with 10 different computer models offering as many conflicting outcomes, he said.

“They’re trying to predict winds at a mountain pass. That is the most complex topography we have,” Battles said. “That’s why you have this feeling like they didn’t know what they’re doing.”

He added: “When you’re fighting a fire the size of the Caldor, you make your best guess.”

The Caldor Fire is just the second in modern history to have traversed the Sierra. The first was the Dixie Fire that started in mid-July near the town of Paradise and has grown to 1,300 square miles (3,367 square kilometers), more than four times as large as Caldor.

Such monster fires typically come later in the year when conditions are their driest but also when cooler days, rising humidity and ultimately rain and snow have aided the firefight, said Char Miller, a professor at Pomona College who has written extensively about wildfires.

But California has received far less precipitation than normal the last two years and there’s no guarantee more will arrive this fall to aid firefighters. “This may burn through October,” Miller said.

Yet the fire experts said the biggest challenge is neither drought nor climate change, but the overgrown forests that could actually benefit from fire — so long as it is set or allowed to burn at a low intensity during the spring or fall before it can explode out of control.

Firefighters still quickly contain about 95% of fires, but it’s the ones that escape that do the major damage, Pimlott said. Once fires spread, firefighters may need to start prioritizing communities that can be protected while letting the flames burn around them, he said.

“It’s a hard pill to swallow for all of us in the firefighting community, because we want to put these fires to bed,” he said. “We just may not be able to do that on every one of these fires, because of the conditions we’re facing.”

The raging wildfire that is encroaching upon Lake Tahoe threatens to mar the pristine alpine lake that draws approximately 15 million visitors a year to its cobalt waters and sandy beaches, remote mountain trails and world-class ski resorts.

The Caldor Fire in California grew to more than 191,000 acres Tuesday, prompting the evacuation of 22,000 residents in South Lake Tahoe and the partial shutdown of casinos next door in Stateline, Nevada.

Beyond the immediate concern for public safety and the thousands of homes at risk is the threat fire poses to the clarity of and scenery around the world-renowned lake.

While wildfires have wreaked devastation across the West in recent years, it’s hard to imagine a more unsettling scenario than fire bearing down on Lake Tahoe, which Mark Twain described as “the fairest picture the whole earth affords.”

The lake straddles the California-Nevada line high in the Sierra Nevada. The top end is about 35 miles south of Reno and the lower end, which the fire is threatening, is about 100 miles east of Sacramento.

“Lake Tahoe is one of the more unique gems of lakes on the planet,” said Sudeep Chandra, a biology professor and director of the Global Water Center at the University of Nevada, Reno.

At more than 1,600 feet deep it is among the largest lakes in the country. Tahoe is about 22 miles long with more than 70 miles of shore, some of which is undeveloped and protected for outdoor recreation, and some of which is tightly packed with housing, gift shops and towering hotel casinos.

Caldor Fire:Roads packed after South Lake Tahoe ordered to evacuate; all national forests in California closed due to wildfires

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“It has a very high transparency,” Chandra said of the famed waters. “You can see almost 100 feet below the surface. It is one of the deepest lakes in the world. From a cultural viewpoint, it is important for the native peoples. The Washoe Tribe lived in the basin. And now it is important for recreation and the local economy.”

A fire burning to the shores of the lake threatens that famous clarity.

South Lake Tahoe, a California city on the south shore, is the most populous area within the basin, and is the area the Caldor Fire is encroaching upon as it moves northward.

Tahoe is known for year-round activities.

The Nevada side attracts people with its casinos. The four on the south end of the lake — Harrah’s Lake Tahoe, Harvey’s, Hard Rock Lake Tahoe and Montbleu Casino Resort — were limiting gambling Monday, with evacuation orders just across the state line in neighboring South Lake Tahoe and many workers needing to tend to affairs at home.

More: Escape from South Lake Tahoe: Evacuees seek shelter from Caldor Fire in Northern Nevada

Caldor Fire updates: Highway 50 packed as thousands flee South Lake Tahoe

Warmer months bring throngs of people seeking Tahoe’s beaches, hiking and biking trails, boating and a variety of water sports such as kayaking and paddle boarding. Among the areas evacuated Monday were the famed Emerald Bay as well as the Tahoe Keys Marina.

Winter brings travelers seeking deep snow at about a dozen ski resorts around the lake, some of which offer views of the deep blue water from the slopes.

Already the flames have enveloped hillsides around Sierra-at-Tahoe Resort. Webcam footage appeared to show firefighters using a lift at Kirkwood Mountain Resort in their fight to keep the flames at bay.

Heavenly Ski Resort straddles the state line, with lifts and trails in both states. Monday’s evacuation orders included the area around its California operations.

Fire comes during busy season

The end of summer is usually among the busiest tourism periods for Lake Tahoe, and tourism is the key industry for the region.

The entire lake basin’s annual economy is estimated at $5 billion, with visitor services making up about 62% of that, said Carol Chaplin, president and CEO of the Lake Tahoe Visitors Authority.

But occupancy for Tahoe-area hotels already fell to below 30% in the past week because smoke from the fires drove visitors away. That was before officials asked travelers to avoid the area.

Now many hotels either are housing evacuees or emergency workers in town because of the fire, Chaplin said.

Normally hotels would be between 80-90% full this time of year heading into Labor Day.

Tahoe attracts most visitors from the San Francisco Bay Area, but increasingly sees visitors from across the United States and, prior to COVID-19 travel restrictions, international markets.

“We are an international destination,” said Chaplin, who also is a trustee of the Reno-Tahoe International Airport. “Our largest (international) markets are the United Kingdom, Australia, but we were starting to see India, China, South America.”

Tahoe was more popular than usual amid the COVID-19 pandemic the past two summers, even with limited international travel.

“We didn’t feel that because of the additional interest in outdoor recreation areas during COVID,” Chaplin said, adding that lodging and the airport have operated above 2019 levels during the pandemic. “People are really getting out there and using the trails like never before.”

Chaplin said her immediate thoughts were with people who already had lost homes to the fire, as well as those still in the fire’s path. But the long-term impact to the travel industry and all the people it employs also gives her concern.

Choking on smoke: South Lake Tahoe, usually bustling now, is empty

Many travelers to Lake Tahoe from California drive from Sacramento on U.S. 50, several miles of which were overrun by the Caldor Fire.

“The approach will be different,” Chaplin said of road trips to the area once the fire is under control. “It will be a challenge to come back from this.”

Water clarity makes lake famous

Tahoe is known for its clarity, with Twain writing in his 1872 book “Roughing It” that drifting on the lake in a rowboat was akin to floating from a balloon because the water was so transparent.

And while development and pollution have clouded the water somewhat since that time, the lake is still clear enough to see to depths of more than 62 feet on average, according to the latest report from the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, which monitors environmental quality in the basin. The best measurements taken last year afforded 80 feet of visibility.

“It is really a national treasure,” said Sean McKenna, executive director of the Division of Hydrologic Sciences at the Desert Research Institute in Reno. “It has stayed that way through a very concerted effort and management practices.”

Maintaining the lake’s clarity has been a concern since the 1960s, and the municipalities around the lake have taken extra precautions, such as pumping all of their wastewater outside of the lake’s basin for treatment, to ensure the water stays clear, he said.

The Tahoe Regional Planning Agency also enforces a variety of restrictions on development, often to the chagrin of home owners and developers, with the intent on keeping runoff out of the lake and maintaining Tahoe’s clarity.

The focus lately is on storm water entering the lake, carrying with it sediment and nutrients that can affect lake clarity.

“Something we worry about a lot is the post-fire hydrologic effects,” McKenna said. “The soils become less permeable, so that could lead to more runoff and debris flows, more sediment. A severe fire going through there will change all the year-round activities significantly.”

What researchers don’t know is whether the effects will last for a short term or continue for years.

In 2007, the Angora Fire burned just over 3,000 acres in the Tahoe basin, destroying 254 homes. That fire’s impacts on the watershed were studied and found to be minimal.

“It is safe to say it is not an easy fix and will take resources and energy above and beyond what we have contributed to restoration to date,” Chandra said.

Ecologically speaking, Tahoe was home to Lahontan cutthroat trout, which wildlife officials are reintroducing to waterways in the region, and remains home to 10 endemic invertebrates, Chandra said.

The smoke from wildfires alone, which have been hammering the region for weeks, can affect the lake by “reorganizing” fisheries and aquatic plants, Chandra said.

But the other concern is that a wildfire in the basin will leave a burn scar, allowing more runoff into the lake that can bring more nutrients and soil, clouding the water and providing nutrients for algae that can further affect the clarity.

“While these are challenging times certainly for the people of Lake Tahoe, the lake also has had the remarkable ability to recover over time,” Chandra said, citing deforestation in the 1800s that increased sediment in the lake.

That problem was largely resolved by the 1950s when the forest had regrown, he said.

“We are facing the same situation today, a catastrophic and in this case unintended event is occurring that has the potential to change the long term clarity in the lake,” Chandra said.

“The science-supported management activities that we need to plan after this fire can help us understand the short- and long-term impacts to the lake’s fragile clarity and — where to go next.”

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.