Tens of thousands of South Lake Tahoe residents were watching hopefully as the Labor Day weekend began for a chance to return home, as firefighters made progress against a wildfire that turned the thriving resort into a California ghost town.
Lighter winds and higher humidity continue to reduce the spread of flames and crews were quick to increase efforts to burn and cut fire lines around the Caldor fire.
California has experienced increasingly larger and deadlier wildfires as climate change has made the US west much warmer and drier over the past 30 years. Scientists have said weather will continue to be more extreme and wildfires more frequent, destructive and unpredictable.
This summer, wildfires have burned at least 1,500 homes and destroyed several mountain hamlets. The Dixie fire, about 65 miles north of the Caldor fire, is the second-largest wildfire in California history at about 1,385 square miles. It is 55% contained. No deaths have been reported so far.
Around the Caldor fire, bulldozers with giant blades, crews armed with shovels and aircraft dropping hundreds of thousands of gallons of water and fire retardant helped keep the flames’ advance to a couple of thousand acres – a fraction of explosive spread last month.
“The incident continues to look better and better every day,” Tim Burton, an operations chief with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Prevention, told firefighters at a Saturday briefing. “A large part of that is due to your hard work as well as the weather cooperating in the last week or so.”
The north-east section of the blaze was still within a few miles of South Lake Tahoe and the Nevada state line but officials said it had not made any significant advances in several days and wasn’t challenging containment lines in long sections of its perimeter.
With more than a third of the 334-square-mile fire surrounded, authorities allowed more people back to their homes on the western and northern sides of the flames. But there was no timeline for allowing the return of 22,000 South Lake Tahoe residents and others in Douglas county, Nevada evacuated days ago.
“It’s all based on fire behavior,” said Jake Cagle, a fire operations section chief. “For now, things are looking good. We’re getting close.”
The resort area can accommodate 100,000 people but it was eerily empty on the Labor Day holiday weekend. The fire dealt a major blow to an economy heavily dependent on tourism which had been starting to rebound from pandemic shutdowns.
“It’s a big hit for our local businesses and the workers who rely on a steady income to pay rent and put food on their table,” said Devin Middlebrook, mayor pro-tem of South Lake Tahoe.
Middlebrook said the city got most of its revenue to pay for police and fire services and road maintenance from hotel and sales taxes.
Fire crews still had a lot of work to do. Despite the better weather, winds could still be erratic as they hit the region’s ridges and deep canyons.
The fire began on 14 August and was named after the road where it started. It raged through forested, craggy areas and destroyed nearly 900 homes, businesses and other buildings. It was considered a threat to more than 30,000 other structures.
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