New Evacuations Ordered for Douglas County, NV; Flames Advance Towards South Lake Tahoe – CBS San Francisco
DOUGLAS COUNTY, NV (CBS SF) – New mandatory evacuation orders were issued for parts of Douglas County, Nevada on Tuesday afternoon as the Caldor fire continued its devastating advance into the Tahoe Basin, according to authorities.
The Douglas County Sheriff’s office issued the orders at around 4:22 p.m.
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“The following parishes in Douglas County are:
• Upper Kingsbury (South & North)
• Central & Lower Kingsbury
• Round Hill Region & Rds including Lower Elks Point
• Village by the lake
• Lower Olivers, Kahle Drive Region & Streets… “Full release, https://t.co/9kWnAb7p0X #CaldorFire pic.twitter.com/QtT2tpNav4
– Douglas Co Sheriff (@DouglasSheriff) August 31, 2021
With the exception of the casinos in Stateline, the following Douglas County communities were under the new evacuation orders:
• Upper Kingsbury (North and South)
• Central Kingsbury
• Lower Kingsbury
• Round Hill region and roads including Lower Elks Point
• Village by the lake
• Lower Olivers, Kahle Drive Region and Roads
Evacuation assignments also include areas from Highway 50 on Lake Parkway, East to Elks Point Road and State Route 207 (Kingsbury Grade) from Highway 50 to Tramway Drive, including all area roads north and south of Kingsbury Grade. Further details are available on the Douglas County government website.
Meanwhile, residents of South Lake Tahoe who were still looking for accommodation after being evacuated from the city have been directed to the Reno / Sparks Convention Center at 4590 S. Virginia St., Reno, NV 89502 .
In addition to other properties in the immediate area that are busy, South Lake Tahoe city officials said the property is in.
The orders come as hundreds of firefighters continued to fight the advancing flames of windswept wildfire.
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An intense firefight took place in the subdivisions around the Sierra Mountain community of Meyers early Tuesday morning when crews put out point fires to save homes from the devastating path of raging wildfire.
The mega-fire increased to 191,607 acres and was contained 16%. When describing the conditions on Tuesday morning, Cal Fire officials said flames were spreading between the canopy of trees.
“Crown fires and embers remained active and covered distances of up to three quarters of a mile,” officials said. “At lower points of the fire, there were high winds in the canyon that tested the control lines.”
The fire blazed over Echo Summit Monday night after leaving a trail of burned trees and houses along Highway 50 and began its descent toward the evacuated town of South Lake Tahoe.
Early Tuesday, the fire burned in and around Park River Estates along Highway 89, in the Meyers subdivision of Tahoe Paradise, and advanced on Christmas Valley, about 10 miles from South Lake Tahoe.
Red flag warning winds fanned the flames and should reach up to 40 mph on Tuesday. Combined with fuel from dense forests, difficult terrain and bone-dry undergrowth, the wall of flames marched relentlessly forward.
“This fire showed us that we were unpredictable, terrain, weather, it was very active and sometimes it progresses very quickly,” said Keith Wade, spokesman for Cal Fire.
I’m going back to #CaldorFire now & will be in the area all day with live reports on @KPIXtv & @CBSNBayArea at 5pm, 6pm, 7pm & 11pm. This is the view near #EmeraldBay on the west side of #LakeTahoe where a pyrocumulonimbus cloud has formed to the east side of the lake. pic.twitter.com/aTw98FXGPf
– Katie Nielsen (@KatieKPIX) August 31, 2021
At the state line, where many South Lake Tahoe residents left after Monday’s evacuation orders, an eerie silence has settled on the normally busy section of hotels and casinos.
“I’ve been watching this for the past two weeks. I never thought it would even reach our area, ”said Sue Meade of South Lake Tahoe.
Meade is on a waiting list for a room at the Hard Rock Casino, hoping her evacuation from her home will be short-lived.
“It’s incredible. It’s surreal,” she said.
“We keep these casinos and everything operational because we have a lot of fire departments here,” said Tahoe Douglas Fire Marshal Eric Guevin. “So this is our core and this is a protected area.”
In addition to the fire departments housed in the casino hotels, there are also many evacuees from the communities in South Lake Tahoe.
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Evacuates like Dawn Hinde and her husband did their best to stay informed of the firefight.
“It’s very difficult not to see what’s going on down there at home when it’s there and when you don’t get a lot of information, like where the fire is burning,” said Hinde.
She said it was just as strange to see her 30-year-old hometown basically deserted. South Lake Tahoe would fill with visitors arriving before a busy holiday weekend. Instead, the streets are empty and the air so thick with smoke that you can barely see the mountains.
“Not a soul around. It’s creepy and sad and scary, ”said Hinde.
The flame – combined with the Dixie Fire that burns further north in Counties Plumas and Lassen – also defeated the decades-long belief that wildfire could not cross the Sierra Nevada. Both fires crossed the Sierra and had burned more than 1 million hectares by Tuesday morning.
“We haven’t had wildfires from one side of the sierras to the other,” said Thom Porter, Cal Fire Chief. “We did that with the Dixie [Fire], now we have with the Caldor. Twice in our history and both happen this month. So we really need to be aware that there is fire activity in California that we have never seen before. “
Clouds of embers the size of a silver dollar churned up in the flames, winds and falling trees, and drove the rapid advance near Meyers and along Highway 89 on Monday.
“These ember sausages can sometimes travel up to a mile from the fire,” Wade said. “It tells you there is a risk and so we evacuate them, this fire can easily spread and the communities down there and the people we want to get to safety.”
CALDOR FIRE:
Long-time resident Will Cottrell was among the evacuees. He was stunned as he watched the flames reach the top of Echo.
“That’s a climbing area up there too,” he said. “This slope. It’s cooked. “
The 77-year-old waited until the last minute to leave his home south of Meyers, turned on the sprinklers and packed up everything he could
“I’m a doctor, so my entire home medical office that I had to work in last year is now squashed in the back of the car,” said Cottrell as flames surrounded his neighborhood. “What I see now says bail out.”
Initially, residents who fled the fire blocked the only way out of the city. But by late Monday afternoon, the normally busy tourist mecca took on the appearance of a ghost town. Hotel and casino parking lots in Stateline were empty, shops and restaurants were closed.
Meanwhile, the evacuation centers in nearby Gardnerville, Reno and Truckee were almost full.
Among the evacuees detained at Gardnerville was Don Caudle, a resident of South Lake Tahoe.
“I think it will be weeks before we can go back,” he said. “I’ve lived in Tahoe for 40 years and they’ve never had a fire like this.”
Porter said at a briefing on the state’s forest fires that the fire in Caldor had grown more than 20,000 acres since Sunday and the fire had spread in all directions.
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“Difficult road conditions, difficult to access. It burns in heavy wood, just very, very difficult conditions, ”said Porter. “We made progress sometimes. Last week I reported on how we effectively have an inversion that kind of curbs fire activity. But when the air clears, it’s like taking the lid off a pot of boiling water. Suddenly this cloud of heat and steam comes out, the same thing happens with a fire. It also sucks in oxygen from all directions, sets fires and punctures fires in all directions. That happened yesterday. “
Raw video of flames in Park River Estates
Outside the Tahoe Basin, point fires also broke out in the Lower Echo Lake, Aloha Lake and Desolation Wilderness areas on Monday.
The El Dorado County Sheriff’s Department issued additional mandatory evacuation orders on Monday for the west bank of Lake Tahoe, from Emerald Bay to Tahoma on the Placer County line and then west to the border of the Desolation Wilderness.
Cal Fire Operations Chief Tim Ernst said the fire spread from Strawberry on Highway 50 northeast to Echo Lake on Sunday, where it burned Monday morning.
“A number of structures have been lost in this area,” said Ernst.
To date, the flames have destroyed 482 homes – many in the fire-ravaged community of Grizzly Flats and along Mt. Ralston Road off Highway 50 – and threatened an additional 21,451 buildings.
Flames continued to threaten the Sierra-at-Tahoe ski resort, which is near Echo Summit. Early Tuesday, webcams showed towering flames near the ski slopes, where large snowmaking machines were being used to keep the vegetation wet.
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The fire, which was first reported near the Grizzly Flats community on August 14, is unlikely to be fully contained until September 8. Officials said the cause is being investigated.
