An explosive California wildfire that has forced thousands to evacuate their homes and devastated a mountain community last week is “knocking on the door” of the Lake Tahoe basin, the state’s top fire official said Monday.
Thom Porter, director of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or CalFire, called the Caldor Fire the “No. 1 priority in the nation” for securing additional resources to help stave off potential damage the blaze could inflict on the popular destination and region that is home to tens of thousands.
“It is that important,” Porter told reporters, adding: “We have all efforts to keep it out of the basin.”
The blaze has destroyed 557 buildings, according to CalFire. Last week, it incinerated much of Grizzly Flats, a small community 65 miles east of Sacramento.
Eric Schwab, a CalFire section chief, said Monday that limiting the fire’s eastern spread toward other small mountain communities and Tahoe was a “huge priority.” But firefighters were struggling to contain a spot fire in that section of that blaze that was quickly expanding, he said.
More than 24,000 people remained under evacuation orders Monday in El Dorado County, where the fire ignited Aug. 14, according to the Governor’s Office of Emergency Management Services.
The blaze, which grew by more than 47,000 acres in less than 24 hours, had swelled to more than 106,000 acres by Monday and it was five percent contained. In recent days, the fire jumped U.S. Route 50, the main thoroughfare through the Tahoe area.
The fire is one of 12 large blazes burning across the state. A Cal Fire spokesman said Monday that a staggering 1.5 million acres has burned in California so far in 2021, a 42 percent jump from last year, which saw the most acres burned across the state in modern history.
Experts have attributed the state’s increasingly intense fire seasons to a historic drought magnified by climate change and a century of fire suppression policies that saw the build-up of dense forests that can act as kindling.
