Lake Tahoe threatened by massive fire, others ordered to flee

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SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. (AP) – Firefighters have ordered more evacuations around the Tahoe Basin as a two-week-old blaze encroaches on threatened mountain towns surrounding glistening Lake Tahoe.

As night fell, all residents of the California side of the Lake Tahoe Basin were warned to evacuate the area, after firefighters stressed for days that protecting the area was their top response to the fight. against fires.

“Today has been a tough day and there are no bones about it,” Jeff Marsoleis, forestry supervisor at El Dorado National Forest, said Sunday evening. A few days ago, he thought the crews might stop the eastward advance of the Caldor Fire, but “today he went wild.”

The flames crossed the mountains a few miles southwest of the Tahoe Basin, where thick smoke sent tourists packing at a time when summer vacation was generally in full swing before Labor Day weekend.

“To put it in perspective, we’ve seen about half a mile of movement around the perimeter of the fire each day for the past two weeks, and today that has already moved 2.5 miles. (4 km) on us, with no sign of it starting to slow down, ”Cal Fire Division chief Erich Schwab said.

Some areas of the Northern California terrain are so rugged that crews had to haul hand-held fire hoses from Highway 50 as they sought to put out spot fires caused by erratic winds.

The forecast was not optimistic: triple-digit temperatures were possible and the extreme heat was to last for several days. A red flag warning for critical fire conditions was issued Monday and Tuesday in the northern Sierra.

The blaze that broke out on Aug. 14 was 19 percent under control after burning nearly 245 square miles (635 square kilometers) – an area larger than Chicago. More than 600 structures were destroyed and at least 18,000 others were threatened.

The Caldor blaze proved so difficult to fight that fire officials pushed back the planned date of full containment from the start of this week to September 8. But even that estimate was tenuous.

In Southern California, a section of Interstate 15 was closed Sunday afternoon after winds pushed a new fire, dubbed the Railroad Fire, through the tracks of the Cajon Pass northeast of Los Angeles. .

Further south, evacuation orders and warnings were still in place for remote communities after a wildfire broke out and quickly spread through the Cleveland National Forest on Saturday. A firefighter was slightly injured and two structures were destroyed in the 2.3-square-mile (5.9-square-kilometer) Chaparral Fire along the San Diego and Riverside County border, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. It was 10% content on Sunday.

Meanwhile, California’s Dixie Fire, the second largest in state history at 1,193 square miles (3,089 square kilometers), was 48% contained in the Sierra-Cascades region, approximately 65 miles away. (105 km) north of the Caldor fire. Nearly 700 houses were among the nearly 1,300 buildings destroyed since the fire started in early July.

Containment was increased to 22% on the 12-day-old French Fire, which covered more than 38 square miles (98 square kilometers) in the southern Sierra Nevada. Teams protected forest homes on the west side of Lake Isabella, a popular recreation area northeast of Bakersfield.

More than a dozen large fires are fought by more than 15,200 firefighters across California. The flames have destroyed around 2,000 structures and forced thousands to evacuate this year while blanketing large swathes of the West in unhealthy smoke.

The fires in California are among the nearly 90 major fires in the United States. Many are in the West, burning drought-dried trees and brush. Climate change has made the region hotter and drier over the past 30 years and will continue to make weather conditions more extreme and forest fires more destructive, scientists say.

The Department of Defense is sending 200 U.S. Army troops from Washington State and equipment, including eight U.S. Air Force C-130 planes, to assist firefighters in northern California, a the US Army North announced on Saturday in a press release. The C-130s were converted into tank planes that can dump thousands of gallons of water on the flames.

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