Officials urged people to obey evacuation orders and said those under evacuation warnings should gather important items such as medications and be prepared to take action if necessary. 1 priority: Get people out of the way and protect life.” “Therefore,” he said, “we resort back to our No. He noted that the fire had been moving about half a mile each day, but that on Sunday it had “already moved about 2½ miles on us with no sign that it’s starting to slow down.” “It’s burned aggressively all day,” said Eric Schwab, the operations section chief. On the front lines of battle to keep Caldor fire from hitting Lake TahoeĬrews were working hard and fast to get ahead of the flames, but they were met with increasingly erratic conditions and extreme fire behavior. The soldiers were scheduled to be trained over the next week and sent to fire lines in Northern California in early September, the agency said in a news release.Ĭalifornia On the front lines of desperate battle to keep Caldor fire from hitting Lake Tahoe Army personnel be deployed to serve as firefighting hand crews. In addition, the National Interagency Fire Center has requested that about 200 active-duty U.S. Most recently, 150 military police members were sent to help El Dorado County and the California Highway Patrol conduct traffic control points and secure evacuated areas, he said. The assistance includes 1,059 California National Guard soldiers, sailors and airmen who are providing support to fire suppression operations that range from space-based platforms to boots on the ground, Maj. “We will continue to assess if additional resources are needed.”Īlready, more than 15,000 personnel are working on California’s fires, including nearly 1,200 fire engines, 315 hand crews, 367 dozer units, 411 water tenders and 111 helicopters, officials said during an emergency operations update Monday. “We are tracking the wildfires,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said at a Monday press briefing. The fire’s advance has alarmed President Biden’s administration, which has otherwise been preoccupied by Hurricane Ida on the Gulf Coast. “It meant our citizens were listening to the evacuation orders.”Ĭhris Anthony, a spokesman for the state’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, said Caldor remains a “very active” fire that officials expected to continue its march forward.Ĭiting factors including climate change and forest maintenance, Anthony said fires such as the Caldor were no longer an anomaly in the West, and said it was “resistant to control.”Ĭoncern about the potential for disaster is mounting far beyond Tahoe’s typically emerald shores. “For us, that was a good sign,” South Lake Fire Chief Clive Savacool said. Some said the road was more like a parking lot as people scrambled to leave town. So far no structures in those areas had been damaged or destroyed, officials said.īoth areas had largely been evacuated along with South Lake Tahoe where those heading east into Nevada were caught in an hours-long traffic jam Monday afternoon. ![]() Specifically, crews were worried about “embers being blown from up at the ridge top landing somewhere down in the valley and taking hold.” ![]() “Our significant concern is that spotting,” he said.
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