Tahoe fire claims at least 180 structures

Firefighters have struggled to contain a forest fire that has destroyed at least 180 homes and other structures and has blazed a path to the edge of South Lake Tahoe, authorities said this morning.

Although no injuries have been reported, firefighters have begun setting backfires, in hopes that the blaze will burn itself out without crossing over the city’s borders. Authorities said the fire might have charred as many as 225 homes and structures.

By late Sunday evening the fast-moving fire was threatening the western boundary of the city and had burned 2,000 acres of heavily wooded, parched terrain just west and south of it. The unincorporated area is between U.S. Highway 50 and the popular Fallen Leaf Lake below the slopes of Mount Tallac. Despite favorable winds and temperatures overnight, the fire remains only about 5% contained, authorities said.

“This is just a monster of a fire,” Lt. Kevin House of the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Department said today on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “It’s just a very difficult thing to get on top of.”

Officials said that about 1,000 people were evacuated from communities near the fire. Some residents went to two evacuation centers in South Lake Tahoe; others went to the homes of friends and the many hotels in the area. No injuries were reported.

“It’s like a 100-foot wall of flame that’s marching through the forest,” said Leona Allen, communications supervisor of the dispatch center for South Lake Tahoe’s fire and police departments. “It’s thick with smoke. You can’t see your hand. You can’t see anything across the street.

“This is the largest fire we have had in the basin since I was born here in 1960, and this is probably the worst tragedy I have ever experienced in my life,” added Allen, whose own home was among those destroyed.

It was not known how the fire started, but there were no thunderstorms or lightning reported at the lake Sunday. Snowfall this winter was well below average. Most of the land surrounding South Lake Tahoe is in the U.S. Forest Service’s Tahoe Basin Management Unit, which is heavily covered by pine forests.

Winds began to subside and temperatures dropped sharply late Sunday. That provided a measure of help to firefighters who were battling to stop the blaze that by nightfall had begun to move into the city limits. Forest service officials said that flights were suspended at nightfall but were expected to resume this morning.

“If we’re going to get a handle on it, we need to do it now,” Allen said.

Late Sunday night, the smoke was visible for miles by the light of a big half-moon. There was a glow all along a half-mile of ridge top from Emerald Bay, several miles west of town.

In South Lake Tahoe, a quarter-mile down from the ridgeline, neighbors were out near midnight watching the hill as if it were the Fourth of July. There was a firetruck in nearly every driveway, as firefighters braced for the long night ahead.

One official said the flames spread quickly even before the fire was reported about 2:10 p.m., and they were at a loss to determine precisely where the blaze began.

Allen said most of the area burned was west of Highway 50. Officials said 400 firefighters had arrived by late Sunday night to battle the blaze.

In addition to her own home, Allen said, her father’s home was destroyed.

“This year we knew something was going to hit,” she said, citing the parched terrain. “When you kick in the kind of wind we had today, the fire danger was huge.”

Still, Allen said she felt thankful to be safe. Her home for the last nine years was just “stuff.”

“We’re over it,” she said of the damage. “Our job right now is to help out the rest of the community and try to stop anyone else from losing their houses.”

Thea Murdock, who drove past the fire with her two children, said orange clouds blocked the sky as drivers veered around clogged traffic on Highway 50, trying to get to homes in nearby Meyers and other towns.

“The smoke was really bad,” said Murdock, who said her children Brigitte, 11, and McKain, 8, were terrified in the chaotic scene. “We saw terrible flames, trees on fire, all lit up like candles.”

Highway 50 was later closed between South Lake Tahoe and Pollack Pines, cutting off the main route to Sacramento.

Brian Brong, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Reno, said wind gusts of up to 30 mph pushed the fire from the south for most of the day. By 7 p.m., he said, the winds had slowed to about 12 mph, and temperatures were expected to dip into the 30s overnight. Moderate winds in the opposite direction were expected today. Brong said it rained about 15 days each summer but that no rain was expected this week.

Todd McAhee, 48, a resident of the Tahoe Paradise subdivision where some of the homes burned, said he was hiking early Sunday afternoon near Fallen Leaf Lake when he saw a plume of smoke that he believed was coming from near his home.

McAhee was allowed to drive to his house, about six blocks from the fire.

“There were a couple of fire trucks going toward the fire. It was bizarre — there was nobody around,” he said. “I never actually did see the flames. It was just black smoke and very ominous.”

McAhee said that many of Tahoe Paradise’s residents work in the resort community of South Lake Tahoe. He had moved in with a friend Sunday night and was still awaiting word on whether his home had survived the blaze.

“It was very explosive and it moved fast — a lot of the homes that burned went in the first half hour,” said Capt. Scott Swift of the Lake Valley Fire Protection District, which includes the Tahoe Paradise area.

The popular and historic Camp Richardson along the shores of Lake Tahoe began a voluntary evacuation of its RV park on the south — or mountain — side of California Highway 89. Campers were paying heed, said reservationist Nate Jackson on Sunday night.

“We can’t see the flames from here, but there’s a large plume of smoke over the South Lake Tahoe area,” Jackson said. “It’s pretty nasty-looking. We’ve had six or seven employees lose homes.”

Also being evacuated was the campground at Fallen Leaf Lake, as well as Angora Lakes Resort. An employee confirmed that everyone was rushing out of that facility, then hung up.

Fire restrictions have been in effect in Tahoe National Forest since June 11, according to a press release from the U.S. Forest Service.

“This is the earliest we have gone into fire restrictions in many years,” Steve Eubanks, the forest’s supervisor, said in the release. “This summer is shaping up as a potentially bad fire season.”

He said the lack of rain and snow “this past winter has resulted in reduced moisture in the vegetation. In dead vegetation, the moisture content is actually less than in kiln-dried lumber.”

Restrictions were placed on smoking, use of campfires and possession of fireworks.

In the June release, Eubanks said that the No. 1 human cause of blazes in Tahoe National Forest was abandoned campfires. In 2001, with conditions similar to this year’s, the Martis and the Gap fires burned a total of 17,000 acres and were caused by illegal, escaped campfires.