Caldor Fire: Wildfire reduces as thousands hope to return home

The Caldor Fire in South Lake Tahoe is coming under the control of the firefighters in California, officials said on Saturday. This has lifted hopes for tens of thousands of residents who are waiting to return to their homes in the resort town.

The reduction in the spread of flames came due to lighter winds and higher humidity and fire crews were quick to take advantage by doubling down on burning and cutting fire lines around the wildfire.

Hundreds of thousands of gallons of water and fire retardant were being dropped by a fleet of aircraft and bulldozers with giant blades and crews armed with shovels helped keep the fire’s advance to a couple of thousand acres — a fraction of its explosive spread last month and the smallest increase in two weeks, the Associated Press reported.

“The incident continues to look better and better every day. A large part of that is due to your hard work as well as the weather cooperating in the last week or so,” AP quoted Tim Burton, an operations chief with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Prevention, as telling the firefighters on Saturday.

The northeast section of the immense Sierra Nevada blaze was still within a few miles of South Lake Tahoe and the Nevada state line but fire officials said it hadn’t made any significant advances in several days and wasn’t challenging containment lines in long sections of its perimeter.

With more than one-third of the 334-square-mile (866-square-kilometer) blaze surrounded, authorities allowed more people back into their homes on the western and northern sides of the fires on Friday afternoon.

But there was no timeline for allowing the return of 22,000 South Lake Tahoe residents and others across the state line in Douglas County, Nevada who were evacuated days ago. Authorities were taking that decision day by day.

“It is all based on fire behavior. For now, things are looking good, we are getting close,” said Jake Cagle, a fire operations section chief

The resort area can easily accommodate 100,000 people on a busy weekend but was eerily empty — except for the occasional, wandering bear — just before the holiday weekend.

The wildfire dealt a major blow to an economy that heavily depends on tourism and was starting to rebound this summer from pandemic shutdowns.

The fire — which began August 14, was named after the road where it started and raged through densely forested, craggy areas — has destroyed nearly 900 homes, businesses, and other buildings. It was still considered a threat to more than 30,000 more structures.

Wildfires this year have burned at least 1,500 homes and decimated several mountain hamlets. The Dixie Fire, burning about 65 miles (105 kilometers) north of the Caldor Fire, is the second-largest wildfire in state history at about 1,385 square miles (3,585 square kilometers) and is 55% contained.

California has experienced increasingly larger and deadlier wildfires in recent years as climate change has made the West much warmer and drier over the past 30 years. Scientists have said that the weather will continue to be more extreme and wildfires more frequent, destructive, and unpredictable. No deaths have been reported so far this fire season.

(With AP inputs)