BY AMY ALONZO RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL
Firefighters with the Los Angeles County Fire Department work to put out the Caldor Fire in the Christmas Valley area of South Lake Tahoe, Calif. on Aug. 31, 2021. The Caldor Fire forever changed what residents of the Lake Tahoe area expect from wildfires. It crested the Sierra Nevada, burned an area larger than New York City and affirmed how dry conditions make fire more likely to ignite and more difficult to contain, the Reno Gazette-Journal reported.(Jason Bean/The Reno Gazette-Journal via AP) JASON BEAN AP
In just a few weeks, Caldor scorched more than 345 square miles (894 square kilometers), an area larger than New York City, as it traveled more than 40 miles (64 kilometers) toward Tahoe, the largest alpine lake in North America. The fire forced roughly 50,000 people on the Highway 50 corridor and in the Lake Tahoe Basin to evacuate. Nearly 32,000 structures were threatened, 81 were damaged and almost 800 were destroyed. And the Caldor did something only one fire – the 1,500-square-mile (3,900-square-kilometer) Dixie Fire – had ever done. It crested the Sierra Nevada, burning from the western slope onto the eastern slope, forever changing […]
Read more at: https://www.fresnobee.com/news/california/article256172772.html