Megafirms are no longer rare in the West, and unprecedented fire behavior is not surprising.
Residents who had the chance to flee from South Lake Tahoe earlier this week had been evacuated, as had people across the state line in Douglas County, Nevada.
Crews battling the Caldor Fire in California that burned just a few kilometres from Lake Tahoe were helped by improved weather conditions Thursday, after days of heavy wind gusts added to the massive blaze.
“We lost the winds aloft,”Jim Dudley
‘We lost the winds aloft,’ said meteorologist Jim Dudley.
‘Spotting continues to be a problem. They’ve been a problem since the very first day of this incident, and that’s what’s causing this fire to grow exponentially, so once we get the wind to slow down we’re going to see the spot fire distances go down,’ t see how the distances between fires will decrease,’ Steve Volmer of Cal Fire told CNN on Wednesday.
As of Thursday, authorities reported 622 homes destroyed, twelve commercial properties and 177 structures damaged, but the count was pending because many burned-out areas are not safe for censuses.
Fighting the Dixie fire, while 6.550 firefighters, around 240 made their way into the Lake Tahoe area in the first days of the Caldor fire.
