Photo: Liu Guanguan/China News Service via Getty
The Caldor fire in the Sierra Nevada has created an eerie scene at Lake Tahoe and impacting both residents and summer tourists.
Those in and around Lake Tahoe continue to flee the area as the massive wildfire inches closer to the popular vacation destination. Evacuation orders were issued in the surrounding area on Thursday.
One visitor, Phil Wente, told ABC7 that he and his family left the area on Monday, one week earlier than planned. The winegrowerlikened the scene to the end of the world.
“It just looked like Armageddon,” Wente said Wednesday, noting his family had attempted to “do some outdoor activities” at their vacation home but that the smoke “was simply overwhelming.”
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“[It] got to the point where even inside the house it looked like somebody had built a fire in the fireplace, closed the damper, and smoked out the house,” he added.
Liu Guanguan/China News Service via Getty
Those in Twin Bridges and Echo Summit, located roughly 10 miles south of Lake Tahoe, were instructed to leave immediately. Christmas Valley was issued an evacuation warning.
On Friday morning,The New York Timesreported that the Caldor fire was just 12 miles away from the scenic town. The blaze is just one of more than 100 currently burning in the West.
“We have had smoke in the sky literally since the third week of July — we have been inhaling toxins for five weeks now,” she noted regarding the smoke from the Dixie fire, the second-largest blaze in California history. “You can’t be outside. You can’t breathe. You can’t see the sun.”
“If it were just this summer, you’d just suck it up and move on. But it isn’t. It’s the realization that this is our future,” she told theTimes. “Every summer from now on, from July to September, it will be this question: Do we still want to live here? I know so many people who have relocated to Tahoe and Reno, who are up here now thinking, ‘What have I done?'”
Weather conditions might not work in firefighters’ favor while combating the Caldor fire. Increased wind speeds and temperatures and the declining humidity are hindering first responders' attempts to wrangle the flames, Daniel Berlant, assistant deputy director of Nevada’s state firefighting agency toldUSA Today.
“That’s what’s closing the window of opportunity we’ve had to make progress and really get hold of the fire,” he said.
source: people.com
