Smoke from Caples Fire continues to enter Lake Tahoe Basin: 3,042 acres burned, 42% contained

Firefighters working on the Caples Fire made good progress on Sunday. They tied in and secured two indirect containment lines on the south side of the fire with a successful tactical firing operation. The area the fire is burning in is exceptionally steep, rugged, with no road access - conditions not safe for direct line construction. Today’s burning and the fire’s natural progression in the past three days has been a low-intensity underburn, consistent with the objectives of the ecological restoration project. The night shift Sunday will monitor and hold established containment lines.

As of 8:00 p.m. Sunday, October 13, fire had burned 3,042 acres and is now 42 percent contained. Complete containment is expected on Friday.

The Caples Fire, which started as a prescribed burn, is still burning within the original prescribed burn area.

Smoke appeared as cloud cover over South Lake Tahoe for much of the day with strong smoke smell. At the fire, smoke settles in the valleys and canyons at night but usually clears later in the morning with the natural diurnal up-canyon winds.

Due to the active fire operations in progress, hiking and hunting in the Silver Fork/ Caples Creek area is not recommended. Roads are blocked at the following intersections: Packsaddle Pass and Silver Fork Road; Packsaddle Pass and 11N19; Mormon Emigrant Trail and Silver Fork Road; Martin Meadows, Margaret and Shealor Lake Trailheads, and Schneider Camp. If you see a road blocked for fire activity please comply to keep firefighters and the public safe.

The Caples Fire is on the northern ridge above Caples Creek, north of Highway 88. It began as a prescribed pile burn on September 30 under favorable conditions following rain and snowstorms. The prescribed fire was within prescription and achieving the goals of the project of reducing fuels loading and create vegetation conditions that allow fires to burn with lower intensities and create defensible space. Once the red flag warning for the wind event was forecasted fire managers began building fire line and conducting firing operations to secure and strengthen the fire perimeter before the wind arrived. The containment lines held well through the wind event into Thursday morning when the winds changed direction pushing the fire farther to the south and west and increasing the fire activity. This activity increase took the project out of prescription as the project objectives were no longer being met. On October 10, the Caples fire was converted to a wildfire from a prescribed fire allowing managers to obtain additional resources not normally available to us for a prescribed fire, such as; dozers and engines from partners like CALFIRE.

The Caples fire is now being managed for full suppression.