City of South Lake Tahoe sets up emergency operation center to work with Caldor Fire command
Submitted by paula on Sat, 08/21/2021 - 5:36pm
EL DORADO COUNTY, Calif. - The Lake Tahoe Basin continues to fill up with smoke and ash from the Caldor Fire burning to the southwest. Aircraft is currently mapping the fire from the air and new numbers on how big the fire is should be available by about 7:00 p.m.
Dusty Martin, the fire's incident commander, held a community briefing Saturday at 5:00 p.m., telling people the fire growth has been what they expected with the Red Flag Warnings in place for the day. The fire pushed to the east and he said it crossed over US50 near Kyburz. How far across it went is not available at this time.
Fire fighting resources are on the ground in Silverfork and Kyburz, No aircraft could fly over the area of the fire that reached the highway due to a large smoke column, so they concentrated on other areas of El Dorado County where they could drop retardant.
"We have eyes on it and doing everything we can to manage this dynamic fire," said Martin. "It is forever changing."
They do expect the fire to see more growth this evening. All previous evacuation orders and warnings remain in place and they did expand one small area of three houses on a small road near the Amador County line to be a mandatory evacuation.
The closest mandatory evacuation area to South Lake Tahoe is east of Twin Bridges. An evacuation warning goes to the top of Echo Summit.
The City of South Lake Tahoe opened its Emergency Operation Center on Saturday with partners from El Dorado County Sheriff's Office and CalFire. They are working with the incident command post in Placerville to handle information at the Tahoe, and be their "eyes and ears," said South Lake Tahoe Fire Chief Clive Savacool. He said they are in constant communication with Placerville.
Many residents are asking what they should do in case of evacuation, and Savacool is referring at to the CalFire website, https://www.readyforwildfire.org/. On that site is plenty of information for people to plan, know and act.