forest fire

Forest officials everywhere are saying: Recreate Responsibly.

Despite large campaigns about fire restrictions and "pack it in pack it out," many visitors to the Eldorado National Forest are not acting responsibly.

Fire and law enforcement officers had another busy weekend contacting a record numbers of visitors about campfires they had made that are not allowed under the current fire restrictions in the Eldorado National Forest.

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. - A new forest management officer (FMO) has arrived in Lake Tahoe to assume the duties left vacant by the retiring Steve Burns.

The U.S. Forest Service ordered Fire Restrictions across the Tahoe National Forest starting Monday, July 16, 2018. The decision to order fire restrictions came after an analysis of current fuel conditions and weather observations. This analysis revealed the potential to support large fire growth across the Tahoe National Forest.

Tahoe National Forest covers land from the Sierra foothills to the California/Nevada state line, except for the Lake Tahoe basin.

Nine years after the devastating Angora Fire in South Lake Tahoe, the AlertTahoe system of cameras around the Lake Tahoe basin is helping to prevent another such disaster.

June 6, 2016: The Sagehen Fire, north of Truckee, broke out and was quickly extinguished by the USFS, Northstar and Truckee Fire Departments.

June 9, 2016: The Truckee Meadows Fire Department quickly put out the Patrick Fire off Interstate 80, near Reno.

Arsonist Wayne Allen Huntsman was sentenced to 20 years in prison and ordered to pay over $60 million in victim restitution after he pleaded guilty Friday to starting the catastrophic King Fire in 2014.

Twenty years in prison was the maximum sentence Huntsman could receive for the guilty plea of three counts of Arson to Forest Land, admitted multiple enhancements for causing injury to firefighters and destruction of multiple structures.

There are nine small lightning caused fires currently burning in or around the Lake Tahoe Basin, the largest one is one-half acre in size.

Staff from the U.S. Forest Service is at each scene with firefighters from the Tahoe-Douglas and North Lake Tahoe Fire Protection Districts, working to extinguish them. Most of the fires are single-tree fires with some ground fire.

Winds are calm, and the Lake Tahoe Basin received substantial rainfall in the area of the fire starts, so the rate of spread is low.

Every year, South Lake Tahoe fire agencies prepare to fight fires around the basin but they rarely get to practice evacuations of residents.

That opportunity came on Monday when the Tahoe Douglas Fire District and Skyland Fire Adapted Community executed an inter-agency wildfire evacuation drill in the Skyland neighborhood.

The drill simulated a real evacuation event to give residents the opportunity to practice evacuating from their homes and getting to the designated safe zone.

The El Dorado Chapter of the California Native Plant Society presents Before and After the Flames: Fire, Forest and Climate Change in the Sierra Nevada, a talk by Dr. Hugh D. Safford, Senior Vegetation Ecologist for the US Forest Service’s Pacific Southwest Region (including California, Hawaii and Pacific Islands) and Dr. Becky Estes, ecologist with the the US Forest Service, Tuesday, January 27th, 7pm at the Planning Commission Meeting Room, Building C of the County Office Buildings, 2850 Fairlane Court in Placerville. The presentation is free and open to the public.

You may have noticed all of the trees missing from large areas of South Lake Tahoe recently. The U.S. Forest Service has had forest thinning projects going on in several locations around the South Shore in order to reduce forest fire fuels and improve forest health.

With an extremely high threat of forest fire at Lake Tahoe and the Sierra this summer, Heavenly Mountain, Northstar California and Kirkwood resorts have put a number of precautionary measures in place, including banning all smoking on their respective mountains for the summer.