Caldor Fire

[jyl]

Well, that was kind of the most discombobulated vacation I’ve had in a long time.

We headed down to South Lake Tahoe for two weeks in a lakeshore cabin with a group of good friends. The day before we arrived, the Caldor fire started and was 1000 acres. A day later it was 6500 acres. Then it blew up overnight to 30,000 acres, about 30 miles southwest of the lake, and winds from the west were carrying smoke into the basin of Lake Tahoe. I’d brought two HEPA air cleaners, and went to the hardware store and bought box fans and furnace air filters to make more air cleaners. We spent the rest of the week mostly inside, venturing out when the air was less bad and trying to enjoy ourselves.

When the AQI was 150, any exertion made my chest hurt. At 220, just sitting outside with a cocktail for fifteen minutes had the same effect. I stayed in my room, working (the market was demanding attention all week), with ash drifting in through the cracks and coating my screens and computer. I bought painters’ tape and taped up the cracks, now it was hot, ashy and stifling. Sometimes it was 300-400 AQI outside.

By the end of the week, I convinced my wife we had to bail and tell the rest of our friends not to come up to Tahoe, even if that meant eating the $2500 we’d paid for that second week. The cabin owners wanted to refund us and our friends wanted to pay their share, but I refused - my call, my loss. The main highway from Tahoe to the Bay Area was closed, so we all took the long route around the lake to get to Berkeley.

[upsscott]

SLT is going to be evacuated by the end of the weekend. It’s going to be a ****show. You did well to get out early.

[jyl]

We spent a few days in Berkeley, seeing friends and cooking dinners for them. I coughed for two days after getting out of the smoke. The Caldor fire grew to 100,000 acres and was just 15 miles from the lake basin. 30,000 people were evacuated from the area southwest of the lake, 400+ homes were burned. My kids were evacuated from the Tahoe summer camp where they were working, they and the other staff packed as much of the important camp stuff as would fit in their cars and got it out. The camp manager’s cat was packed into our car and we drove it down to his house in Oakland.

We saw one of our good friends in the Bay Area who is being openly cheated on by her husband, who also used to be one of my closest friends. She’s been a perfect wife and mother to their three boys. He started telling her she was fat and unattractive, which has never been remotely true, she’s always been lovely. She went to counseling, lost a ton of weight, is now thinner than when we first met 25 years ago, absolutely gorgeous albeit sad, and he’s still running around with some married woman. What an *******. That was depressing.

We got offered a condo on the Oregon coast for the second week of our vacation by some friends, so we decided that was a good Plan B and drove from Berkeley to Portland today. Well, we drove 584 miles, hung out by the side of the freeway for an hour, got flatbedded the last 16 miles to the mechanic. I think the ABS has failed which causes the car to light up every warning light, emit a piercing warning tone, and eventually shut off. So we were met by another friend at the mechanic’s shop after dark, where we quickly transferred most of our stuff into her car so we could leave our stricken car outside the shop. This is in a part of Portland that has become block after block of homeless in tents and broken down cars, not somewhere you want to be after dark. My mountain bike wouldn’t fit in our friend’s car, so I found my bike shoes and helmet and rode it home. Again, not an area of town I really wanted to be riding through at night. Naturally, I’d not taken a spoon to California, so I was naked, as it were.

So, we’re home and glad to be here. Tomorrow morning I’ll call the mechanic, go to work for a few hours, then we’ll drive out to the condo on the coast. In the 911, since it is running. My wife hates riding in the Porsche :-( Our kids are driving their cars from Berkeley to the condo tomorrow, and we’ll meet up and try to make the best of the last couple days of a very disjointed vacation.

Meanwhile, I’ll be following the Caldor Fire progress. It is 128,000 acres now, being fought with everything available, lots of tankers and helicopters, dozers cutting firelines and thousands of firefighters doing everything they can to keep the fire from destroying more of one of the most beautiful places in this country. Yeah, I’ve been whining about my disrupted vacation while hundreds are losing their homes, tens of thousands are in shelters or getting ready to evacuate. *****.

[upsscott]

They pulled planes off it tonight and sent them to a new fire in socal. In tonight’s briefing they talked about the feds sending in the military to aid in the fight. If it gets past Twin Bridges it’s lights out for the Tahoe basin. Sorry to hear about the rough vacation.

[jyl]

Originally Posted by upsscott

They pulled planes off it tonight and sent them to a new fire in socal. In tonight’s briefing they talked about the feds sending in the military to aid in the fight. If it gets past Twin Bridges it’s lights out for the Tahoe basin. Sorry to hear about the rough vacation.

I’ve been thinking up to Echo Peak is very very much at risk. From there to Myers there’s a lot of granite and more open ground, so I’m hoping - not with any real knowledge - that they can stop it. But Kyburz, Strawberry, Echo, Fallen Leaf, all those places - arrgh

[upsscott]

Originally Posted by jyl

I’ve been thinking up to Echo Peak is very very much at risk. From there to Myers there’s a lot of granite and more open ground, so I’m hoping - not with any real knowledge - that they can stop it. But Kyburz, Strawberry, Echo, Fallen Leaf, all those places - arrgh

It’s been spotting as far away as five miles. The granite might not matter plus I read an article by some expert about a wind storm that we had last winter blew over tons of trees and debris that when the fire reaches it will burn extra hot and prove very difficult for crews to get to. Ugh, so much bad news.

[jyl]

Originally Posted by upsscott

It’s been spotting as far away as five miles. The granite might not matter plus I read an article by some expert about a wind storm that we had last winter blew over tons of trees and debris that when the fire reaches it will burn extra hot and prove very difficult for crews to get to. Ugh, so much bad news.

I read about the windfall area but didn’t grasp it.

[LWJ]

First. I hate the fires. HATE. They trigger a base response that I can’t explain.

A positive? I just came back from Yellowstone / Grand Teton. And I noticed how much had burned in the past. Evidence of huge fires.

And nature claws back. And recovers. And makes new life and beauty.

It was an important lesson.

I still hate the fires.

[masraum]

Wow, you had a crappy vaca for sure, fires, dead car, etc....

And the fires, wow.

[red-beard]

Can we send you a Hurricane?

[jyl]

Originally Posted by red-beard

Can we send you a Hurricane?

I’d rather a Spitfire if you’re offering

[red-beard]

I'd rather have a P-47...

but...

New potential hurricane in the Gulf. We are still not over Harvey.

[Tobra]

You go right to airplanes

I was thinking margaritas as the alternative to hurricanes

Fire provokes a visceral response. I smell fire and it makes my hair stand on end. Grass fire has a really distinctive smell. I get a whiff of that and am ready to call 911

[jyl]

We’re probably most of us following this fire. So most of the special mountain places my kids and their fellow camp staff go to each summer have burned. I think the fire ran through Strawberry today. The fire is pretty much at the ridgeline above Echo Lake and looks set to run over Echo Peak and take Echo Camp where they’ve worked the last many summers. Myers is evacuated, to the south Kirkwood ski resort is threatened. When the fire gets into the more urbanized parts of the basin, with structures and wide roads and big parking lots and city water systems, I’m not sure if that makes it better or worse for firefighting. South Lake Tahoe is only 22,000 population but has the buildings and infrastructure of a much larger city.

[jyl]

When we were still at the lake cabin, watching the fire’s progress, I offered to buy my friend, whose family owns the place, a couple of portable gas powered dirty water pumps. The idea was we could rig up soaker hoses on the roof ridges and sprinklers around the house. If the fire got into SLT they could start the pumps and pull well or lake water to saturate the house exterior and surrounding grounds for hours or even days, even running the pumps unattended until the gas tanks were empty. The area around the cabin doesn’t have all that much fuel, it’s mostly sand and the trees are widely spaced, they’ve kept it cleared and there’s a wide meadow between them and the south. Hard to describe the setup but I thought it was worth doing. But the idea of the fire reaching the lakeshore seemed remote and they were leaving for a backpacking trip around Bishop so it never happened. I kind of regret not pushing the issue.

[upsscott]

If it gets in there the way it’s forecast to, it won’t matter unfortunately. Tomorrow is going to bring sorrow to many people who have homes up there.

[masraum]

What we really needed to do was introduce Storm Ida to the Caldor fire. Seems like these two stormy, incendiary individuals might mellow each other out a bit.

Of course, that probably just means that you'd then end up with the offspring which would be monster mudslides, and who wants that much kahlua and milk.

[upsscott]

Originally Posted by masraum

What we really needed to do was introduce Storm Ida to the Caldor fire. Seems like these two stormy, incendiary individuals might mellow each other out a bit.

Of course, that probably just means that you'd then end up with the offspring which would be monster mudslides, and who wants that much kahlua and milk.

Very true. The only thing that’s going to extinguish these fires is a lack of fuel or moisture. There’s an endless supply of fuel and no moisture in any forecast. When we do get any measurable moisture the mudslides will be epic.

[jyl]

Almost all (maybe all) of SLT to Stateline now mandatory evac.

Only ways out are twisty mountain roads. Wonder what traffic is like. Personally I would take Kingsbury Rd to GTFO of the basin.

[upsscott]

Originally Posted by jyl

Almost all (maybe all) of SLT to Stateline now mandatory evac.

Only ways out are twisty mountain roads. Wonder what traffic is like. Personally I would take Kingsbury Rd to GTFO of the basin.

Should have been mandatory yesterday ahead of today’s forecasted wind event.