SOUTH LAKE TAHOE: Thousands of people were ordered to evacuate on Monday (Aug 30) as a huge wildfire loomed over a major US tourist spot, filling the air with choking smoke.
The Caldor Fire has already torn through more than 700 square kilometres, razing hundreds of buildings.
On Monday it was roaring towards South Lake Tahoe, the main resort town in the popular holiday area that straddles the California and Nevada border.
“The firefighting conditions, the fuels, are historic,” said Cal Fire Incident Commander Jeff Veik, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. “We will put this fire out. (But) it’s not going to be today.”
The western United States is burning at an alarming rate, with more than 6,900 square kilometres blackened by late August in California alone – more than double the area consumed by this time in an average year.
The fires are being driven by a historic drought that has left swathes of the region parched, as man-made climate change takes a visible – and painful – toll, and people living in the area are forced to flee.
“I got a knock at 10pm last night with a warning to be ready,” South Lake Tahoe resident Corinne Kobel told the Sacramento Bee newspaper.
“At 10am this morning, it was the sheriffs kicking us out. I am freaking out.”
Kobel was among the 22,000 people ordered out of their homes on Monday morning, joining tens of thousands of others trying to escape the fire’s relentless march.
TRAFFIC JAM
An AFP journalist witnessed streams of traffic leaving the city, with cars and RVs clogging the main roads.
Among those stuck on the road was Mel Smothers, 74, who was whiling away the time spent in a traffic jam by playing his violin.Smothers, who has lived in Tahoe since the 1970s, said this was the first time wildfires had chased him out. But it wouldn’t be the last.
