Live updates: Dixie Fire crews rerouted to Caldor. Winds abate in California wildfire
Conditions have gotten so bad on the Caldor Fire burning in El Dorado County that Cal Fire transferred 30 engines early Wednesday from the Dixie Fire — the largest fire in the state this year and second-biggest in state history.
The engines and their crews had been stationed in Reno.
“They were released from the Dixie Fire and sent straight over the hill because they were the closest resources available,” Cal Fire director Thom Porter said.
Speaking to reporters at the state Office of Emergency Services headquarters east of Sacramento, Porter said the shift reflects the balancing act fire agencies are performing as the state juggles 13 major fires burning in California.
He acknowledged that the Dixie Fire is “exceedingly resistant to control and “not going to end anytime soon.”
But officials believed the Caldor Fire was becoming the more urgent situation.
“We are moving resources around as needed .... It’s a surge, kind of, to where the greatest need is.”
The fire as of Wednesday evening grew to 62,586 acres, nearly 10 times bigger than the 6,500 acres reported 36 hours earlier, according to Cal Fire’s Amador-El Dorado Unit. The blaze grew more than 30,000 acres overnight, continuing extreme fire behavior for a second straight night as winds rocketed the fire dangerously close to well-populated communities along Highway 50 and surrounding areas.
Late Wednesday afternoon, Cal Fire officials said the winds moderated during the day and helped slow the spread. But they didn’t provide an update on acreage or containment. And they warned the fire remains dangerous.
“This is a huge fire; nothing is coming easy,” said Eric Schwab, a Cal Fire sections chief. He added that the fire was within about 200 feet of 50, in the vicinity of Ice House Road east of Bridal Veil Falls, but still hadn’t crossed to the north side of the highway.
Meanwhile, troubles remained on the southern flank of the fire. The Amador County Sheriff’s Office issued an evacuation warning for the River Pines community and other areas along the Amador-El Dorado county line.
Sheriff’s officials Tuesday evening issued a number of new evacuation orders across a sprawling range of territory, including the entirety of Pollock Pines, Cedar Grove and Kyburz; most of Camino; eastern portions of Pleasant Valley and Somerset; a large stretch between Mormon Emigrant Trail and Highway 88; and areas near the Union Valley, Ice House and Loon Lake reservoirs.
The fire earlier Tuesday devastated the community of Grizzly Flats, population of about 1,200, within hours of the town being urgently evacuated.
At least two civilians were airlifted to hospitals with injuries described as “severe” and “serious,” both of them picked up in Grizzly Flats, Cal Fire and Forest Service officials said in a joint statement.
Precise destruction tallies are not yet available due to dangerous conditions, Cal Fire says, but Sacramento Bee journalists observed many homes, a post office, an elementary school and a church all burned to the ground in Grizzly Flats.
California fire resources stretched thin
While the agency’s official early-morning update reported just 242 personnel on the Caldor Fire, Porter said more firefighters were being deployed to the incident throughout the day. He didn’t have details beyond the redeployment of the engine crews from the Dixie Fire.
The Legislature beefed up Cal Fire’s budget this year, but the state agency remains stretched for resources across the state. Behind Porter, the electronic board in the Cal OES control room showed 1,074,622 acres currently burning.
“We have every Cal Fire employee engaged in this siege,” Porter said.
Porter and Anthony Scardina, deputy forester with the U.S. Forest Service’s California office, said the presence of 100 major fires across the West is hampering California’s ability to pull more firefighters and equipment into the state. As it is, 65% of the Forest Service’s 10,000 firefighters are currently working in California, Scardina said.
Getting help from international partners is limited, too, in large part because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the 1 million-plus acres of wildfires in British Columbia.
“Canada is burning as well,” Porter said.
The Caldor Fire, which began over the weekend on the Eldorado National Forest, remained relatively small at first, before raging out of control Monday night, raising new questions about the Forest Service’s firefighting practices.
Scardina said the Forest Service made an aggressive initial attack but was hampered by the terrain and the presence of heavy smoke, which limited the ability to fight the fire with retardant from the air.
Over half of state’s evacuees from El Dorado
More than 16,300 El Dorado residents — about 9% of the county’s total population — have been evacuated, the state Office of Emergency Services said in an update around 10 a.m.
That’s over half of California’s current total for wildfire evacuations. Close to 15,000 are evacuated across Plumas, Siskiyou, Lassen, Trinity, Tehama and Shasta counties in response to other major wildfires burning in the state.
“Please, please heed the warnings, and then when you’re asked to get out, get out,” Cal Fire Chief Thom Porter said during a Wednesday morning briefing with Cal OES. “We need you out of the way so we can protect your homes from these fires.”
Major destruction near Grizzly Flats, but some homes standing
The fire appeared to have flared up overnight in the Grizzly Flats area, which had been largely obliterated Monday night.
Early Wednesday, hot spots were still burning throughout what had once been neighborhoods, but a handful of houses had survived, some because they had defensible space and no trees nearby.
A retirement home belonging to Rege and Janet Brannagan on Meadow Glen Drive appeared to be one of only two that survived the fire.
Their son, Mike Brannagan, said in a phone interview from San Luis Obispo Wednesday that his parents had evacuated Monday night, hours before the mandatory order to get out.
“They were smart,” Brannagan said. “They didn’t want to be scrambling at 3 in the morning.”
The family had managed to pack photos, paintings and other items to take to safety as they evacuated to Cameron Park, Brannagan said, adding that he wonders what his parents will be returning to with much of the community destroyed.
“The crazy part was my dad just talked to me about it Saturday because of the Dixie Fire,” he said.
Two evacuation shelters at capacity
The American Red Cross in Northern California said shortly after 8:30 a.m. that the Cameron Park Community Center was full.
A shelter at the Diamond Springs Fire Hall was also reportedly full.
The El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office was directing residents in need of shelter to go to Green Valley Church, located at 3500 Missouri Flat Road in Placerville.
‘Can they make us?’ Some stay despite evacuations
Authorities went door to door in areas of Pollock Pines early Wednesday ordering residents to leave the area.
Although a mandatory evacuation had been ordered Tuesday night, law enforcement officials at first took no immediate efforts to evacuate residents or to set up roadblocks to keep visitors from coming in.
That changed shortly after midnight, when law enforcement sirens began blaring throughout town and authorities set up roadblocks and began ordering people in the community of 7,000 to leave immediately, including residents of the Sly Park area who had taken refuge in Pollock Pines earlier in the day.
Several groups had set up camp in a CVS drug store parking lot Tuesday after being evacuated from the Sly Park area. The fire had chewed through forest land above the Sly Park Recreation Area through most of Tuesday.
But some chose to ignore the Wednesday morning evacuation order.
Candie Calderon, who was sitting in a pickup truck filled with belongings and had parked a trailer in the CVS lot as a temporary home, said law enforcement officers came through the lot early Wednesday ordering people to leave.
“They told us they were going to clear the parking lots,” Calderon said. “They said they were going to clear all of Pollock Pines, to go down the hill.”
Calderon said she was evacuated Tuesday afternoon from the Sly Park area.
“We’ve only been here a little bit,” she said. “We’re debating. Can they make us?”
She said she did not know whether her house had survived the flames.
Highway 50 still open
Authorities were concerned early Wednesday with the prospect of the fire jumping Highway 50 near Fresh Pond and forcing the closure of the roadway.
Although ash was falling in the area, there were no obvious signs of flames near the highway between Pollock Pines and the south fork of the American River early Wednesday, and firefighting crews were positioning themselves along frontage roads near the highway.
As of 7 a.m. Wednesday, the highway has not closed.
‘Unprecedented’ fire activity in El Dorado
Cal Fire and U.S. Forest Service officials in a late Tuesday night update reported the fire at 22,919 acres, down from an estimate of 30,000 acres earlier in the evening due to better mapping but still an intense increase from 6,500 acres that morning. The fire remains 0% contained.
“The Caldor Fire experienced unprecedented fire behavior and growth due to extremely dry fuels pushed by the south winds,” officials wrote in an 11 p.m. incident report.
Evacuation orders now extend to within about 5 miles of the eastern outskirts of Placerville, the seat of El Dorado County with a population of about 12,000. The Placerville Police Department said authorities are monitoring the situation, but no formal evacuations or warnings were in effect for the immediate Placerville area as of early Wednesday.
The state Office of Emergency Services reported around 7 p.m. that close to 7,000 residents had evacuated from El Dorado County, but that total likely grew by thousands as more people left the Pollock Pines area later in the evening.
Evacuation centers have been set up at the Cameron Park Community Services District center and Green Valley Church in Placerville, as well as Diamond Springs Fire Hall, which was full as of Tuesday night, according to Cal Fire.
The Forest Service announced late Tuesday that Eldorado National Forest will be closed to the public now through the end of September due to the Caldor Fire.
The Caldor Fire ignited Saturday evening about 4 miles south of Grizzly Flats, which is about 10 miles south of Highway 50 at Pollock Pines. Activity remained relatively calm until Monday night, when the two agencies reported “extreme” growth beginning in the northeasterly direction. Evacuations began, some of them issued around 3:30 a.m. Tuesday.
Authorities also on Tuesday morning ordered the evacuation of Sly Park, a popular campground by Jenkinson Lake.
Very rapid spread continued essentially all of Tuesday, day and night, as crews continued to struggle with rugged terrain, extremely dry vegetation brought on by drought conditions and limited personnel due to other major fires burning in Northern California, most notably the Dixie Fire.
“We are all competing for the same precious resources,” Cal Fire incident commander Dusty Martin said during a briefing Tuesday evening.
Thick smoke prompts air quality concerns
Multi-layered smoke plumes resembled volcanic eruptions at times: so-called pyrocumulus clouds, as seen throughout Tuesday on Alert Wildfire network cameras maintained by the Forest Service.
The skies adopted a thick haze tens of miles away in each direction, darker and more ominous to the east, including near Lake Tahoe, but also significant near the Sacramento area. The National Weather Service in Reno shared a short video taken in Gardnerville, Nev., showing red skies and ash falling in a snow-like trickle.
Making matters worse, a red flag warning from the National Weather Service warned that strong gusts could sweep heavy amounts of smoke from the wildfire to the south and southwest. Not only will that stir more intense fire behavior, but it is also likely to plague wide swaths of the Sacramento region, Central Valley and the greater Bay Area with poor to dismal air quality for much of this week.
Newsom declares emergency
Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency for the Caldor Fire on Tuesday.
California also on Tuesday secured a fire assistance grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The state received two additional FEMA grants earlier in the day, for the Dixie Fire burning in Lassen County and Monument Fire in Trinity County.
This story was originally published August 18, 2021 at 7:13 AM with the headline "Live updates: Dixie Fire crews rerouted to Caldor. Winds abate in California wildfire."
