(CN) — Residents of Kyburz have fled the small mountain community near Lake Tahoe and await news regarding the fate of their town on tenterhooks as the front of the Caldor Fire inches toward the outskirts.
“Generally speaking, once that smoke inversion lifts, the wind is going to push that fire in a northeastern direction,” said Diana Swart, a public information officer for the U.S. Forest Service, Monday morning.
That’s bad news for Kyburz, which is situated only a few miles to the north and east of the 106,000-acre fire.
“It’s getting a lot of attention,” Swart said. “That’s where we are focusing our dozers and our hand crews.”
Bulldozers and hand crews cut lines through the forest in order to prevent the vanguard of the fire from spreading, in the hopes it will burn out. Firefighters in the region are also hoping to use U.S. Highway 50, the main artery that traverses from Sacramento to South Lake Tahoe, as a natural fire break.
But even that has proved dicey, as a spot fire to the west of Kyburz broke out over the weekend, burning about 200 or 300 acres.
“Luckily, it was in some pretty rocky terrain,” Swart said. “It’s not contained, but it was a big focus yesterday.”
If the Caldor Fire is able to get loose in the forest to the north of Highway 50, it will become an even larger monster, possibly burning hundreds of thousands of acres for a considerable period of time.
Pollock Pines, a village on the eastern flank of the fire, is also under evacuation orders, as are many of the small foothills town dispersed around the 7,000-person town east of Placerville.
While the wind doesn’t appear to be pushing the fire west, the fire generates its own wind.
“The fire creates its own weather,” Swart said. “Because of the intense heat, the fire will push oxygen outwards, particularly when it’s trapped in steep canyons or drainage areas.
Those gusts of wind can aid further spread even when there is an absence of wind in the forecast, as is the case Monday.
Nevertheless, firefighters remain hopeful they can salvage Kyburz and the other assorted municipalities near the edges of the fire.
“We’re getting in a lot of containment lines and we are back-burning in some places around Grizzly Flats,” Swart said.
Grizzly Flats is a small town that was largely razed to the ground by the Caldor Fire last week. To date, the fire has destroyed 551 structures and two people sustained serious injuries while fleeing the fire.
Farther north, the Dixie Fire which started on July 15 has yet to abate more than a month later, although fire officials on that upped their containment to 40% and have seen its growth slow as it hovers around 720,000 acres. It is the second-largest wildland fire in recorded state history.
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