Caldor Fire Closes In On Tahoe

A red flag warning for dry, windy conditions remains in effect until 11 p.m. today. More than 50,000 people remain evacuated throughout the region.

Favorable weather helped firefighters trying to save communities on the south end of Lake Tahoe from an approaching wildfire, but officials warned Wednesday that stiff winds and dry conditions mean that homes in the California-Nevada alpine region are still in danger. “We lucked out a little bit yesterday with some of the winds that didn’t come up quite as hard as we expected them to," Tim Ernst, an operations section chief for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, told firefighters in a briefing. “We were fortunate the fire did not make as strong a push into Tahoe as it did the previous day." The Caldor Fire remained roughly 3 miles (5 kilometers) south of the recently evacuated city of South Lake Tahoe, moving northeast toward the California-Nevada state line, said Henry Herrera, a battalion chief for the agency, which is also known as Cal Fire.