Tahoe resorts turn to snow guns to battle the Caldor Fire

The resorts of Lake Tahoe are turning their snow guns away from their slopes and towards the raging fires threatening to destroy them.

Image Credit: Mike TeSelle KCRA-TV via Twitter

As the Caldor Fire continues to burn, forcing the evacuation of almost the entire South Lake Tahoe region, firefighters and private resorts are feverishly trying to prevent devastating losses to one of the world’s top vacation destinations.

“We don’t have any tools out there to stop the fire so we resorted to herding the fire away from structures and away from people,” Bloomberg News quoted Eric Schwab, a division chief with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, saying during a public briefing on Tuesday evening.

Already some structures on South Lake Tahoe have been destroyed. Weather conditions today won’t make the fire any easier to handle, according to firefighters quoted by Bloomberg News.

The Caldor Fire is one of more than a dozen fires in California right now. And it’s just part of a summer of American climate-related disasters.

Fires, drought and a deadly heat wave on the West Coast coupled with flooding in the East and the devastation of Hurricane Ida across Southeastern Louisiana underscore just how vital the need is to create more sustainable and resilient infrastructure in the U.S.

The Caldor Fire has already injured five people, burned 192,000 acres, and completely destroying the town of Grizzly Flats.

It’s only the second fire in California history to burn from one side of the Sierra Nevada mountains to the other, as Bloomberg noted. Meanwhile, the other fire to hold that distinction, the Dixie Fire, is still burning as well.