Like many people, I am quite concerned about the likelihood of a substantial fire in the Tahoe Basin during summer. But what really keeps me up at night is concern that our government stewards are not sufficiently prepared for such an event, especially for a no-notice/immediate evacuation.
I don’t think the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency and the multiple government agencies that manage the Lake Tahoe Basin — four counties, two states, and two national forests — are sufficiently taking the emergency fire evacuation issue seriously. It’s not enough for all of us to say a substantial fire is a matter of “when, not if” and think we understand the gravity of the threat.
The single biggest flaw is that the government agencies involved think they can evacuate thousands of visitors in July or August on a two-lane highway around the lake. This fails to take into consideration an obvious question: How many people have to be evacuated on any given day during peak summer season? There are several estimates out there, but it looks like authorities would have to reach hundreds of thousands of people. According to the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, Tahoe’s average daily population is 152,000, which can swell to 260,000 in July (the highest daily recorded population was July 2018, with 280,000 people in the Basin), even though some people will be unreachable at times when they are hiking in remote areas in the Basin, swimming off dozens of beaches around the lake, sunning at beaches and in their backyards, biking on bike paths, mountain trails, or highways, taking a nap in cabins — many of which have no land lines — and then somehow the visitors, many of whom know nothing about the highway system around Tahoe, would have to safely navigate a one- or two-lane road to safety. I say one or two lanes because even if we opened both lanes, how will the emergency vehicles be able to respond to both the fire and auto emergencies like collisions in a panic or breakdowns?
I wrote to the TRPA weeks ago with my concerns and suggestions, including electronic signs at every entrance to the Basin warning visitors that they’re entering fire country — just like Placer County already does with permanent signs in avalanche zones — and listing radio stations or alert systems they should tune into in case of emergency. The sign should indicate if both lanes will be open and where to evacuate to. I have not yet received a definitive reply, just that the matter is being reviewed.
All of this comes down to something called carrying capacity. It analyzes how many people and cars and how much development an area can handle environmentally. I am not personally aware of any such study by the government agencies in the past several years to determine the lake’s current carrying capacity. A study should happen immediately and be composed of a select group of people whose highest and only priority is the lake’s environmental health, and not its future development potential for the benefit of developers.
Why are the government agencies moving so slowly? Remember in the movie Jaws when the sheriff wanted to evacuate a beach due to the massive shark in the water, and then the mayor arrived and basically said to the sheriff, “Are you insane? Our tourist season is just beginning so we can’t greet them with scary news.”
If you’re as concerned as I am, please write to your local county governments and TRPA and ask them to assume the worst in a fire evacuation and to, at minimum, install electronic signs at all entrances to Lake Tahoe.
~ Ron Grassi, a retired San Francisco attorney, has had a home in Tahoe City for 45 years. He is the executive director of the Friends of the West Shore, a former co-conservation chairperson of the Sierra Club’s Motherlode chapter, and a current member of its legal committee.
I do believe that local officials take the problem of evacuation seriously. As an example, during the Caldor fire the west shore of Lake Tahoe was evacuated very early–in the end the fire never came close, thanks to the work of firefighters, and people I know who were out of their homes for weeks were not happy, but it was the right call. I’m sure that early evacuation will continue to be a priority. Plans call for turning all lanes of evacuation routes into outbound lanes, prioritizing lives over property. Considerable work has been done over the last few years clearing flammable material from roadsides to allow safer evacuation. Officials continue to encourage people to sign up for Code Red and there are also warning systems that can hijack peoples’ mobile phones without them having to sign up. (Our son’s wedding during the Dixie fire was interrupted by evacuation notices in Plumas County that were for locations far from the wedding. The announcements were very loud even on silenced phones.)
That does not mean that a fast moving fire in prime tourist people could not trap a lot of people. There is only so much that can be done given the limitations of geography and infrastructure. Short of drastically limiting the population of the basin during high risk periods– can you imagine the blowback if authorities ordered evacuations whenever there is a red flag warning–visitors and residents have to accept the risk that they could be trapped by fire. It is hard to believe that there are many people who do not already know that.