Where’s the Caldor Fire burning? Blaze threatens rural homes, Sly Park summer camp
The Caldor Fire swept with frenzied growth overnight through a largely wooded part of rural El Dorado County in Northern California, putting densely populated parts of the foothills on high alert by early Tuesday afternoon.
Where exactly is it burning, and how many people live in the region?
The fire is about 60 miles east of Sacramento along the Highway 50 corridor. It is burning south of Pollock Pines, home to about 7,000 residents, which straddles the highway roughly 10 miles to the northwest of the community of Grizzly Flats.
The incident started Saturday evening about four miles south of Grizzly Flats, where about 1,200 people live, and two miles east of Omo Ranch, home to roughly 300.
Extremely rapid growth led to mandatory evacuations Tuesday morning for those two communities, extending east into parts of Somerset, a community of about 3,600 people about six miles from Grizzly Flats. Happy Valley, a very sparsely populated area a couple of miles north of Grizzly Flats, was also evacuated.
Forest Service officials later Tuesday morning announced an evacuation order for the Sly Park area and a warning for the Pollock Pines area, and then expanded mandatory orders once again at 1 p.m. to include a swath of Pollock Pines, east of Sly Park Road and south of Highway 50.
The state Office of Emergency Services said approximately 2,450 El Dorado County residents evacuated through 11 a.m.
Cal Fire and U.S. Forest Service officials confirmed structures have been destroyed, but said it remains too dangerous for a full damage assessment. Sacramento Bee journalists at the scene confirmed multiple homes have been destroyed in Grizzly Flats, as well as its Post Office.
The two agencies wrote in a morning incident report that there is continued threat to more than 2,000 structures, including homes and outbuildings in Omo Ranch and Grizzly Flats “as well as private businesses, commercial timberlands, vineyards and other agricultural lands.”
Authorities also wrote the Caldor Fire “is predicted to impact Sly Park Lake and interstate travel including important evacuation routes.”
The fire is about midway between Highway 50, to the north, and Highway 88, to the south, which are the only routes toward Nevada in the area. Highway 50 is also the only direct route between Sacramento and South Lake Tahoe, and Pollock Pines is roughly halfway between the two.
Sly Park is a popular campground and recreation area around Jenkinson Lake. Schools in the greater Sacramento area frequently use the site for field trips. There is also a cluster of homes east of the lake, across Sly Park Road, where roughly 500 people live.
The fire spread toward the north early Tuesday morning, and 20 mph gusts blowing toward the northeast were in Tuesday afternoon’s forecast from the National Weather Service.
The weather service has a red flag warning in place for most of Northern California from Tuesday evening through Wednesday warning of 35 mph gusts from the northeast, which could flip the direction of the fire and its stream of smoke.
Leoni Meadows, a Christian youth summer camp just north of the fire’s ignition point, Leoni Meadows around 5 a.m. posted photos and videos to Facebook showing evacuation of the camp, under a deep red sky with active flames in close proximity.
“Everyone is out safely,” Leoni Meadows wrote.
This story was originally published August 17, 2021 at 10:18 AM.
