Caldor Hearth in El Dorado County explodes to 30,000 acres, rips via Grizzly Flats, injures 2
CAMERON PARK, El Dorado County — A vegetation fire that began several days ago in El Dorado County exploded into a 30,000-acre monster Tuesday, leveling parts of the town of Grizzly Flats and threatening to incinerate other nearby communities.
The speed with which the Caldor Fire grew — from 6,500 acres to 30,000 within hours — underscored the unpredictability and high danger faced by communities nestled in the forests of the Sierra foothills.
In two instances, firefighters battling the wildfire were approached by seriously injured residents escaping the devastation in Grizzly Flats. Both victims were airlifted to area hospitals. Grizzly Flats had been ordered evacuated, but a fire official said the wildfire grew so quickly that residents “may not have had time to react to it.”
“These fires are extremely fast-moving. … So in the process of evacuating they may have been injured,” Chris Vestal, a spokesperson for the Caldor Fire, said. “What we do want people to take notice of is we’d rather that they leave when it’s a warning. We’d rather that they’re prepared. If they have any concern, they need to leave the area.”
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The frames of chairs and the chimney are the only things left at the Grizzly Flats Community Church after the Caldor Fire burned through the area on Aug. 17, 2021.
Sara Nevis/AP
2of2A Folsom fire engine drives past Jenkinson Lake as the Caldor fire burns near Pollock Pines, Calif., on Tuesday, Aug. 17, 2021.Ethan Swope/AP
Carol and Randy Hill were among those who fled their Grizzly Flats home on Sunday night. On Tuesday, they sat in their pickup truck in the parking lot of the evacuation shelter set up in Cameron Park with their black Lab Bella between them and little Chihuahua Carlos on the passenger side floor. They hadn’t slept in two days.
“The fire was going so fast,” Randy Hill said. “You could see at the top of the street, the red.”
By Tuesday, much of their community, including the school and post office, was destroyed.
Evacuee Carol Hill was hoping her retirement home was spared, “but I’m also trying to be realistic.”
“You always know when you live in the mountains this could happen,” she said. “We’ve been in denial, thinking it’s not going to happen to us. It happens to other people.”
Randi Harrod of Sly Park also waited in the parking lot, two cats in carriers.
“It’s just something we’ve been dreading,” she said of the now ever-present fires during summer and fall in California. “You check the yard, you rake the leaves to prepare and you know it’s coming sometime.”
Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Elk Grove (Sacramento County), whose district includes El Dorado County, said the blaze ripped through Grizzly Flats, a community of 1,000. In a statement, the congressman said he’d do “everything I can at the federal level to assist with the heartbreaking situation.”
Cal Fire said it was not yet safe to send assessment crews to the area to tally the damage.
Extremely high fire danger in Northern California prompted Pacific Gas & Electric Co. on Tuesday to impose power shut-offs in 18 counties to as many as 51,000 customer accounts. The move is an effort by the utility to prevent a utility-caused wildfire.
What sparked the Caldor Fire wasn’t clear as of Tuesday, but U.S. Forest Service officials said the fire began around 7 p.m. Saturday, 4 miles south of Grizzly Flats and 2 miles east of Omo Ranch. There was no containment.
The blaze prompted mandatory evacuations for small towns in the fire’s path, including areas near Grizzly Flats, Somerset and Happy Valley, and orders were expanded Tuesday night to include Sly Park, nearby areas around Highway 50 and all areas between Mormon Emigrant Trail and Highway 88.
During a live-streamed community meeting about the blaze, Cal Fire Unit Chief Mike Blankenheim gestured to an empty wall behind him, saying he would typically refer to a map during operational briefings on fires, but this incident is different, pointing to “extremely fast” fire growth starting on Monday.
“This thing has grown fast enough over the last 12 hours that we are having a hard time keeping an accurate fire perimeter on a map,” Blankenheim said.
Blankenheim said that “unfortunately in the path of that fire, there have been communities.” He said Grizzly Flats and Leoni Meadows, a camp and retreat center, were “heavily impacted,” along with other areas. He said there has been structure damage and loss in those areas, and said damage inspection teams should provide details about that damage “in the near future.”
The region’s steep, rugged terrain made fighting the Caldor Fire difficult, the Forest Service said. The agency was also straining under staffing shortages created in part by the large number of fires tearing across the state. Caldor was one of 12 significant wildfires burning in California, including the 626,000-acre Dixie Fire, which on Tuesday was threatening Susanville.
Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency in El Dorado County in response to the Caldor Fire on Tuesday, a move that helped the state acquire, hours later, an emergency assistance grant to help in the firefight from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The state also received FEMA grants to help in its response to the Dixie and Monument fires.
8/17/21 at 6AM
***THE EL DORADO COUNTY SHERIFF HAS ISSUED UPDATES TO EVACUATION ORDERS NEAR THE CALDOR FIRE***
WHAT: Update to the Evacuation
WHEN: Effective Immediately
Where: Below are the updates to the evacuation orders
EVAC ORDERS HAVE BEEN ISSUED FOR THE FOLLOWING AREA pic.twitter.com/N3RCz3sWCn
— CAL FIRE AEU (@CALFIREAEU) August 17, 2021
Chronicle staff writer Omar Shaikh Rashad contributed to this report.
Jill Tucker, Lauren Hernández and Dominic Fracassa are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: jtucker@sfchronicle.com, lauren.hernandez@sfchronicle.com, dfracassa@sfchronicle.com
