The Caldor Fire nearly devastated Lake Tahoe. Here’s what we can learn from the close call

Lake Tahoe dodged a bullet. If not for the heroic work of firefighters and other emergency workers, who toiled through exhaustion and the worst air quality on the planet, South Lake Tahoe and environs might be sorting through mass destruction from the Caldor Fire. Instead, we’ve all received a green light to return to our homes, every single one of which was saved.

While we lament the fates of wildfire-ravaged towns like Grizzly Flats and Greenville, the Tahoe community is breathing a collective sigh of relief and feeling enormous gratitude. Everyone has been looking for a firefighter to high-five, a hotshot to hug, a crew to cheer.

As we return to our homes, we’ll seek a return to normal. But that normal is nowhere to be found. The Caldor Fire — just the second to crest the Sierra Nevada in recorded history (the first being this summer’s Dixie Fire) — should serve as a code red, alerting us to the work we need to do to protect our communities and leave our kids and grandkids a livable planet.

Opinion

Prior forest thinning projects have been credited with helping to slow the Caldor Fire’s ferocity in South Lake Tahoe, giving firefighters the time and space to successfully defend structures. Forest management works, but so much more needs to be done on both public and private property in Lake Tahoe and throughout California and the West to temper the size and severity of fires burning in hotter, drier climates.

The good news is that the California Legislature just approved $1 billion for wildfire prevention efforts over the next year, double what was previously budgeted. Now it’s up to communities and forest managers to hire crews to head into overgrown forests, carrying chainsaws and drip torches rather than fire hoses to help restore historic, diverse, healthy forest conditions. Thousands of new, living-wage jobs could be created and new, local wood industries fostered.

Beyond comprehensive forest management, it’s imperative that we accelerate the pace and scale of solutions to the force driving the extreme wildfire landscape: human-caused climate change.

During an emergency meeting of the South Lake Tahoe City Council during the Caldor evacuation, a young woman named Molly called in and said tearfully, “As this is seemingly becoming our norm, as the trajectory (shows) this is going to be getting worse, I just want to know that you are going to be thinking about our future, and my future. I am scared for the rest of my life.”

Molly spoke for the fear and anxiety of her generation about the world they are inheriting. All who hear Molly’s cry are called to do everything we can to bend the climate change curve.

South Lake Tahoe has committed to obtaining 100% of our electricity from renewable energy sources and has adopted an ambitious climate action plan. The city is also pursuing a plan with six other mostly public entities (including the public utility district, school district and community college) to meet our building electricity needs at all hours with locally generated energy like solar with battery storage by 2025.

The more we generate energy locally, the less we’ll depend on transmission lines running through fire-prone forests.

The test for the city — and for every governing body at every level everywhere — is whether we’ll deliver on our plans and commitments to confront and prepare for climate change and its effects, including catastrophic wildfire, at the pace and scale required. If we stay as united as we are while cheering our firefighting heroes, motivated by our shared concern for our kids’ future, anything is possible.

John Friedrich is a South Lake Tahoe councilmember and member of the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency Governing Board.