15 years since devastating Angora Fire at South Tahoe. What has changed?
Submitted by Jeff Munson on Mon, 06/27/2022 - 4:43pm
It has been 15 years since the Angora Fire swept through the North Upper Truckee and Angora Ridge neighborhoods of El Dorado County in the South Lake Tahoe area, taking with it 242 homes and 67 commercial structures as wind-driven flames burned through 3,100 acres.
It was a sunny afternoon on June 24, 2007, when the first calls of fire came in at 2:15 p.m. Within a few hours, the devastation was already evident but it was over a week before the fire was completely contained.
Anyone living on the South Shore at the time can tell you exactly what they were doing at the time of the fire. Some were fleeing their homes for the last time, others were watching from afar as the huge plume of smoke appeared over the landscape.
In the 10 years leading up to the Angora Fire, some fuels management projects had started, with a big push during the 1997 Lake Tahoe Presidential Forum that sent funds to the U.S. Forest Service to start mechanical thinning, urban lot management, and prescribed fires around the Basin.
The Martis Fire on June 17, 2001, and the Gondola Fire on July 2, 2002, brought a new elevated awareness to wildfire at Lake Tahoe with Living With Fire guidelines for defensible space adopted in 2003.
Defensible Space — A full perimeter 0-5’ noncombustible zone became the universal prescription of defensible space at Lake Tahoe homes. The next zone of 5'-30' is still the "lean, clean, and green" zone. The 2003 Living With Fire Wildland Fuel Reduction zone is 30'-100' away from a house. The guidelines were still new at the time of the Angora and not everyone had started to implement them.
Fuel Reduction and Forest Restoration Plan for the Lake Tahoe Basin Wildland Urban Interface was created in January of 2007, just a few months before the Angora Fire.
Angora was the game-changer.
California-Nevada Tahoe Fire Commission was formed in August 2007 and that brought together multiple agencies with working groups, permit streamlining, stronger defensible space, and BMP integration. An implementation team was created with the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency and Tahoe Basin partners, using science and technology to best create a safer forest and neighborhoods at the lake.
The Tahoe Fire and Fuels Team came out of the partnerships in February of 2008 with the University of Nevada Reno. It was created to implement the Lake Tahoe Basin Multi-Jurisdictional Fuel Reduction and Wildfire Prevention Strategy.
The seven Lake Tahoe fire chiefs and nine local agency executives continue the mission 14 years later: Protecting life, property, and the environment at Lake Tahoe through proper management of the forests to reduce the threat of catastrophic wildfire, thereby protecting communities, while safeguarding the exceptional natural resources of Lake Tahoe.
Tens of thousands of acres of forest have been treated around Lake Tahoe since the Angora, and the efforts are continuous both mechanically and through prescribed fires.
As the 2021 Caldor Fire hit the forest areas that were treated after the 2008 plan treatments in Meyers, the fire went around the neighborhoods with the heroic efforts of firefighters and the aid of a treated forest.
Through collaboration, the massive Lake Tahoe West Partnership will treat thousands of acres of forest along the West Shore, the largest project seen at Lake Tahoe.
Nothing may be as important in a post-Angora world as the Fire Adapted Communities development at the lake.
A Fire Adapted Community is “A human community consisting of informed and prepared citizens collaboratively planning and taking action to safely coexist with wildland fire.”
A fire-adapted community is knowledgeable, engaged, and one where the actions of both residents and agencies lessen the need for extensive protection actions and enable the community to safely accept fire as part of the surrounding landscape. There have been ongoing workshops and outreach by the TFFT on how to proactively protect one's home and property.
See https://www.tahoelivingwithfire.com/ for more information.
