In a recent letter to TRPA a group of conservation and environmental organizations expressed concerns over what they say is a failure to produce a detailed evacuation capacity study. That would be to determine how quickly visitors and residents could safely leave the area in the event of a fast-moving wildfire. They want any new projects to be suspended prior to such a TRPA study being completed. That would include affordable housing projects.

As a 51-year resident of Tahoe their letter caused me to have Deja vu all over again regarding what must be amnesia on their part. There ought to be a name for their condition, perhaps Dej amnesia or maybe Amnesia vu. Here’s why.

First of all, we are not dealing with a natural forest but rather an unnatural second growth forest. When John C. Fremont wrote about our forests, he wrote that a person could ride a horse at a gallop through the forest with ease and that a wagon team could easily go between the trees. That was because those trees were the gigantic Sugar Pines spaced 40 feet apart like the ones, we see at Camp Richardson and Kiva Beach. Then the silver mines demanded wood, each using a chord of wood per hour to run machinery to pump in fresh air and pump out the hot volcanic heated water. Nearly every large tree in the basin was cut down about 165 years ago leaving some sapling Sugar Pines but also allowing the Tamarack to encroach. The Tamaracks were clearly choking each other out of water, so that many were dying. When TRPA came to Tahoe in the late 1960s early 1970s, they soon froze development and closed side exit roads through neighborhoods. The extreme environmental groups stopped the thinning of the forests that were beginning to die in great numbers as they choked each other out. At that time the U.S. Forest Service had a more saws off policy but when they did try to do thinning projects, they were stopped either by TRPA, or lawsuits by the League to Save Lake Tahoe and Sierra Club. Their written and spoken fear was that logging companies would make a profit from thinning our forests. Now the wood is not profitable and is very costly to remove with little commercial value.

I remember as early as the 1980s being a part of bringing state and federal politicians out on the lake to show them the dead and dying trees that were visible from the boats. Here we are 40 years later dealing with the huge potential conflagration caused by the very agencies and organizations pledged with all good intentions to protect our environment. That is the deja vu part.

In January of 2004 Fire Chief Whitelaw, myself on behalf of the Chamber and State Senator Tim Leslie met in Washington DC with Senator Diane Feinstein and Congressman Doolittle to show them a film about what would happen if we didn’t allow mechanical thinning of our stream zones. In April that same year 300 people including every agency, including all the environmental groups gathered at LTCC to see the film and to hear especially Senator Feinstein tell them that if they didn’t change their ways that they would be responsible for possibly burning down our community. They did nothing. On June 24th 2007 the Angora fire that burned down 254 homes was stopped by firefighters literally off the back decks of Gardner Mountain homes and rocks throw from the high school. Many of the homes belonged to those same people from agencies and groups who thought they knew best. They finally got the message.

Since then, every professional fire agency in the basin in coordination with Caltrans and transportation experts have worked together to create numerous constantly updated what if plans. The prosperity Center worked tirelessly to initiate a system of cameras that cover the entire basin with fire watch cameras. The City of SLT has hired about ten new firemen purchased new equipment and reopened station # 2. Fire Wise Councils for cleaning up private property meet regularly. STPUD started on an aggressive program to ring the town with upsized water lines and installed hundreds of fire hydrants spaced about 500 feet apart. They even put fire hose hookups on the wastewater export line in Meyers.

It is painfully obvious that more needs to be done not only to clear out our dead and dying trees and ladder fuels on private property but absolutely more needs to be done on the hundreds of lots owned by the CTC and U.S. Forest Service. However, it is important to note that the CTC and Forest Service, knowing that the winds come predominately from the Southwest, virtually saved our town from the Caldor Fire by clearing what they call the Wildland Urban Interface, ( WUI.) It is basically a fire break created by cutting down all the dead and dying trees. Those who are against the clearing of the dead and dying trees, if listened to yet again, might find themselves in the same poor historical grouping as those who refused to listen to Senator Feinstein. TRPA led by Julie Reagan has started to recognize truth over emotions, but is now being beset by conservation groups who feel their ideaollogy is being betrayed. We can no longer bow to their wrong minded demands.

The bottom line is that the true professionals have been hard at work on what actually works in the actual science of firefighting, not acquiescing to what arm chair quarterbacks and second guessers say. The dense forest they are dealing with was created by the wrong policies promulgated by those with well-intentioned but uneducated people with emotional reasoning, The professionals are doing their best with the funds and employees they have.

That is where the Amnesia comes in. Now those same agenda-driven, junk science conservation agencies and organizations are demanding that all projects (that includes affordable housing) be stopped until they are satisfied that there is an evacuation plan in place that they as non-fire professionals approve. It appears that their underlying reason is that they are worried that those in the new apartments might clog their ability to exit during a fire. Those few apartments we manage to get built will be spread throughout the town and will be close to the main arteries. The amnesia includes the memory that in 2021 when the Caldor Fire rushed towards our community that the fire agencies wisely sent all the tourists packing two days in advance and then amazingly evacuated the City and Meyers residents (roughly 30,000 people), in about four hours. That seems like a decent plan. Those complaining are making it about population density. Our population has not increased and is infact slightly lower than average.It is really about decades of failed forest policies.

However, because of the concerns, the South Tahoe Chamber and Tahoe Chamber are hosting a community Fire Forum together on Thursday April 17, 6 pm at South Tahoe High School. Some may say that date is too late. However, our experts in fire science and some of our crews are in LA at present, learning even more about what to do. The experts will present the science and practical measures regarding how they are prepared to defend our community as well as the various evacuation scenarios. There will be written questions from the audience. Each agency will have information tables and literature set up in the foyer. That way specific answers can be given to our questions. Local elected officials and hopefully state and federal elected officials will be there to hear what they can do to help further fund our efforts to protect our community from fire danger.The goal is to get everyone in the community on the same page about what can and will be done when another fire occurs as well as what the evacuation plans are. The event will be filmed and made available to the public. Many thanks in advance to Tahoe Chamber CEO, Cristi Creegan and Steve Teshara for having their Chamber co-sponsor this event and thanks to City Fire Chief Jim Drennan for doing the heavy lifting of getting all the agencies coordinated.

Duane Wallace., CEO, ACE

South Tahoe Chamber of Commerce