Before explaining why a fire was inevitable, consider the following report from ABC News:

“A day after an explosive wildfire emptied a resort city at the southern tip of Lake Tahoe, a huge firefighting force braced for strong winds Tuesday as residents in neighboring Nevada were put on notice to be ready to flee.

The city of South Lake Tahoe, usually bustling with summer tourists, was eerily empty and the air thick and hazy with smoke from the Caldor Fire, one of two major blazes plaguing California. On Monday, roughly 22,000 residents jammed the city’s main artery for hours after they were ordered to leave as the fire advanced, chewing up drought-stricken vegetation.”

Have you ever been to the south end of Lake Tahoe? I have. I lived there once. A narrow two-lane road was all that separated my apartment complex from a forest that hugs the shore of Lake Tahoe. I regularly passed through the forest to reach Lake Tahoe’s shore and to reach a store a few miles away.

I am no expert on forests or on fires, but back then, I worried about about the fire risk that the forest displayed to me. As I saw it, a fire was just waiting to happen there. Why? Because there was no government effort to eliminate the fire fuel that was accumulating in the forest.

I thought the same thing about the forests that I drove through as I traveled back and forth between South Lake Tahoe and central California. I never heard or read a mention of controlled burns in those forests. If there were any, then they weren’t being reported by the local media. Those forests are now on fire, and it isn’t a controlled burn.

Although I lived on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe, I was certain that any fire originating on the California side could reach the Nevada side. Apparently, I was right.

From the office of Nevada’s governor:

“CARSON CITY, NV – August 30, 2021

Today, Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak declared a state of emergency in response to the ongoing Caldor Fire and the anticipation of the fire crossing from California into the State of Nevada in the coming days.”

If you want to blame climate change for Lake Tahoe’s fate, then go for it. After all, the climate has been changing for as long as there has been a climate.

When I lived at Lake Tahoe, I knew about the historic droughts that plagued the USA’s southwest region prior to that region being settled by English-speaking people.

I thought that it was only a matter of time before the climate in that region reverted to the way it was in the 1500s.

Ironically, on the day that I moved away from Lake Tahoe, Mother Nature gave me an opposite reason to live elsewhere. The first snow storm of the season struck, and the region started receiving an inch of snow per hour. I quickly stuffed every available space in my vehicle with my belongings and hightailed it over Spooner Summit with snow chains on my tires.

That was in 1988. I still have the snow chains.

It is possible that controlled burns have taken place around Lake Tahoe since I left the area. I hope so.