With the Caldor Fire storming towards South Lake Tahoe, popular ski resorts are using built in infrastructure to repel the ferocious flames.
The destructive blaze, which recently became the 15th largest in California history, continues to threaten Heavenly and Kirkwood ski resorts and was just three miles away from South Lake Tahoe as of Wednesday morning.
Heavenly, whose slopes most years are filled with fluffy white snow and downhill skiers as the Labor Day holiday approaches, is now eerily dry and abandoned, and forced to use its snow cannons to blast streams of water to hydrate surrounding mountainside vegetation.
A CAL FIRE spokesperson explained to the San Francisco Chronicle that gusty winds could send embers from the wildfire as far as a mile ahead which could, with so much dry vegetation in the area, spark spot up blazes.
Susan Whitman, a spokesperson for Heavenly, Northstar and Kirkwood resorts, told the paper that their hydrants pumped "significant water" onto the resort and that everyone is "laser focused on safety and mitigation at this point but we do want to be a helpful resource."
Similarly, Sierra at Tahoe employed their water canons to mitigate wildfire impact, misting nearby buildings and trees.
The Caldor Fire overnight eclipsed 200,000 acres burned, with containment up slightly to 20%. Officials said the fire remained "very active" overnight due to extremely poor humidity and warm temperatures, though CAL FIRE told SFGATE that crews "lucked out" because winds were not as bad as anticipated.
An agency spokesperson told the outlet that crews feel "really good" about holding the line on the northeastern front close to South Lake Tahoe and they were fortunate that the blaze did not make as big of a push into the city as the previous day.
Firefighters expect gusts as high as 35 to 40 miles per hour on Wednesday as a Red Flag Warning remains in effect throughout the region until 11 p.m.
The inferno has forced massive evacuations across the Tahoe Basin and even extended into Nevada on Tuesday.
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