As the Caldor Fire continues to burn, a number of South Lake Tahoe evacuees remain in areas around the lake that haven't issued evacuation orders.
But those areas are now dwindling.
Douglas County on Tuesday issued the first evacuation orders in Nevada due to the Caldor Fire.
Yet some of the 20,000 people who evacuated the South Lake Tahoe area on Monday were allowed to remain in Douglas County on Tuesday, as the evacuation orders didn't include casinos in Stateline, Nevada.
That included about 100 evacuees who spent Monday night at the MontBleu Resort Casino and Spa, where there was no evacuation in place on Monday or Tuesday.
The rooms and hallways were smoky, and it was even worse outside. It was hard for many to sleep, but at least it offered a place to stay.
For now, anyway.
"I have lived here 50 years. I have never walked through a casino that is empty," Gail Shiffert, who was evacuated from a senior home, told KCBS Radio. "It's sad."
The air was pretty smoky on the northern side of Lake Tahoe, too. But as of Tuesday, the area around Truckee wasn’t being threatened by the Caldor Fire, and South Lake Tahoe evacuees were being welcomed by their neighbors on the north shore.
Denelle White, who has lived in Truckee all of her life, was one of many locals giving a place for South Lake Tahoe evacuees to park their RVs. White took it a step further, offering her RV for anyone who needed a free, pet-friendly place to stay.
“The majority of those locations do not let you bring your pets, or they’re still going to charge a rate,” White told KCBS Radio on Tuesday.
"I just felt the need to reach out for people that are being displaced," she added.
At the MontBleu in Stateline, Nevada, Shiffert said she is having difficulty breathing. She added she didn’t have any medicine to help out, either. Shiffert didn’t feel comfortable taking a shuttle to Reno for fear of contracting COVID-19.
Neither she nor her friends from the senior center have cars, so they took advantage of a discounted rate at the casino.
"I don't know if any of us are sound," Shiffert said, coughing.
Shiffert and several others who spoke to KCBS Radio are worried they’ll have no place to go if evacuation orders extend into Nevada. White worried, too, even though warnings and orders hadn’t been issued in Truckee.
Tuesday was supposed to be the first day of school for White's 6-year-old, but the Tahoe-Truckee Unified School District on Monday postponed it until Sept. 7. Over 100 students in the district evacuated on Monday, officials said in an email to parents on Monday. White's sister also had to evacuate her Tahoma home on the lake's western shore.
In the meantime, White will continue arts-and-crafts time with her children while offering her RV to a family who needs it. She already packed her to-go bag, and empathizes with the stress evacuees are feeling.
"I know that it’s just your mind is already over-working and over-thinking and on overdrive, the next thing that you need to worry about is where am I going to go," White said.
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