Firefighters battled to protect homes on the fringe of tinder-dry forests near Lake Tahoe on Tuesday as a wildfire chased thousands of residents and tourists from the popular resort destination in California's Sierra Nevada range, APA reports quoting Reuters.
The so-called Caldor fire, burning since mid-August in the mountains east of the state capital, Sacramento, crested a ridgeline and roared downslope toward communities at the southern end of the Tahoe basin on Monday, triggering mass evacuations.
Traffic crammed local roads as South Lake Tahoe, a town of 22,000 residents, rapidly emptied out along with several nearby villages, leaving an area normally thronged by summer vacationers largely empty - except for the smoke.
By Tuesday, the blaze had charred more than 191,000 acres (77,300 hectares) of drought-parched forests, some 14,000 acres (5,665 hectares) more than the day before, while firefighters had managed to carve containment lines around just 16% of its perimeter.
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