Chief Clive Savacool on the Caldor Fire Evacuation

On August 3, 2021 the City of South Lake Tahoe’s city council approved their new wildfire evacuation plan. Clive Savacool, Fire Chief with South Lake Tahoe Fire and Rescue, led the effort to draft the new plan, not knowing that it would be put into action for real a few weeks later when the Caldor Fire would threaten South Lake Tahoe.

For more full episode details including the transcript, visit https://www.buzzsprout.com/1819551/episodes/10001978

On Episode 9 of the Living With Fire Podcast, Chief Savacool talks about writing and executing the evacuation plan. "When I was putting it together with help from others, I honestly never envisioned putting it into play on my own, during my career," Savacool explains.

But, on August 30, 2021 at 10:59 am, the very active Caldor Fire was spreading toward South Lake Tahoe. As a result, agencies began evacuating people. About 22,000 people were issued evacuation orders and told to leave their homes.

Later that night, the Caldor Fire crossed Echo Summit and entered Christmas Valley, a secluded community about 10 miles away from South Lake Tahoe. Amanda Milici, the Tahoe Network of Fire Adapted Communities coordinator, lives in Christmas Valley. Milici described how she and her partner were evacuated twice, first, to her partners' parents' home in South Lake Tahoe, where they were required to evacuate again, less than 24 hours later.

"We kind of thought we would at least have a couple days there, you know? We had no idea how fast the fire was moving, and then the next morning, probably just like 12 hours later, we evacuated from the city." Milici explains.

The Caldor Fire evacuation was a massive operation. Chief Savacool described some of the challenges involved in such an effort and how agencies in Tahoe worked together to make it happen. “We all recognize that we can't handle a major incident our own and we recognize that the community is what matters. And so we have to make sure we're doing right by them versus our own interests,” said Savacool.

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Funding for this podcast was provided by the Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act of 1994 in cooperation with the Tahoe RCD & University of Nevada, Reno Extension, an EEO/AA Institution. 

Transcript

Megan Kay: 0:19

Welcome to the Living with Fire Podcast where we share stories and resources to help you live more safely with wildfire. Hi, I'm your host, Megan Kay, Outreach Coordinator for the Living with Fire Program on today's episode, I'm joined by Jamie Royce-Gomes, manager of the Living with Fire Program, and our partner, Amanda Milici, the Fire Adapted Communities Program Coordinator at the Tahoe Resource Conservation District. Together, we interviewed Chief Clive Savacool with South Lake Tahoe Fire and Rescue. He talked about how agencies in Tahoe work together to evacuate people during the Caldor Fire, which occurred near Lake Tahoe last summer. On August 30, 2021 at 10:59am, the evacuation order was issued for South Lake Tahoe, and about 22,000 people were ordered to evacuate. Amanda lives in Tahoe and shares her evacuation story, and Chief Savacool gives us some behind the scenes knowledge about how agencies in Tahoe have been preparing for a potential wildfire evacuation and what it was like to actually do it. Can you introduce yourself with your title and then maybe give us a little bit of background on how you got to South Lake.

Clive Savacool: 1:38

Sure. I'm Clive Savacool, Fire Chief for the City of South Lake Tahoe. I've been the Chief here for the last year and a half. Before that, I was on the other side of El Dorado County as a Fire Chief. And prior to that, was a firefighter in the San Francisco Bay Area for Contra Costa County, where I spent most of my career.

Megan Kay: 1:56

Awesome. Nice to meet you. Thanks for coming on the podcast. I kind of just wanted to start by to start by asking you how the Caldor Fire was for you. What was your experience?

Clive Savacool: 2:08

Yeah, it was very enlightening. And fortunately, I have an amazing city council, amazing city manager and great counterpart of the police department. And my firefighters are super hard workers, so if anybody had to do anybody had to do these roles on their own without support, I can't imagine. And so fortunately, prior to the Caldor Fire, we'd had several Emergency Operations Center drills. So that's basically, we take every department head in the city, and they fill out different positions that they would had we activated the Emergency Operations Center, and then prior to the Caldor Fire, we had the Tamarack Fire, and we didn't think it would get to Tahoe, and it didn't, but we still prepped, and we got everybody ready, and we went through a dry run. Should we have to activate our EOC Emergency Operation Center we would be in good shape. And so we had a nice, nice dress rehearsal. And in addition to that, I was tasked with coming up with a new evacuation plan for the city. And prior to the Caldor Fire, and ironically, the City Council adopted that new evacuation plan on August 3rd, less than a month before we actually put into play. And honestly, when I was putting it together, was putting it together with help from others, I honestly never envisioned actually putting it into play on my own during my career. And so it was shocking that, fortunately, we put some hard work into it. So it actually worked well, but the whole incident itself was such a huge challenge.

Megan Kay: 3:42

So then, so the timeline kind of went you got hired, and you got tasked with revamping or updating the evacuation plan. And then the Tamarack Fire happens. Where were you in the process when that fire was happening was? Did that kind of light a fire under you and the city council to be like, Okay, we need to get this going right now? Or were you, did it, did the Tamarack Fire have any sort of impact on the timeline of getting that evacuation plan ready?

Clive Savacool: 4:13

We started the evacuation plan rebuild probably last winter, so it was already well underway. The city manager has in the city council has a list of strategic priorities. They put together things like housing and that sort of thing to help out the community. And revamping our evacuation plan was part of that. And so the city manager tasked me with that, along with the Police Chief and the Police Department. So it was already well in the works, the Tamarack fire, even though we we didn't really believe it would get to Tahoe, we did have trigger points. You know, if it crossed highway 89 we're gonna kind of do a soft opening of our EOC, and if it got into the county line, that's we're gonna do full blown EOC activation. So we had our trigger points. You always plan for the worst, hope for the best. But I think what the Tamarack Fire helped was it got the community prepared too, because we saw this huge plume of smoke just over the hill. Our fire stations were blowing up with phone calls, people walking up saying, do I we need to evacuate? And so we started our messaging early on, saying, please everyone register for Code Red, the county's alerting system should there be an evacuation. So the Tamarack really was a great primer for the Caldor Fire, not just for the city staff and the fire department staff, but also the community itself.

Megan Kay: 5:33

And you guys had, I mean, it must have been. I mean, it seems like there might be sort've a little bit surreal to be rehearsing for something, putting a lot of effort into something, and then all of a sudden it happens.

Clive Savacool: 5:46

So the preparing for incidents is a lot of what we do. I'm going to paraphrase poorly, but there's a quote from Lincoln saying, If you give me six hours to chop down a tree, I'll spend the first four sharpening the axe. So we spend a lot of time building out these plans with the hopes that we never have to use them. But should we need them? They're they're well thought out. And so we actually started, we activated the Emergency Operations Center, I believe, it was August 21st a week before, over a week before the evacuation. And it all started with a conversation with the city manager myself the night before, just saying, Hey, let's go down into the EOC. We don't think the Caldor Fire will ever get to Tahoe, but let's just go down to the EOC, which is our city council chambers, and get everything ready, just in case. And that phone call by the end of it, was deciding, nope, let's get every department head down there at 6am on a Saturday, and let's, let's do this for real. And kind of the sentiment from some people were that we were activating the EOC too soon, because it, it does send a message to the community when you activate it. And when everyone's saying, well, Caldor Fire will never get to Tahoe, then they question, well, then why is the city activating the Emergency Operations Center, and so we recognized that by doing that, it was going to have some messaging in itself. But we thought if we actually do have the Calder fire come in our community, we need the full week, or whatever it is to prepare. So by the time we actually got to that Monday where we called for the evacuation, we had done so much preparing that we were as ready as we could have been.

Jamie Roice-Gomes: 7:23

Chief Savacool. I actually have a question just to help the audience remember now, when did the Tamarack fire happen in relation to the time period of the Caldor Fire?

Clive Savacool: 7:36

It was just about a month before, and I'm trying to remember the exact date, but it was not that much more before it actually, I believe it started on July 4th. I'm pretty sure it started right on July 4th. It burned for a few days, and then it really flared up. I can't remember the exact date, but there was this one date where there's just this huge plume of smoke you could see from South Lake Tahoe, and that's when everyone kind of went into panic mode. And I think it went on for a couple few weeks. So it was pretty, pretty recent before the Caldor fire.

Jamie Roice-Gomes: 8:13

So the the Tamarick Fire occurred in like July to mid, mid, late July, and then the Caldor Fire occurred late August into September.

Clive Savacool: 8:23

Yeah, I think the Caldor Fire started on August 14th.

Megan Kay: 8:31

During an emergency like a wildfire evacuation, officials use local emergency notification systems to send messages and keep people in that region informed, depending on which type of emergency notification system your county uses, you can register multiple phone numbers, email addresses, and register to receive voice or text messages. Doing so increases the likelihood that you'll receive these urgent notifications. Visit tahoelivingwithfire.com to register for emergency notifications in the Lake Tahoe Basin. Amanda, do you mind if I ask you a question real quick?

Amanda Milici: 9:12

Yeah, please do.

Megan Kay: 9:14

So Amanda was evacuated because she you live in Christmas Valley, right? Where in relation, so what is your Fire District?

Amanda Milici: 9:24

It's Lake Valley Fire Protection District. Yeah.

Megan Kay: 9:27

And then so where Chief Savacool like? So where's just to kind of, because this is an audio format, you can't do it visually. Can you describe kind of like in relation, where your district and the Lake Valley district are in relation to the Caldor Fire and to the lake.

Clive Savacool: 9:47

Yeah. So Christmas Valley is right on the edge of essentially the Tahoe Basin, right at the base of Echo Summit, and the city Proper starts at about the airport and when, and then the city itself goes all the way to the South side of Lake Tahoe. Now, when we built out our evacuation plan, we did it collaboratively with Lake Valley Fire, with Cal Fire, with the US Forest Service, with the Sheriff's Department, with CHP. We built it with everybody in mind, because we knew that if we got to the point where we needed to evacuate, we were going to have to do it collaboratively with everyone. And so if you look at our evacuation map itself, it basically just breaks down every community in South Lake Tahoe, including the unincorporated county areas, into neighborhoods. And we did that because city lines, boundary lines, don't matter when it comes to evacuation, we were going to make the decision collaboratively with everyone in mind, because it it didn't really matter what the city boundaries were not. And if we tried to do something on our own, it just would have been disjointed, mixed messaging and problematic. And so even though we're separate agencies, we coordinated our evacuation together with all the agencies I mentioned.

Megan Kay: 11:08

So when you said you described the EOC, the can you explain that acronym again real quick?

Clive Savacool: 11:15

Yes, that's the Emergency Operations Center, and it basically outlines similar to how the incident command team down in Placerville on the other side of the county was running the incident. We technically we weren't running the fire. All we were doing is managing our city and the community and getting them prepared for an evacuation. So with the Emergency Operations Center, it basically takes department heads and they they fill out the different positions for an Emergency Operation Center, which is finance section, logistics section, operations, planning and Public Information Officers and liaisons. And so we take, for example, the city attorney. She is the city's liaison when the Emergency Operations Center is activated, the Parks and Rec Department Director. She runs logistics section, the Police Chief, he runs operation section. And so these different entities throughout the city, they have dual roles. So that's why we had to have our drills throughout the year leading up to this. Because you're asking someone that's been, you know, running Parks and Rec for for years in the city, to take on this position in a very natural disaster. And so that's that's basically how the EOC is is set up.

Megan Kay: 12:26

So circling back to you, Amanda, the reason I wanted to loop you in is because you experienced the evacuation. So just like Chief was saying earlier, about once the EOC is formed, that kind of sends a message to the community. I know that it's a different fire protection district you're in, Lake Valley, but what was it like for you?

Amanda Milici: 12:46

Yeah, so I actually evacuated twice, because I evacuated from Christmas Valley on Sunday, and that was Sunday, I want to say the 29th, August 29th and I evacuated from Christmas Valley to my partner's parents house in the city, and they live by the college. And we kind of thought we would at least have a couple days there, you know, we had no idea how fast the fire was moving. And then the next morning, probably just like 12 hours later, we evacuated from the city. So it was, yeah, two evacuations within 24 hours. Yeah. I mean, it was definitely really surreal when the Caldor Fire first started, I just didn't even have any worry that it would, you know, come into the Tahoe Basin. And as it inched closer and closer, it was kind of like, Huh, that's not ideal, but still, I mean, could it really crash Echo Summit? And then once the evacuation warnings were issued for Christmas Valley, then it was really like, Okay, this is this is real. And then once the warnings turned into orders, and then once the whole city was evacuated. It was like, All right, this is really happening. It was, it all just happened so quickly that went from, you know, oh, there's no way this could happen, to oh, we're, we're in the middle of it now.

Megan Kay: 14:17

Wildfire evacuations are stressful, and often there's not much notice before it's time to leave. In order to leave quickly and safely, when asked, prepare for evacuation now and pack a go bag before an emergency happens. A go bag should be easily accessible and packed with at least three days of supplies for each member of your family, including pets. Visit tahoelivingwithfire.com to learn more.

Clive Savacool: 14:44

I can't emphasize enough the preparing side of the evacuation, and I kind of would tell everyone that the key to the solid evacuation going smooth was having strong relationships, planning purposes or planning process and acting, I'm sorry, acting early, relationships and planning. And so we spent that full week before the evacuation working with our partners. It's, we had to find busses. We had to identify the demographics who wouldn't have cars, we had to find evacuation shelters that would take pets. We had to identify what to do with the hospital, because that was going to be a different evacuation with different triggers. We identified neighborhoods because it wasn't just which neighborhoods closest to the fire. If we found a neighborhood that might have a demographic doesn't have cars they might evacuate before a neighborhood that's actually closer to the actual incident. So a lot of planning went into that. And on the morning of the 30th that Monday, I worked the EOC that night before, so I was up all night, and I would drive up Echo Summit every couple hours take a look at the progress and with the predicted fire behavior and the weather. When the rest of the EOC staff came in that morning, got together the Police Chief and the City Manager, our liaisons from the incident, and basically said, You know what this fire could get through the city today with the way it's it's going, and if we just are passive about this, and we wait for the incident command post in Placerville to make the call for an evacuation, it might not be until the afternoon, and we might end up evacuating people into the night, which would be a challenge, especially since we were only going to do one route out of town, which was highway 50 through Stateline. So we didn't want to use 89 North due to the the narrow road that it is. And if one car broke down, or car accident happened, to just stop everything, and we have to start directing resources that way. So what we decided is we got together with the EOC from the Sheriff's Department, came up with our plan, and then send it over to the incident management team, who was running the incident itself. And they because we wanted their endorsement, even though technically are the governing the law enforcement agency with jurisdiction is technically the one that makes the decision to evacuate, we still wanted to have the blessing of everybody else that was involved in the incident, and so I think we met at 8am with the Sheriff's Department, and the incident bought off on it, and it was at 9:18, that morning that we started sending out the first red alerts to evacuate. So it actually went very smooth as far as the triggers, and it was set up in stages to evacuate the community. There, there were bumps in the road, as there always are. So some notifications went out earlier than we'd hoped with some of the neighborhoods. But ultimately, the evacuation, despite the four and a half hours of traffic, it went as smooth as it could, given that we're trying to evacuate that many people out one direction of the city.

Jamie Roice-Gomes: 18:01

Chief, can you just to help us stay on track with the timeline. What day did you guys evacuate, folks?

Clive Savacool: 18:11

I believe is Monday, the 30th. At least that was the bulk of it. We did do Christmas Valley that Sunday, the day before.

Megan Kay: 18:20

And then how do you how did you notify the neighborhoods of evacuation? Was it a door to door thing, or did you guys use text alerts?

Clive Savacool: 18:33

We use red alert, and we use door to door. And so before, I can't remember which day it was, maybe that Friday before the evacuation. So several days beforehand, we had a huge influx of law enforcement come into South Lake Tahoe. The concern was that if the fire blew up, they wouldn't be able to get up Highway 50, and so all those law enforcement officers would have to go around to get into South Lake so we had them all staged in South Lake Tahoe at our City Hall several days before the evacuation. And so the days leading up to the evacuation, they would drive neighborhoods, and they would get head counts, they would put notes on doors, and then when the actual evacuation took place, all those law enforcement officers were out in the streets, knocking on doors on loudspeakers, basically ushering people out of town.

Megan Kay: 19:21

I don't want to interrupt the timeline. I was just curious about how the logistics of notifying those people work.

Clive Savacool: 19:28

Yeah, that's how the initial code red alerts went out. We, we did have some also planning with the Visitors Authority leading up to that evacuation several days beforehand. We, tried to get them to get messaging out, and they were very cooperative with getting messages out to tourists saying, don't come to Tahoe. Every news interview I would do the few days before the actual evacuation, I would tell people, you know, their Bay Area news stations and Sacramento news stations, I'd tell them, now isn't the time to come to Tahoe. Even if you were able to get a hotel, it's going to be smokey. Businesses are closed and the air quality is horrible, so don't come to Tahoe. We also did planning for the evacuation, where we put flyers out in the community at hotels vacation rentals that had a QR code on them. So if anybody checked into a hotel, or if they were in town, we asked hotel desks and such to how people scan them and then they could register for Code Red as they came into town. So we did a major campaign of just getting everybody signed up prior to.

Megan Kay: 20:28

If people had vacations planned to South Lake. What a time, you know? I mean, besides just the danger of the fire, the smoke was really intense.

Clive Savacool: 20:37

Yeah, I can't remember which news outlet it was but it reported that South Lake Tahoe had the worst air quality on earth for a day or two there.

Megan Kay: 20:46

That's not the record. You want to have.

Clive Savacool: 20:48

No.

Megan Kay: 20:54

Communities located in wildfire prone areas. Need to take extra measures to live safely. There are many ways to prepare communities and properties for wildfire, including creating and maintaining adequate defensible space and hardening homes to withstand wildfire. This could mean altering or replacing certain components of the home. Our wildfire home retrofit guide will help you better prepare your home and communities for wildfire. You can find the guide in the resources section of our website at livingwithfire.com So what were some of the just out of curiosities, you described some of the some of the challenges. What are some of the, maybe like highlights and kudos, things that really went really well.

Clive Savacool: 21:39

I think the collaboration between agencies. We had so much going on in and outside of our own jurisdictions that it it's you're heavily dependent on other agencies to work with you, and we don't always have the same priorities. You know, our concern, we made clear, is to get our community safe, get them out of town, protect their homes while they're gone, the incident management team who's running to the command post, they want to get the fire under control. You know, they might not want to repopulate as fast as us, because they're trying to manage the incident. If they have people flying back into town, it's gonna be harder for them to have resources. So I think that us all embracing a level of humility and recognizing that even though it's a stressful situation, we're all running on fumes, getting very little sleep. My firefighters and myself were all evacuated from our own homes. I think even though the stress level is really high, I just can't emphasize enough how well other stakeholders and everybody worked great together. You know, the Lake Valley Fire Chief, him and I were in constant contact when we saw the fire was heading towards Christmas Valley. Our message to them was, just tell us what you need. We'll send you every resource we got. And so it really brought, I think, not just the community, but all the stakeholders together. And I think that was a real high point.

Megan Kay: 23:00

Could you give us a maybe a few bullet points of some of the key lessons that were learned during the evacuation, and then also how you're going to incorporate those lessons going forward?

Clive Savacool: 23:11

Overall, we, I don't think we made any glaring mistakes, or there's little things that we learned, such as having a fleet of tow trucks ready to go during the evacuation, to get cars out of the way or out of the evacuation zones, should they break down. I think that recognizing that evacuation plans are a working, living document, so we can never just file it and say we're good. We've we've checked that box. I've been tasked with becoming the kind of coming up with an evacuation plan for all of Lake Tahoe with the Lake Tahoe Basin Fire Chiefs Association and so the group I'm working with on that, we're going to take the lessons learned from this basically create sections for each county in the basin, so that they have at their fingertips, locations you can get busses, the different utility companies. Having a plan in place so that if you do call for an evacuation, you don't have to look anything up. There's already a playbook ready to go, and those playbooks are going to need constant updating. So I think those are some of the key lessons. We were just very fortunate because we built our evacuation plan literally a month before finished it, a month before this, this took place. So the, like, the planning piece of it is just huge.

Megan Kay: 24:29

So there's, like, many tiers right of this evacuation, like, there's the individual that has to be prepared for evacuation, and then maybe they own property that then that has to be prepared for their property, for fire and evacuation. And then there's the agencies that are working, and it's, if I feel like there has to be some sort of upward flow, things have to flow nicely. Otherwise there's, there's just more hiccups that could potentially happen. It seems like.

Clive Savacool: 24:58

Yeah, and having the the constant communication, whether it be through the fire chiefs association, through our Fire Marshals, I think that one dynamic that South Lake Tahoe is taking a step forward on is we're creating a formal Fire Prevention Bureau so that the fire department, in the past has used on duty crews to send out for inspections and defensible space work. And moving forward, we're going to have a Fire Marshal, dedicated Fire Inspector and part-time Fire and Defensible Space Inspectors. So we're really revamping how we address fire prevention in South Lake Tahoe. And in conjunction with that, we're going to work with other stakeholders and organizations such as yours through these programs to make sure our community is well informed and they're prepared.

Megan Kay: 25:48

For folks who may not understand this, the sort of relationship between like individual homeowners and agencies. So if they, if they want to make their homes more, I guess, fire safe or they want to prepare for for wildfire. They need, sometimes they need some expert guidance, right? And so those are the agency professionals that come out and kind of assess their homes. But it's a little hard for firefighters to do that during the summer when they're on call.

Clive Savacool: 26:17

Yeah. So we're, we're really putting a focus on the fire prevention side, not that we haven't had that focus, but we're just making a dedicated division. And really the firefighters, we have the busiest fire agency in the basin, they're running calls pretty frequently. And so having them tasked with these other projects, it's loading their plate up with a lot. And so we really, really need a dedicated fire prevention bureau. The Caldor Fire just kind of help shine a light on it. The city already had it in the in the strategic plan, not the actual Fire Prevention Bureau Division, but just fire prevention in general. And so these inspectors are Defensible Space Inspectors that go out. This was the first year we used them, and they had a very warm reception. So as you mentioned, getting the community informed with two inspectors, we determined we could do the entire city, which is just over 15,000 parcels, in about 18 months. And so when they would go out and they would meet with people and educate them, it was actually a very warm reception, as we were a bit concerned that it would be perceived as the yard police.

Megan Kay: 27:31

So I thought that was an excellent run through of the evacuation. I don't have any other evacuation related questions. Amanda, do you?

Amanda Milici: 27:42

So from a resident perspective, I felt like we got pretty lucky in that we had a lot of time to prepare for this evacuation. You know, like I said that the fire was really creeping and creeping towards the Basin, and so you know us as residents, you know, we were just trying to get every extra pine needle off the deck, and, like, really packing the car, and feel like I had a lot of time to prepare, and I would assume, from an agency perspective, maybe that's the same. And so how does, how different does the evacuation plan and like the execution of the evacuation plan, look when, when or if a fire starts in the Basin. And there's not, you know, those that week of time to really prepare?

Clive Savacool: 28:30

Yeah, it's a great question. And I think that the previous fires they've had in the basin are probably some examples of just a really fast moving fire that you don't have the luxury of a week leading up to it to educate people. And so that's why front loading the education side is so important, starting in the spring, making sure people are signed up for Code Red, working out the bugs like we didn't realize it until we had some mistakes that people needed to sign up for Code Red online and not through the app. If they signed on on through the app, it didn't work, and we didn't realize that until we did the evacuations on Echo Summit. So working those details out so that if you do have a major fire that is moving quickly, and we don't have a week to get through it, that you're able to send out those notifications on a moment's notice, and it's not going to be the first time that that our citizens have heard be prepared to evacuate that season. So like the Angora Fire, that one moved very fast, so we need to make sure the public is educated well in advance.

Amanda Milici: 29:38

Yeah, that's a really good point. And I think one thing that I have personally found challenging is, like, the balance between, you know, doing all of that front loading and education and outreach, but also having folks be really interested and engaged in it. I'm hopeful that the Caldor Fire, that the momentum will, you know, continue for years to come. But I've definitely found it challenging in the past, like, you know, April, March, May, folks just aren't thinking about fire as much as they should be for planning. Whereas, like July, August, there's smoke in the air. It's hot, people are really thinking about it, but at that point, you know, the fire could start at any moment. So I don't want to say it's too late to prepare. It's never too late to prepare, but feel like at that point it's there's less time. And so it's interesting to sort of, yeah, navigate finding that balance between having a lot of time to prepare and get folks ready, but also getting folks really thinking about fire.

Clive Savacool: 30:43

It's a great question and great point, because people do have short memories. And I think if we'd only had the Tamarack Fire and there was that concern of evacuation, it didn't quite hit home, like when people literally have to leave their home, and, you know, and unfortunately, evacuating and going through these types of incidents is psychologically traumatic. And so people that have lived here and lived through the Angora Fire this, this was ripping off a bandaid that opening up an old scar. And so I think, because this really hit home, literally, I think people are going to remember it come this springtime. They are going to be conscious about signing up for Code Red, and they're going to listen when our inspectors come through town, because it's no longer this hey, let's clean up your lot for something that may never happen. It's like, hey, clean up your lots, in case we have a summer like last summer. So we're optimistic that people are going to have a memory of the Caldor Fire, and they'll take it to heart.

Jamie Roice-Gomes: 31:45

I've noticed that people will they have, like, what do they say the half life of an emergency is like six months, but honestly, I feel like it's shorter than that now these days, and I hope that we can continue that momentum.

Megan Kay: 31:59

What is, is there anything unique about working in Lake Tahoe in regards to preparing for an event like this?

Clive Savacool: 32:08

Yeah, I say that something that Tahoe has going forward is, despite having multiple counties and couldn't tell you how many different fire agencies, different state lines, we all recognize that we can't handle any major incident on our own, and so nobody is too territorial or has their ego get in the way to where they say, well, we don't need any help. We're going to handle our own business. We all recognize that we can't handle a major incident our own, and we recognize that the community is what matters. And so we then make sure we're doing right by them versus our own interests. I came from an agency with 300 firefighters and 30 fire stations, and so we could handle an emergency on our own. That's not the case here. And so fortunately, everybody in Tahoe gets that. And so we all play nice in the sandbox to make sure we provide the best service we can.

Megan Kay: 33:04

Thank you for listening to the Living with Fire Podcast. Funding for this podcast was provided by the Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act of 1994 in cooperation with Tahoe RCD and University of Nevada Reno Extension an EEO AAA institution.