Unprecedented Behavior: Wildfires Have Jumped The Sierra Nevada

The Caldor Fire, burning in eastern California and western Nevada, became the second incident to take wildfire behavior in a direction never recorded before 2021: Across the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

This followed a similar jump by the earlier Dixie Fire, the New York Times reported.

Approaching seven weeks after it ignited, the Caldor Fire was approximately 222,000 acres as of September 30.

Nearly 1,100 structures were damaged or destroyed and five people were reported injured across California’s El Dorado, Amador, and Alpine counties and Douglas County in Nevada, according to reports from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) and InciWeb.

More than 53,000 people were ordered to evacuate throughout the affected counties, 22,000 of them in South Lake Tahoe as the California resort community was threatened, CNN reported, highlighting another concern for the insurance industry when considering wildfire risk: The potential for business interruption claims from the area’s thriving tourism industry.