How Long Does It Take to Evacuate Lake Tahoe in an Emergency?

(TNS) — People forced to flee the Lake Tahoe Basin during the wildfire emergency could face an hours-long, life-threatening scramble to reach safety, according to a new report.

The Tahoe Basin Wildfire Evacuation Analysis released in late August shows that unannounced evacuations in some areas could last eight to nine hours. That includes potential closures of Highway 28 in Stateline and Sand Harbor. Those times could be as long as 14 hours, depending on road closures.

So-called wildfires are sudden and immediate life-threatening events that require evacuations, such as the Bear Fire, which flared up Monday in a remote area of Sierra County near the town of Loyalton. Residents of about 250 homes in Sierra Brooks were forced to evacuate under a red flag warning hours after the fire began. By Tuesday morning, the fire had grown to about 1,400 acres.

“The public and land-use planners need to be aware of the potential evacuation consequences,” says Doug Flaherty. TahoeCleanAir.orgIn a statement announcing the report, a former battalion commander said:

“The carrying capacity in the Tahoe Basin is already being overstressed,” Flaherty said, adding that officials “need to take a realistic approach to land-use planning decisions to avoid the problems experienced in other major wildfires.”

Independent analysis commissioned by TahoeCleanAir.orgThe nonprofit organization noted that this is not a recommendation, but paints a clear scenario of the chaos and hardship that residents, visitors and first responders could face if an emergency were to occur in the basin.

In the analysts’ scenario, the emergency occurred between 1 p.m. and 5 p.m., Lake Tahoe’s peak summer season. Evacuees in the scenario had little or no notice, used vehicles to escape and left an hour after being told to evacuate.

Using artificial intelligence, studies of Sierra wildfire behavior and the experience of firefighters in the field during the deadly and devastating Camp Fire in 2018, analysts ran hundreds of evacuation simulations, estimating evacuation times, simulating anticipated road closures and other bottlenecks during a fast-moving fire.

The study, part of a larger evacuation analysis to be released soon, focuses on the Placer County area of the lake, along Tahoe’s Nevada north shore, and its four evacuation routes: Highway 89 north toward Truckee; Highway 89 south toward Lake Tahoe; Highway 28 over Brockway Pass to Highway 267; and Highway 28 from Incline Village to Mt. Rose Summit.

“The estimated average evacuation time required for an unannounced evacuation of the Placer/Tahoe Work Area during the busy summer months is 9 to 10 hours or more,” the report said.

Tahoe residents are familiar with devastating wildfires. The Tamarack fire, which scorched more than 67,000 acres in California and Nevada in 2021, was followed just a few months later by the Caldor fire, which burned more than 221,000 acres.

Both fires occurred during the height of the summer tourism season in the 207,000-acre Tahoe Basin, prompting the report to call on local leaders to improve their safety plans.

“This analysis underscores the need for policymakers in Tahoe to provide better, more transparent public safety planning,” Flaherty said.