CARSON CITY, Nev. – Fire managers began releasing engines and air power from a fire Saturday that destroyed at least 15 homes as crews secured containment lines near homes and made progress in the Sierra backcountry to keep the flames out of the Lake Tahoe basin.
Meanwhile, officials broadened their investigation of the fire’s cause. They initially said they suspected the blaze was started by teenagers in Kings Canyon the day before the fire erupted Wednesday, but said Saturday the fire could have started the previous weekend and smoldered undetected for days.
The wind-driven blaze, which scorched nearly 7,600 acres, also destroyed a business and 25 outbuildings. It was 50 percent contained Saturday, and no longer posed an imminent threat to communities in northwest Carson City or surrounding areas in Washoe Valley, officials said.
Fire officials said the blaze could be contained by Tuesday.
Hundreds of evacuees were allowed back home late Friday, but some of them on Saturday questioned whether firefighters could have done more to stop the blaze in its early stages.
“This atrocity should never have happened,” Washoe Valley resident Betty Kelly said at a town hall meeting Saturday. “There was too much waiting and seeing.”
Fire officials defended their response, as did some residents.
“They moved so fast to try to control it,” said Mike Gutter, who watched the fire unfold from her home near Kings Canyon. But the afternoon wind “flattened it out like a pancake and spread it in all directions,” she said.
Meanwhile, in California, hundreds of residents were allowed to return home Saturday after a wildfire in northern Los Angeles County shifted away from two rural communities. The fire in Lake Hughes had blackened 15,988 acres, but was about 54 percent contained, officials said.
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