Original analysis of corrected Forest Service data provided by the agency shows only 14% completion. The Forest Service’s data overstated Trestle Project accomplishments, claiming the agency completed work on at least 24% of the project before the Caldor Fire.Due to a complex web of regulatory delays, logistical challenges and resource shortages, the agency pushed back the completion date to as late as 2032 - three decades after its initial warning to Grizzly Flats. The Forest Service originally committed to finishing the Trestle Project by 2020 - a year before the Caldor Fire would later ignite.It aimed to “reduce the threat of large high intensity wildfire and threats to Grizzly Flat” and other nearby landowners by removing excess brush and vegetation that fuel increasingly devastating wildfires, according to project documents.

After the community meeting, the Forest Service took a decade to announce a comprehensive 15,000-acre forest management and fire mitigation plan, called the Trestle Forest Health Project.But a nine-month investigation by CapRadio and The California Newsroom, a public media collaboration, found that the Forest Service’s plan to protect Grizzly Flats fell far short: In the years that followed, the Forest Service took steps to prevent such a catastrophe. Forest Service, with chilling foresight, had warned that a wildfire mirroring the Caldor Fire’s burn progression could easily wipe Grizzly Flats off the map. At a community meeting in the early 2000s, the U.S.

(Courtesy Eric Henton)ĭiaz, his wife, their six kids and the family dog raced down Grizzly Flat Road in a two-car caravan, leaving behind the fire’s red glow and the home they’d never see again. The Caldor Fire burns south of Grizzly Flats on Aug. “You need to get the beep out,” Diaz recalled. An even-keeled speaker with a clean vocabulary, Almer barked his warning with a rare four-letter word that Diaz declined to repeat. “I thought we still had time,” Diaz said in a recent interview.īut Almer’s voice indicated otherwise. Before the official evacuation order came, Almer called his next door neighbor, Victor Diaz. He was more concerned about making sure everyone else in the community got out safely. Their six cats, corralled into six crates, took up most of the car space. On August 16, 2021, two days after the fire ignited, gusty winds pushed the flames out like billowing sails, spreading across thousands of acres overloaded with shrubs and trees in the neighboring Eldorado National Forest.Īlmer and his wife didn’t grab much on their way out the door. Mark Almer poses outside his Grizzly Flats home on Thursday, Aug. The Caldor Fire would be the council’s ultimate test. “But it’s just one piece of the puzzle.”Īlmer had an even bigger plan to protect his community.įor more than a decade, he’s led the Grizzly Flats Fire Safe Council, a group of two-dozen volunteers that raised money for wildfire mitigation projects, educated the town’s roughly 1,400 residents about defensible space and regularly gathered local, state and federal fire officials to help improve their fire response plan. The 60-year-old retired fire inspector had spent over a decade fireproofing his Grizzly Flats home, trading wood deck boards for composite material and replacing traditional siding with a protective cement shell. Before the Caldor Fire sparked one year ago this week - before its 150-foot flames devoured century-old ponderosa pines in California’s Sierra Nevada, and before it destroyed more than 400 of the 600 homes in Grizzly Flats - Mark Almer had a plan.

Caldor evac map