Early snow falls during October gave hope for a busy winter ski season at the neighboring Heavenly Mountain Ski Resort, and resort operators say hotel reservations through Christmas and the New Year have been picking up. Photo: Tim Lenard / The Nevada Independentīut nearly two months later, the South Tahoe gaming market appears to be rallying. The casino floor at Hard Rock Lake Tahoe is seen on Monday, Oct. We were actually an evacuation site for a lot of folks.” Beyond the temporary closures, the fire compounded fears of a more rapid decline in the region’s gaming market, which saw peak gaming revenue more than two decades ago amid the growth of tribal casinos in Northern California and lasting damage from the 2008 recession. It didn’t get near any of our properties. “There was some structure damage, but the fire never got near the lake. “We wanted to get that message to get out there, that Tahoe is just as beautiful as it ever has been,” Hall said.

We’re just getting back out of it.” Karie Hall, general manager of Harrah’s Lake Tahoe and Harveys Lake Tahoe, said damage from the fire was non-existent in the populated areas of the community. “This has been a two-month ordeal for the market. You would have thought Tahoe had burned to the ground and the lake was going to have an environmental impact for years to come,” Barbaro said in early October. Hard Rock Lake Tahoe Executive Director of Marketing Eric Barbaro said national headlines and images circulated during the fire “sensationalized” the effect on the Tahoe region. In reality, the Caldor Fire, which consumed nearly 222,000 acres over a two-month period, never got closer than five miles from the California city of South Lake Tahoe, which neighbors the Nevada community of Stateline, home to the south shore's big four casinos: Hard Rock, Monbleu, Harveys and Harrah's. But they feared images of the blaze could fuel a misperception by customers that Northern Nevada’s picturesque gaming community was going up in flames. South Tahoe casino operators knew the shutdown was temporary. Gaming operations, which are normally crowded during the busy Labor Day weekend, were shut down for six days.

The largest blaze, the Caldor Fire, produced heavy smoke that substantially reduced air quality and induced highway closures that halted visitation from Northern California customers. Northern California wildfires wiped away several weeks’ worth of business this summer from casinos on the south shore of Lake Tahoe.

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