Fire casts pall over tourism at Tahoe

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. —  Business leaders and merchants in this mountain resort town are bracing for a second damaging blow from last week’s devastating wildfire: a projected economic hit on the region’s critical Fourth of July tourism.

Already, the fire that destroyed 254 homes has caused a 25% drop in occupancy rates in the area’s 9,000 hotel rooms as vacationers hastily canceled plans. And, at a time when reservations are typically in high demand, casino giants Harveys and Harrah’s are nearly empty as the holiday week unfolds.

For service workers, tips are as scarce as a full-house poker hand. Most worry that if business doesn’t pick up soon, a tough year lies ahead for a resort already staggered by a dry winter that affected ski conditions and sent tourists packing.

In their own offensive against the relentless images of the Angora fire -- which burned more than 3,000 acres just miles south of the famous lake -- leaders are launching a public relations campaign that many call a fight for their livelihoods.

Their message to rattled tourists: Turn off your TVs and switch on your computers.

“Rome is not burning,” said Pat Ronan, president of the Lake Tahoe Visitors Assn. “We want people to decide for themselves, to see that the sun is shining, the smoke has cleared away and Lake Tahoe is ready for them.”

Radio and print advertisements direct viewers to a website featuring live video of the area’s beaches and hotels. The footage shows that flames are not licking at the casinos and that the cobalt-blue lake has not been turned gray by ash -- facts business leaders say are glossed over by news reports.

In a region where tourism is 80% of the economy, the July 4 weekend alone accounts for 15% of the annual summer intake. Some 2 million visitors descend on South Lake Tahoe between Memorial Day and Labor Day.

“This is it, the peak of summer, a time we’ve got to make money,” said Linda Giannoni, manager of the Tahoe Lakeshore Lodge. “But I’ve never gone into the week before July Fourth with this many rooms available. It’s devastating.”

Officials expect the blaze to be contained by Tuesday. On Saturday, South Lake Tahoe came closest to returning to normal since the fire started. Authorities opened most of the roads in the fire zone, except for the hot spots, and hundreds of firefighters headed home after officials announced Friday that the blaze was 80% contained.

On Friday night, the U.S. Forest Service told a packed meeting of hundreds of residents that the Angora blaze was started by an illegal fire at a popular campsite and asked for the public’s help in reporting anyone who might have been in the area last Sunday. On Saturday, the skies over the lake were blue, with not a puff of smoke in sight.

The tourism campaign started soon after the fire hit. On Wednesday, even as smoke blew out of the trees behind him near South Tahoe High School’s football field, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared: “Right now it is safe for people and families to come here” for the holiday.

Hotels quickly began e-mailing past visitors with assurances that Tahoe was still open for business. Casinos were calling high rollers back to the tables, where they insisted the dice were still rolling. Chamber of Commerce officials also announced that the annual Fourth of July fireworks show, which routinely attracts 100,000 people to the south shore, is still on.

Yet heading into the long holiday week, merchants remain nervous. Not only did many travelers cancel reservations at the first news of the blaze, there is a drop-off in reservations clear through Labor Day.

Ron Williams, whose fleet of 78 boats is usually rented for the fireworks display, said business is down 60%. He blames media coverage, complaining that television stations continue to show footage taken last Sunday when the fire started, even though the sun is shining over Tahoe.

“You turn on CNN and you hear that ‘Tahoe’s on fire!’ ” he said. “The truth is that one-twenty-fifth of the community has burned. The rest is just fine. But how do you get that word out to people?”

Wayne Griffin can feel Tahoe’s pain. The president of the Catalina Island Chamber of Commerce experienced similar difficulties when a blaze shut down the island for the busy Mother’s Day weekend.

“We’re still recovering from that fire,” he said. “Business is still down by 30%, and it looks like it’s going to take a year to get it back. We were cruising along and then it’s like somebody just shut the power off.”

Griffin also blamed media coverage. “We lost one residence to the fire, but the news crews just kept showing that house over and over, so it looked to potential tourists like a whole bunch of houses had gone up in flames. Tahoe must be feeling even worse than we do.”

Some visitors decided to come here despite the fire.

Kelsey Keller had a wedding planned for Saturday and couldn’t believe her eyes when she saw reports of the blaze.

“I thought, ‘How could this happen to my wedding?’ ” she said. She watched TV news around the clock and then called the hotel where she planned to stage her big day. They told her to come.

“I asked my husband about Plan B,” she said. “He told me there was no Plan B.”

Colleen Renshaw and a friend drove in from the Bay Area. “We’d seen the news footage, so when we got here, we said, ‘Where’s the fire?’ ” she said Thursday.

Falling ash and the smell of smoke did not deter her. “We saw the ash blowing around,” Renshaw said. “But we figured with all those people who lost their homes, we could put up with a little ash.”

Standing inside a near-empty Harrah’s casino on Thursday, Kay Dalton, who sells time-shares at a booth near the gaming tables, worried whether tourists would return in time to save her money-making holiday. In the days after the fire broke out, the place reeked not of cigarette fumes but of brush fire smoke, scattering gamblers.

“In 30 years, I’ve never seen this casino so empty,” she said of Harrah’s, located about six miles from the fire. “Years ago when I was a cocktail waitress here, I used to have to hold my hand in front of me so the crowd didn’t spill my drinks. Now you could roll a bowling ball through here and not hit a soul.”

Nearby, at the Heavenly casino bar, Bob Mason sipped a beer and fretted about his bartender friends.

“These guys hustle, and now this fire” threatens to take money “out of their wallets,” said Mason, 54, a retired boiler worker. “To me, July Fourth just means more traffic, but for these people, it’s a matter of survival.”

Some Lake Tahoe businesspeople say they’re content to let firefighters finish their jobs before proclaiming that the area has returned to normal.

“We’re not going to tell people we’re OK if we’re not OK,” said John Packer, director of entertainment at Harveys and Harrah’s, the two Stateline, Nev., resorts. “We’ll wait for word from the Fire Department that this thing is finally extinguished before we ourselves start using words like ‘containment.’ The last thing anyone wants to happen is for this thing to flare up and for people to get hurt.”

So for now, Tahoe residents watch and wait, keeping an eye on the horizon for signs of smoke.

“If people want Lake Tahoe to stay financially healthy, we ask them to come and support us now, when we really need it,” said Carl Ribaudo, chairman of the Lake Tahoe South Shore Chamber of Commerce.

“We’ve had a tough year. We don’t want this to boomerang and get even worse.”

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john. glionna@latimes.com

tami.abdollah@latimes.com