Sand Fire Evacuees Returning Home

Cal Fire says more than 500 homes were evacuated because of the Sand Fire in El Dorado and Amador counties. Most people are able to return to their homes, but more than a dozen families have no home to return to.

Rick Ogden and his wife lost their home in the fire.

"We got a little place up in Camino that we're able to stay at through," Ogden said. "Thank god for friends. And, then we just got to go through the insurance things and go from there."

Rick says they'll rebuild.

Wendy Fisher and Robert McCoy say by Saturday, it was clear they would need to pack up and get out.

"We had to move some horses out early that day just thinking that we might be getting evacuated. So, we got kind of a jump on it. And then when the ash started getting really thick and the smoke was getting thick, we decided we better go. We actually left an hour before we were mandatorily evacuated," Fisher said.

McCoy added, "We left everything we own."

They weren't certain, but they believed their home was safe.

Scott McLean with Cal Fire says the fire appears to have been preventable. 

"The cause is a vehicle into dry grass. It doesn't take much and that's what we need to impress. You park your car in maybe a foot-tall grass. You have all those hot components underneath that vehicle and this is what happened. Look at the fire up out of Redding - the Bully Fire? Same thing," McLean said.

The fire's size was unchanged overnight at 3,800 acres and firefighters say containment has increased to 65 percent. 

At least 13 homes and 38 small structures were destroyed.

The department expects full containment of the fire by Friday. But, in this morning's  briefing, firefighters did voice concern about late afternoon winds and thunderstorms in the Lake Tahoe area possibly causing embers to escape containment lines.