This is a quick summary of the events related to the staff and the camp during the fire.
Saturday Oct. 25th - The fire begins about 5 miles southwest of Santa Ysabel just before 6 pm. We have a group, Women Aglow, in the camp doing all their own cooking and dishes. Peter is back east at a meeting, most of the staff are in Baja on vacation, two are in Ohio. Vicki Bergstrom and John, Sherry and Dana Horton are holding down the fort.
Sunday Oct. 26th - As word of the fire in San Diego is getting to us and the group, many of the women need to head home. Vicki works with the group to help people find a way to get home. This is challenging as I-15 is still closed and then I-8 is closed off and on also. Highway 67 to Poway is also closed. And the information changes every 5 minutes as the fire spreads.The fires in Otay Mesa and Valley Center begin. Some of the staff are to return from Mexico later that night, and ultimately some do.
Monday Oct 27th - Early in the morning the electricity comes and goes. Then at 8:14 am power is lost. The fire is now huge, still mostly blown by the strong Santa Ana winds from the northeast. But weather conditions are to change with a prevailing wind from the west. While many of the newscasters make comments that this good news for the fire fighters, it is, in fact, not good for Camp Stevens. What the wind change will mean is that all the fire crews on the western edge, which now have a handle on most of the fire, will be in the wrong place as the fire is pushed in the opposite direction. As the winds shift, the fire moves both south and east. The Valley Center fire which started about the same time, is also moving in the other direction. The two staff members visiting home in Ohio are stranded in Phoenix when their flight is canceled.
More of the staff return to the camp. There is concern here about the movement of the fire and that we are in the path. Evacuations in parts of Julian and the surrounding areas start taking place. Still no power. The evacuation center in Ramona is moved to Julian High School as there is now increased concern for fire near those centers. The camp is made available as overflow housing if needed, and 3 persons do stay here on Monday night.
The fire can be seen from town, burning just outside of Pine Hills
as well as down on the 3 Cuyamaca Peaks. The sky is very dark and smoky.Tuesday, Oct 28th - News is not very good. All of Julian is now on manditory evacution and the Red Cross center at the High School is moved once again to Borrego Springs. The only road out is Hwy 78 to the east and there is bumber to bumper traffic. We find that we have more cars than we do drivers, so some cars go to the High School. Then, the staff except for Stuart, Monica, Ava, John, Sherry, Dana and Vicki head off for Ryan Casey's family in Bonita (later refered to as Camp Casey). While we have enough drivers, well some of the experience is rather limited but they make it and arrive safely.The two staff members stranded in Phoenix arrive in San Diego, and are picked up by Mary Toomey, a friend of Camp. They eventually make it to Camp Casey to join the other staff members. Julian is now pretty quiet except for a few locals like us and lots of fire equipment. CDF predicts that the fire will arrive near the historic town center between Midnight and 1:00 am.
At one point on Monday there were only about 10 fire trucks on the mountain. Tonight there are 20 times that many with many of them in the town center. Vicki decides that Borrego Springs is a nice place this time of year and leaves in the early evening after a lovely candlelight dinner at the Campbell home. The wind is strong from the west and the sky glows more and more red. Sherry stays in town at the Horton property and calls periodically to update John and Stuart on the situation. She has a front row seat, whereas at camp, the fire is hidden by the hill. John and Stuart decide to take turns being up and watching just in case we need to leave. John takes the first shift and around midnight Stuart decides he cannot sleep so he will watch too. The fire glow is huge and fortunately we feel safe because it is mostly south of the camp and the wind is still blowing from the west. Around 1:15am Sherry drives back to the camp and tells John and Stuart that the fire misse
d town, and never came over the hill behind town, just burned
on the backside then crossed over farther down Highway 79. They then drive to
town and see what has happened. Historic old Julian is saved, but the forest
and other homes are not so lucky. They decided that things are good enough for
now and that sleep would be good. Everyone agrees to look out the window everytime
they wake up just be be sure,Wednesday Oct. 29th - Early morning is the first time that flames are actually visible from the camp. They are distant on the hills to the south of the camp. The wind is rather strong and seems to be increasing. The fire appears to be definately south of the camp and this is good. During the morning the wind increases. We are hearing of fairly active fire in the Wynola area. This is of concern as this area is 4 miles directly west of the camp. We are starting to see a lot of very dark smoke to the north. After lunch John and Stuart decide to hike to the upper meadow to see what is happening with the smoke to the north. The upper meadow has winds that are about 30-40 mph and the smoke seems like it is coming from not to far away. Knowing that there is fire in Wynola (this is about the same time as the fire fighters were caught in the fire), that the Valley Center fire is burning our way, the decision is that if the fire comes, it will come too fast, so we leave for Borrego Springs ourselves. The last of the propane tanks are turned off, the generator on the freezer is turned off and the water tank is turned back on in case fire fighters need the water.
The Campbells and the Horton's became one more part of the displaced refugees of the fire in Borrego. Peter is starting to travel home from the east coast, Vicki joins the Campbells and Hortons, and the rest of the resident staff are still at Camp Casey. The odd part about being in Borrego is that while there is news, there a lot more rumors and news that is not very accurate. The Julian area had fairly poor news and infomation over all. While the fire was spreading our way and evacuations were being called, much of the TV and radio coverage was still focused on Scripps Ranch for example. When the offical fire spokespeople came to Borrego to update the evacuees, one spokesperson had just arrived from Minnesota and was not familiar with the area, much less the neighborhoods of Julian. The San Diego paper showed maps of the fire that were miles off from the actual burn areas. It was difficult to be uninformed and displaced. The only factual information seemed to come from people still in the Julian area.
Thursday Oct 30th - Vicki goes to San Diego to pick up Peter and on the way back to Borrego on Friday they stop and see how far they can drive up to the camp. They are able to get to Wynola Road and are allowed to walk into the camp. They find that all is well and that the camp is safe. Earlier that morning John talked with the Keith Dalton, one of the local sheriffs who came to fill in the folks in Borrego, and asked him to check in on the camp. While at camp, officer Dalton turned on the generator and turned off the water tank to conserve what water was left. Peter and Vicki found this and knew that someone had been there and checked on things.
At this point in the fire, the winds had shifted to coming more out of the south/southwest and that pushed the Wynola portion of the fire north of the camp and up to Volcan Mountain where it would join up with last years Pines Fire.
Friday Oct. 31st - The weather changes and becomes very cold and actually wet, and there is very little active fire left. We become very hopeful that we will be let in the next morning. Ava Campbell attends the improptu Halloween Party at the Borrego Springs High School.
Saturday Nov. 1st - The Borrego group finds that it is time to head home and finally arrive at the camp to find it is safe, the freezer is still frozen and we still have water left. The Red Cross and others have been informed that the camp is available for temporary housing for families that need a place, but there is work to do to get even that ready. We get a large generator for the well so we can pump water and start to find other generators.
Sunday Nov. 2nd - All the staff arrive today and we start the work of, not only getting the camp operational, but putting all of our things back into our homes, the camp office etc. We get 3 generators and put them to use. We take some time to see how lucky we were and that night share dinner together reflecting on how lucky and thankful we were over the past week