Note: On Friday, Los Padres National Forest officials declared the Thomas Fire extinguished, with no hotspots detected in the last two months. In honor of this good news, over the next several days the College will publish reflective stories about the fire, all of which appeared in the Thomas Fire Commemorative Edition of the Thomas Aquinas College Newsletter (receive a free subscription.)

 

Remembering the Thomas Fire: Firsthand Recollections

 

“Like a Flaming Waterfall”
Clark Tulberg
Facilities Manager

I was having dinner with my family when Pete Rioux called to tell me there was a fire in Steckel Park. I was on the road in maybe 10 minutes, and when I passed Steckel Park, it was already lined with fire trucks. I stopped to ask the fire chief if they wanted us to shelter in place or to evacuate the campus. He said there was no evacuation order, but he suggested we leave. When I got to campus and passed that message on to President McLean, he agreed right away.

All night there were flare-ups on the ridge overlooking the campus, but the wind kept pushing them back. Once the flames got a toehold on this side, though, in no time the whole mountainside was on fire. The wind was blowing huge plumes of flame and ash in every which way. At some points the fire looked like a flaming waterfall, and other times like a volcano. Every once in a while I would run through the sprinklers just to cool myself off, and my beard would start to sizzle.

 

Terrified … Yet Confident
Lynda McLean
Wife of President Michael F. McLean

Michael and I were in our on-campus home when we got word that a fire had started. We headed up to the Commons, where the students were gathered, preparing to evacuate. It was never a thought in my head that I would leave: As the captain of the ship, Michael was determined to stay, and I did not want to be separated from him. We wanted to see what was happening, to help out in any way we could to make sure the College survived.

We next went to the patio behind St. Gladys Hall to check on the progress of the fire, and then headed to the administration building. It was dark, and as I was crossing in front of the Chapel I missed a step and crushed my foot, breaking my ankle! Someone was able to get me crutches from the nurse’s office, but that was the end of my helping in any way. I became a burden instead — the only injury sustained on campus during the entire fire!

We began the night in Michael’s office, but were moved to the athletic fields at about 3:30 a.m. We spent the rest of the night in the car, watching the fire on the mountains all around us. Right at the edge of our road, trees were going up in flames. It was terrifying and yet all through it I felt fairly confident that the school would be safe.

 

The Search for Father
Andrew Carey
Janitorial Maintenance Supervisor

It was the middle of the night, and we were all on the athletic field, with the fire closing in around the campus. It was raining fire. And then Clark rolls up in his car and says, “Hey, we don’t know where Fr. Marczewski is!”

So we drove up the fire road by St. Peter and Paul’s Hall, and I ran in to look for him. Even the air inside the building was all smoke at this point. I went to Father’s apartment, but couldn’t find him anywhere. So I went back outside, and that’s when we noticed a chair burning right outside the fire escape of St. Junipero Serra Hall, the flames licking up on the door, which was charred black. So Clark and I moved the chair and stamped out whatever fire was there. We then spotted another fire in the bushes beside St. Katherine’s and stamped that out, too.

Eventually we ended up back at the athletic field, still unable to find Father, hoping that maybe he had evacuated. And then, suddenly, Fr. Marczewski comes strolling onto the fields, walking on the path from the library! It turns out he had gone to the Chapel to consume the Eucharist, just in case. We were so relieved!

 

“Trust in God Alone”
Rev. Robert Marczewski
Chaplain

After everybody was evacuated, things seemed peaceful on campus, so I went to bed. I woke up at about 3:00 a.m. and saw everything on fire around us. I got concerned, and decided to go to the Chapel to consume the Blessed Sacrament. While I was there at the altar, the force of the wind and fire was flipping the Chapel’s big, heavy bronze doors open and closed. It was something to see!

Eventually I made it back to the soccer field, where everybody else was, and we just stayed there. There was a sense of humility, and a sense of helplessness. You just had to wait. And that part was a valuable experience, a reminder of something we teach and try to live by: Trust in God alone. He is in charge, and He brings good out of evil, even evil we cannot explain or understand.

The next morning the Blessed Sacrament was consecrated and reserved again in the tabernacle. And over the next week, when it was just the few of us on campus, we had Mass in the Chapel every day.

That was pretty much my experience of the fire — the sense of humility and mystery. No insurance, no fireman can give you safety. Ultimately it comes only from God.

 

Heroic Efforts
Pierre Rioux
Operations Supervisor

The fire trucks came to campus right away, around 10 or 15 minutes after we first saw the fire. At least some seemed to stay here all night long, maybe five or six U.S. Forest Service trucks and 30 to 40 firefighters.

Oftentimes when there was a flare-up or fire, a truck would drive over there very quickly, and the firefighters would work to put it out. They put out one by the guest trailers, and another by the oak tree between St. Bernard’s and St Katherine’s.

There was also a very brilliant, very visible fire that broke out in front of St. Joseph Commons, by the coffee shop, and they took care of that one, too.

Even after the fire had passed us by, the firefighters kept coming by campus, checking for spot fires, burning embers, things like that. Any one of those small fires could easily have spread had they not been extinguished. I think that, with divine assistance, the firefighters certainly saved the campus.

 

A Celebratory Feast
Ben Coughlin
Landscape Assistant

We brought a small refrigerator into the faculty building, where we were staying, and filled it up with food from the Commons. Thankfully, the kitchen crew had just prepped dozens of tri-tip steaks, so we had steak dinners every night.

I didn’t work on Friday because it was the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception. Instead I spent the day preparing for a big feast that night. I cooked up some steaks and fried potatoes, plus mushrooms and some other vegetables. There was a lot of heavy cream in the kitchen that I knew would need to be thrown out, so I made a triple batch of truffle loaf — chocolate mousse with raspberry sauce — for dessert. Dr. McLean invoked presidential privilege and authorized us to get a couple of bottles of wine and some port from the wine cellar.

We gathered in the Commons, in the President’s Dining Room, for a dinner that, at first, was going to be only in honor of the feast day. But it ended up being an end-of-the-ordeal meal, too, because the road opened up the next morning. It was a real celebration.

 

Confidence Well Founded
Michael F. McLean
President

When the embers were blowing, and the burning branches were raining down onto the field, and the wind was ferocious, I just thought, “It will be amazing if we get through this without a loss of property.”

On the other hand, I also watched the fire trucks come in, and I saw the professionalism in the firefighters’ approach. They were obviously well trained, and they proved to be well-prepared for whatever circumstances arose. I had a lot of confidence in them, and it turned out to be well founded.

I was also, from the beginning, very impressed with the dedication of the members of our own staff who stayed to protect our campus. They knew that there were things they could do to help, which they did, with no questions asked. They worked hard to make sure that the fire didn’t re-assert itself and do any further damage, and then they worked hard to try to put things back together.

I was edified by their performance, by their dedication to the College. They worked around the clock for that whole week, and their efforts were extraordinary.