First day of Work

So After arriving October first we were given time to move in and get settled then we were invited to a meet and greet dinner at Brett Wingo's home, he is the Camp Manager here at CCR. We were given and orientation on saturday and sunday was supposed to be our first official day of work.

Sunday Oct. 3rd started off awesome went to Church at 8:00 then headed to Doug and Sue Freitas house for an incredible breakfast. We then got back to camp and were walking to work around 1:00 pm when over the radio it was announced that there was a forest fire on the back side of Sheep mountain, which is the mountain Crooked Creek Ranch is on! Interns were instructed to help escort the guests that were still on camp out of camp and to pack our car with an emergency travel bag. It was crazy.


Thats camp on the right of the photo and the very start of the fire. The photo was taken by one of our neighbors. However when I was helping people leave from the entrance sign you could see the 80 foot flames it was frightening

After we evacuated the guests from camp, all of Camp staff took there cars (now full of the belongings i really didn't want to burn i.e. my guitar.) up to the office. We were told that we weren't being evacuated yet however a reverse 911 call told us to prepare to be evacuated (a reverse 911 is when 911 calls you!). We all sat up at the office we waited to see if the fire would co me over sheep mountain.

The fire department jumped right into action to stop the fire. They had slurry bombers out right away that is what the red stuff is. Another photo by our neighbor he had a great vantage point

Helicopters used the tiny pond on camp to grab water to dump on it.






We watched it for five hours and because there is a lot of dead pine trees from a pine beetle that kills them everyone thought it would be a horrible disaster. Every time the flame hit a new patch of dead trees you could just see the smoke expanding rapidly pretty strange. The maintenance staff trained us with a trial by fire attitude....any who they trained us on how to run hoses if the fire did come close enough though as they were telling us to use the hand sprayer for the garden hose I thought we may not have a huge impact but I went with it. Luckily we never had to use them!

This is a picture by Alyssa Guidon from out in front of the office. As we watched waiting.

The Lords hand was here at Crooked Creek the entire time. Wind is really bad in a forest fire. It pushes the fire along otherwise the fire has a harder time spreading. That sunday the wind, which normally comes over sheep mountain heading south east, which would have brought the fire right on top of us was blowing north west. It blew the fire away from any houses or property. It burned up 520 acres of public land. No property loss.

We never did work that day...