Wildfires Burn Close to Home

When Marion R. Holmes ’06 left her summer job in New Hampshire to start anew at a West Coast environmental education center in August, she was bracing for a change.

But she was not quite ready for the uncertainty of being evacuated from her home less than two months later, a result of one of the several California wildfires that have raged through the southern part of the state this week. The fires have blackened some 645 square miles in seven counties and led to the evacuation of half a million people, including many members of the Harvard community and their families.

“I kind of uprooted and decided to start my life all over again, and now my life might be burning down,” said Holmes, who was evacuated on Monday morning, several hours after showing up for work at the Pali Institute, an education center in the San Bernardino mountains.

Holmes was hardly the only member of the Harvard community to be touched by the wildfires this week.

Assistant Dean of Harvard College Jay Ellison wrote in an e-mailed statement yesterday that resident deans had been asked to contact students from affected areas to offer the College’s support.

“As you know, we have a lot of students from [California] and many have families in the area who are affected,” he wrote.

Sitting in the Lamont Library Cafe yesterday, Christina R. Ward ’09 looked at a Google Map feature that tracked the locations of the fires. She recalled a Monday afternoon phone call she had received from a high-school friend, who told her that Rancho Bernardo—Ward’s former school district—was “burning down.”

“This is where my uncle lives,” said Ward, pointing at a spot near the red region of the map. “Red means it’s burning,” she added, when asked to clarify the map’s color scheme.

Ward, whose aunt, uncle, and parents were all evacuated earlier this week, went on to note that few Harvard students are aware of the destruction being wrought on the opposite coast.

“Most people are like, ‘What are you doing?’” she said. “I’m like, ‘Watching the news with my neighborhood burning down.’”

Holmes, who is currently staying with her brother in Los Angeles, said she has been monitoring Web sites and police logs for word of her home’s condition. She added that a couple of hundred homes in her hometown of Running Spring have been affected by the flames.

“This time yesterday I thought I was going to have to file for bankruptcy, I have no job, and I have no place to live,” she said.

Despite the magnitude of this week’s fires and the ensuing evacuations, Nikhil A. Balaraman ’10, whose family was evacuated because of the fires, stressed that large-scale burning was not out of the ordinary for this time of year. He recalled “fire days” during high school, when classes were cancelled because burning vegetation made air quality unhealthy.

Researchers from the 3,000-acre Harvard Forest in Petersham, Mass., where much of the University’s research in forest biology is conducted, confirmed that wildfires in the southern California region were to be expected.

“When I was an undergraduate, my ecology professor said that coastal California was being developed in order to burn down, so this is nothing new,” said David R. Foster, the director of the Harvard Forest. “This is a landscape that was made to burn. It’s got vegetation that dries out and has conditions that are perfectly conditioned to carry immense fires.”

For her part, Holmes—secure in her brother’s home, though still unsure of the fate of her own house—seemed ready to resign herself to nature. In the meantime, she’s heading out on a little vacation.

“My life’s on fire,” she said. “Might as well go to Vegas.”

—Staff writer Christian B. Flow can be reached at cflow@fas.harvard.edu.