Camp…

This past weekend was our winter weekend. It went well, but Friday was quite the adventure. Friday we had a major windstorm. It toppled trees and that made getting into camp hard. Thankfully the bus in front of me knew the back roads in the pitch black. We followed them and made it into Lake Champion to discover that all the electricity was out. The emergency lighting was on, ran by generators, in the hallways, so we were at least able to find our rooms and drop off our stuff. We went to the gym and club, which were dimly lit by generators, and had a lot of fun. While walking back to the dorms, I thought I heard an alarm going off. I turned to Lindy, one of my girl leaders and friend, and said, “Do you hear that alarm going off?” We kept walking and as we approached the girls’ dorms we noticed that the fire alarm was going off at the first dorm. My first thought was that the lack of electricity tripped the wire and that is why it was going off. And then we saw the smoke. And then more smoke. We came to realize that this was major, as property crew were running around and volunteer fire fighter crews began to show up. The fire grew more before it was contained. What had happened was that the generator overheated, caught on fire, and then caught the building on fire. Some girls and leaders lost their belongings to fire and or smoke damage. Thankfully, no one was in the building while it happened. That would have been very bad.

Anyway, here is the crazy part. When the fire was going we gathered all our kids and met in the clubroom to do a head count. This is still w/o electricity mind you. The head leader then asks for all the Ferndale leaders to meet with him. (Ferndale is one of the girls’ dorms along with Brookview.) Each dorm contains about 8 rooms/cabins and bathrooms. Lindy and I were curious as to why they wanted to see us, as we were in the dorm next to it, the dorm that did not burn. Come to find out, somehow, we went into Brookview 5 instead of Ferndale 5. Because it was dark, we could not see the building name, so when we went to room 5 and saw it empty so we thought we were in the right place. We were supposed to be in the building that burned. Can you believe it? While I feel very badly for the people who lost their stuff, at the same time I am sooo thankful that we did not have to deal with that. I also feel really guilty.

I have pics I will try to post.