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fires Panther Prowler • Dec. 7, 2018
Community stands strong in the face of wildfires
Hannah Gross Staff Writer
Jessica Zhou Photographer
Sarah Lu Photographer
Clarissa Shin Photographer
Fires threaten citizens’ safety
Emily Augustine/Prowler
Nobody had expected what was going to happen on Nov. 8, 2018. Still reeling from the Borderline shooting that had happened the night before, Ventura County was not ready. The afternoon of Nov. 8, the Hill fire broke out, which burned 4,531 acres before it was fully contained. The fire started in the Santa Rosa Valley and spread very quickly, jumping the 101 freeway and burning part of the Vallecito trailer park homes. Soon after, the Woolsey fire started near Simi Valley and quickly spread throughout Ventura and Los Angeles before it was put out after burning 96,949 acres and destroying 1500 structures. When the structures are rebuilt, “the new homes will be designed and built to comply with newer State building codes that have greater fire prevention aspects,” Peter
Gilli, deputy director of community development in Thousand Oaks, said. Many students in the Newbury Park and Thousand Oaks area had to be evacuated due to the fires’ close proximity to their homes. Deighan Valko, senior, lives in Santa Rosa Valley, close to where the Hill fire started. Valko is the owner of many animals that she had to bring to other houses when she was evacuated. The main issue for Valko was her horse, who was in Newbury Park. “The smoke in Newbury was really bad, and it was bad for (the horse’s) lungs to be exposed to that… so we had to take them away, try to get the smoke away for a while,” Valko said. “It’s stressful to transport them… It can almost make them sick when they get super stressed like that.” However, the community came together and helped move horses to safer places. “The people who weren’t being evacuated were helping the people who were being evacuated,” Valko said. Meagan Pruner, senior, lives behind the trailer park, where the fire got within 150 feet of her home. She first found out about the fire during fifth period. “At first it was just a cloud of smoke so I thought it wasn’t that big of a deal. But by the end of fifth period I could see the fire on the hill right by my house so I kind of panicked,” Pruner said. When Pruner saw her house for the first time after the fire, she was surprised at how close the fire had gotten. “It was kind of crazy. I don’t know how else to say it. We knew it got close but we didn’t know (it was) that close,” Pruner said. “Everything was super smoky. I left my window open so everything was covered in soot.” Unfortunately, others were not as lucky. The aftermath of the fires has left many people without their homes. One of these people is Nicholas Guerin, career education coordinator who had lived in the Seminole Springs mobile home park for five and a half years. After evacuating early Friday morning, the day after the Woolsey fire started, Guerin found out that his home had burned
down. “It was gut wrenching, it was a punch to the stomach, because that’s your home, it’s part of your identity. It feels almost like you lost a loved one,” Guerin said. “It’s not just about the building or the furniture, it’s about everything you created there, in that place, in that space, and that time you spent with your family and all of the experiences you had and all of the love are all, in a instant, gone.” “You are never prepared for this type of an event 100%, but I can say that we knew that we were in a “high fire” area and we even paid an annual tax for wildfire protection. But my wife and I have done some preparation, especially observing how devastating the Thomas fires were last year, knowing that it could have been us,” Guerin said. Despite knowing that this could happen, it was still hard to deal with it. However, Guerin did not have much time to grieve. His wife had just given birth to a third child, and they needed to find a place to stay. That was Saturday, Nov. 10. Two days later, Guerin found and rented a house in Oak Park. “It was unbelievable… I was very emotional watching all of the news coverage of the Borderline tragedy and so I was already in an emotional state.” Guerin said. After hearing about Guerin’s home, Steve Lepire, principal, and other teachers “put together a coordinated effort to ask if anyone had any items for donation or if anyone was able to provide any gift cards,” Guerin said. “So what happened was that we ending up taking an empty house into a fully functioning home in a record time. I think I was able to rent that house in Oak Park on Monday and by the end of the week the house was filled with furniture.” The community support has helped Guerin and others throughout this whole ordeal. “What has helped with the uncertainty is the students, teachers and the people showing their support. It makes it feel like everything is going to be okay.”
School closures impact students and faculty The entire school district of Conejo Valley made an impactful decision for school closures during the period in which the fires affected the surrounding communities. On Thursday, Nov. 8, the district released a notice that all CVUSD schools would be closed the next day. The district then decided to close all schools until after Thanksgiving break and resume on Nov. 26. Although staff members in the district and on the NPHS campus had to adjust to the school closure, they felt it was the best idea to help rebuild the community. Steve Lepire, principal, enforced the executive decision of closing the CVUSD schools, in order to keep the students, faculty and district safe while assessing the outcome of school campuses post fire. Lepire also wanted to respect the physical and emotional damage the community was enduring. “The difficult thing was determining the impact the fires had on our general community in terms of the amount of people that were evacuated and had not been able to get back in their homes, and the ability to assess the damages, what actual damage had taken place at specific schools,” Lepire said. The school faced the challenge of adjusting the curriculum based on the days missed due to the fire. Teachers on campus were encouraged not to assign any work due the first day back, and to have resources available for students to review any missed
material. Lepire acknowledged that block classes would be affected more than rotators, and students taking AP or IB level classes may miss a critical amount of information. “We tried to make it very clear with teachers, and communicating with parents, that the goal is not to try to catch and make up everything that was missed in between that time period. We are going to look and see exactly what the essential things we want to get covered by the end of the term are,” Lepire said. Although the fires have caused shifts in the curriculum, finals for students will remain the same, and will be taken the week of Jan. 14. “There was some conversation about moving the semester back a week, but the problem with that is we have that week blocked off, basically for no activities that week of finals. We build it around what we have,” Lepire said. The NPHS community had concerns about making up the days missed, however, the CVUSD campuses will most likely not have to make up the days and have applied for a waiver based on natural disaster. During the period in which the students were not at school, campuses were getting repaired and cleaned, in order for students to safely enter back into the school environment. Campus restoration workers dusted and cleaned every classroom
from floor to ceiling. Each classroom had its air filters replaced to ensure a healthy air quality. Lucia Lemieux, english teacher, had to make several changes in her curriculum for term one. Since Lemieux teaches block semester classes for 9th and 10th graders, the school closure has affected the timing of her assignments. “Unfortunately there’s going to be a gap between what we finish before break and what we finish after. I’ll try to come up with some innovative ways to help refresh their memories when they come back but I’ve looked at the schedule there’s just no way I can do it,” Lemieux said. Many teachers have to cram assignments in before the end of the semester in order to prepare each student for their IB tests in May. Debbie Dogancay, IB coordinator, has been planning the rest of her course accordingly. “We’ve been working together by teams to figure out where we can distill concepts to the essence in order to focus on what’s on essential to prepare students for the exam. We’re not doing double time, we’re just cutting out non-essential pieces so that the students are just as well prepared for the exam, but taking into account that we lost days,” Dogancay said.
