COMING BACK
FROM DISASTERS BY MIKE GAST
Thomas Fire © Jeff Turner via Flickr Creative commons
If you operate a business in the outdoors, eventually Mother Nature will show you who’s really in charge. Glamping operations, no matter their locations, can’t escape the reach of devastating natural disasters.
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successful rebound from devastating events seems to hinge on advanced planning, the right insurance, and an indefatigable spirit that ignites a comeback. Here are the stories of two glamping operations completely wiped out by natural disasters in 2017, as well as what they learned on their journeys back.
FIRE ON THE MOUNTAIN / VENTURA RANCH KOA RESORT, CALIFORNIA Just before Christmas 2017, Scott Cory was thrilled with the glamping accommodations at his Ventura Ranch KOA Holiday just outside Santa Paula, California. Glamping was luring an entirely new category of “non-camper” guest to the park bordering picturesque Santa Paula Creek, just east of Ojai. Business was booming. But in the early evening of Sunday, December 4, 2017, something sparked a fire in the mountain brush just five miles from the campground. Everything changed. “I got a call from my maintenance person saying he could see flames in the hills,” Cory said. “We
were having 50-mile-per-hour Santa Ana winds at the time. I knew this could be a disaster.” Those first flickers of flame became the massive Thomas Fire, at the time the largest wildfire to ever strike California. It eventually consumed 281,893 acres and destroyed more than 1,000 homes and structures. Cory’s order to evacuate his facility had guests scrambling to leave. Luckily, it was a Sunday evening and most weekend guests had already departed. Those who remained were still leaving when firefighters arrived.
“It was chaotic,” Cory remembers. “We had one recreational vehicle leaving with its slide out still extended, they were in such a hurry.” Firefighters arrived just 15 minutes before the flames. In the end, Cory lost 26 structures including 14 Deluxe Glamping Cabins, 12 teepees, 4 glamping tents, 150 trees and most of his underground utilities. “Everything was flattened,” he said. “Fire temperatures reached 1,500 degrees. The coins in the washing machines melted together.” The metal roofs on all glamping cabins warped and cracked and the concrete siding turned to dust. What had been a premiere California glamping facility had been completely devastated within a half hour.
ONE RESORT, TWO HURRICANES / CINNAMON BAY RESORT, U.S. VIRGIN ISLANDS
Pool furniture melted by fire at Ventura Ranch
4 8 | G l a m p i n g B u s i n e s s A m e r i c a s | g l a m p i n g s h o w. u s
If you live in the Caribbean, sooner or later you will experience a hurricane. But the two back-to-back Category 5 storms that walloped the tiny island of Saint John in the U.S. Virgin Islands in September 2017 were a surprise even to longtime residents. The storms completely flattened what had been
