The photo is the fire behind the Saints Peter and Paul Residence Hall, St Thomas Aquinas College, Santa Paula, California
A View Out of Dante
By Michael Livingston and Javier Panzar Contact Reporter Fires Wildfires
The Thomas fire is California’s largest wildfire on record, burning 273,400 acres during its destructive march across Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. The milestone reaffirmed 2017 as the most destructive fire season ever in the state. In October, a series of fires in wine country burned more than 10,000 homes and killed more than 40 people. The fires have been fuelled by dry conditions and intense winds. The Thomas fire has claimed just over 1,000 structures since it started on Dec. 4, and the life of San Diego fire engineer Cory Iverson.
The fire broke out in the foothills above Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula on Dec. 4, sweeping into downtown Ventura and burning hundreds of homes that first morning. The fire ebbed and flowed with the winds over the next couple of weeks, moving up the southern Santa Barbara County coast, with firefighters making a stand in the hills above Montecito.
“The main fire itself will not have any growth,” said Capt. Brandon Vaccaro of the California City Fire Department. “Any growth that we see or is reflected in the acreage will be based on the control burns.”
It was a close call for Thomas Aquinas College, the little college I had the honour of visiting in April 2016, and who gave its name to the wildfire raging in California. The fire started near to the college and circled all around it. Somehow, the college survived.
On December 20, 2017 Fr. Michael said:
“Thanks be to God! A few shifts of the wind and Thomas Aquinas College could have been annihilated!”
The view from the campus athletic fields, where sprinklers sprayed water overnight and embers rained down. (Courtesy Thomas Aquinas College)
The Thomas Fire is now the largest wildfire in California on record, burning 273,400 acres. 2017 is the most destructive fire season on record in the state.
“It was a view of hell.”
‘It was a view of hell’: The wildfire raging in California was named after their small college — it started that close by Susan Svrluga
Alexa D'Angelo
The fire that has burned for more than two weeks, consumed more than 272,000 acres, destroyed more than 1,000 structures and engulfed cities in two counties somehow spared the small Catholic college nestled in the hills near Santa Paula.
The wildfire erupted just half a mile away from Thomas Aquinas College. Students leaving dinner and making their way to evening seminars saw the flames rising near their campus. With the Santa Ana winds swirling in their ears and faces, hot, dry and fast, students heard the chapel bell rang, calling them to an emergency meeting. Here they were told to take a blanket, a pillow and any essentials they could grab within a minute from their rooms. In half an hour, the campus was empty.
The fire was so close that the college gave the fire its name: Thomas. That great Thomist Dante would found the scene and the scenario more fitting to the Inferno.
Clark Tulber, facilities manager at Thomas Aquinas College, who stayed to help put out spot fires on campus, described how the fire approached the campus. Around 1 or 1:30 am, Tulberg could see that the fire was very close. He and two of his workers climbed the bell tower to find out from which direction the fire would hit the campus. And they saw that the fire was approaching the college from all four sides. After 2 a.m., the wind shifted direction, with the result that the fire came to encircle the campus, along ridgelines in every direction. “I knew that the moment had come,” Tulberg said, as the fire descended on the campus from all sides all at once. “It was a view of hell,” says Tulberg. “Just walls of flame in every direction.” “It was coming toward the campus from all directions. We were surrounded,” he said.
School President Michael McLean and his wife were led out of the faculty building and on to an athletic field, where he had moved his car. Tulberg, his workers and some neighbours had also pulled their cars onto the field. In no time, the firestorm descended on the campus. Streams of fire cascaded down surrounding hills, like lava from a volcano. One-hundred-foot jets blew out of the storm, fuelled by the Santa Ana winds. When the flames attacked a tree, they started in the roots, working their way up through the center before shooting out of a branch that had been broken or pruned off. “It would look like a blowtorch coming out,” Tulberg said.
With the fire circling round, Tulberg turned on the sprinklers in the campus’s athletic fields. “It was raining fire. It was a view out of Dante,” Tulberg said. Burning embers rained down fire, blown by the wind and falling everywhere. “Not just embers, either,” Tulberg said. “There were small burning branches in the air. They were landing and starting spot fires on our buildings, near our buildings. A chair caught fire outside one of our dorms; we put the thing out.”
Tulberg, assistant landscaping coordinator Ben Coughlin, maintenance supervisor Andrew Carey and Pierre Rioux, the operations supervisor, stayed on campus to assist firefighters with the spot fires popping up all over the campus. President Michael McLean and his wife also stayed after students evacuated. The college chaplain remained on campus, and spent much of the night praying.
When blazes were seen shooting up suddenly, it looked as though the college buildings were burning. “Standing in the middle of the sports field at 3:30 a.m. with fire all around me, I thought for sure the campus was gone,” Tulberg said. Tulberg paid tribute to the hard work of the fightfighters that first night for the campus remaining largely unscathed. “I thought for sure different flare-ups would send buildings up in flames,” Tulberg said. “I was pleasantly surprised in the morning when we had lost no buildings. It’s a real testament to the firefighters.”
“Look, you could say we were lucky, but there are others that would say there was something else involved,” Tulberg said. “We are lucky. It’s burnt up to the campus on all four sides. ... The campus is still smoldering. But it’s here.”
Tulberg had never seen burning ash like this before: “There were sticks a foot and a half long, all in flames, landing all around you. “We were in the fire,” he said. Tulberg told his fellow workers, recent graduates of the college, that risking their lives was not in their job description. But they kept on fighting the fires, moving the sprinklers, and, armed only with shovels, stomping on the hot spots.
“You see a mountain on fire — a whole mountain — and it is full of fire,” he said. “And the winds are so strong that these plumes of fire are reaching out 100 feet horizontally. It is terrifyingly beautiful.” “I knew what was at stake,” he said. “It is no fun to be on fire.”
As dawn drew near, the flames were halted at the perimeter road. The only building that had been lost was a large storage shed. McLean praised the actions of those who had fought the fire: “Thanks to their efforts, the flames, amazingly — maybe even miraculously — never reached any of our major structures.”
By 6 or 7 a.m., McLean thought that the worst was over. But not so. The fire raged on and was only 30 percent contained more than a week after it had started, with more than 240,000 acres burned and nearly 1,000 buildings destroyed.
Checking the area around the campus, Tulberg discovered his aunt’s house destroyed, still burning, and a friend’s house likewise. The school’s longtime nurse lost her home, too. And McLean had friends who lost homes. The campus was spared but, where once it had been park-like, with 25 acres of woodland ferns fed by springs, now, in the words of Tulberg, “it looks like the moon.” Hills blackened, trees burned.
Over a week on from the onset of the fire, parts of Thomas Aquinas were still smouldering. But nothing burned brighter than the spirit of the members of the college community. ‘Milton Daily, a member of the Board of Governors, had gone to the church where students evacuated, concerned that many had nowhere to go. He and his wife, who live in Ventura County, took 10 home with them. In the days that followed, they helped the students lug home library books to study for final exams, shared meals and decorated a Christmas tree listening to a recording of Bing Crosby crooning carols.’ They sang, in Latin, classical Christmas songs: “With tears in my eyes, I still think about it,” Heather Daily said. “They all harmonized. It was just simply beautiful. We are family.” This is the true vision of Dante, not the more familiar warnings of Hell to come, but the sweet symphony of Paradise that is within our reach should we come to act and live well together:
‘Differing voices join to make sweet music;
So do the different orders in this our life
create sweet harmony among these spheres.’
Par 6: 124-126
And life returned to campus: “To hear birds in the air, chirping — it’s such a reassuring, pleasant sound,” Tulberg said.
McLean is expressing gratitude, for the efforts of the firefighters, the courage of the employees, the closeness that made evacuation and relocation so easy, and for the grace that spared the college.
“It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and not one that I’m anxious to have again, to tell you the truth,” McLean said. “It was unbelievable how quickly this fire moved.” “We appreciate all the prayers and good wishes that came our way during the worst,” McLean said. “Our thoughts and prayers go out to those who lost their homes. ... Our concerns are for those who suffered more than we did.”
'Don’t worry, mom.'
Thomas Aquinas College students report on their experience half a mile away from the Thomas Fire
California Catholic Daily exclusive by Roseanne Sullivan.
Freshman John Gartonzavesky called home from Thomas Aquinas College on the evening of December 4, the last Monday of the Fall semester. He told his mother that “the hills behind my dorm are on fire.”
By December 10, power was still out. The fire had burned up to the perimeter road and completely surrounded the campus. Even though the fire was (and still is) raging aways to the north and west, the road into the college was now drivable, and students had been allowed to return briefly to pick up their possessions for the past few days.
The fire behind Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity Chapel at Thomas Aquinas College. (Courtesy Thomas Aquinas College)
Extensive Damage
The damage is extensive. ‘The hills encircling the campus are all burned. On campus, the brunt of the fire was borne on the lower area. Before the fire, it had been a lush area, with redwoods and sycamore trees with drawbridges crossing over streams. That morning it was nearly unrecognizable to Tulberg: All of the underbrush was gone, and a layer of ash ankle to knee-deep carpeted the area.’
“Now it’s like walking on the moon,” Tulberg said.
The Recovery Begins
‘After the students left, Tulberg continued to oversee the recovery, which included removing debris, putting out the smoldering hot spots that remain, and troubleshooting the myriad other problems caused by the fire.’ For Tulberg, the reality of the fire has yet to fade. “I’m told the fire was over two weeks ago,” he said in an interview Dec. 19, “and it just seems like a few days to me.”
Costs – And How to Help
“We appreciate all the prayers and good wishes that came our way during the worst,” McLean said. “Our thoughts and prayers go out to those who lost their homes. ... Our concerns are for those who suffered more than we did.”
Total costs of the fire to the college have yet to be determined, but are expected to run into the tens of thousands of dollars.
“We had to rent generators and hire additional security,” McLean said. “The food in the freezers and refrigerators had to be thrown out, so we need to replace that, and there are many trees that need to be removed from campus. A big redwood just fell a couple of days ago.”
Some damage may lie in the future, due to the possibility of mudslides during the upcoming rainy season, which begins in January. Tulberg said he is consulting soil engineers and civil engineers to help the college prepare.
“This event, in a way, is not over,” McLean said. “We won’t know the full impact until the rains come.”
Thomas Aquinas College is seeking donations in the wake of the fire to help cover costs. Donations can be made on the college’s website thomasaquinas.edu.
McLean said he’s grateful to those who have donated to the college to help with the additional expenses and to the staff members who stayed that first night fighting to protect the campus.
For now, McLean said the fire has only been a “major inconvenience” for the college, in contrast to the tragedy it has been for so many others in the area. He credits the fire-resistant building materials, such as clay-tile rooves and stucco over wood buildings, the bushes and trees that surrounded them, and the local firefighters with helping to save the college.
But there is also a sense that God’s hand was at work in the whole process. “I have a strong sense that the college was spared and that we were very fortunate to escape with so little damage and certainly escape without loss of life,” McLean said.
Gartonzavesky said, “It’s basically a miracle.”
Help Us Recover! ‘Would you please help us in our hour of need? Any gift will be greatly appreciated!’
I was happy to make a contribution. I like the approach of this college. I like its way of life. And I like that it teaches Dante. I am currently finishing a book on Dante. The world needs his vision of peace, justice and harmony. That’s the view out of Dante that I seek to bring to the world.
The Poet of Catholic Liberal Education
By Dr. Brian T. Kelly (’88)
Thomas Aquinas College believes that to learn is to discover and grow in the truth about reality. It is the truth, and nothing less, that sets men free. And because truth is both natural and supernatural, the College offers an academic program that aims at both natural and divine wisdom.
This curriculum presents the arts and sciences of liberal education as a comprehensive whole. There are no majors, no minors, no electives, and no specializations. The four-year interdisciplinary course of study makes use of the original writings of the great philosophers, historians, mathematicians, poets, scientists, and theologians of the West. Homer, Herodotus, Plato, Euclid, Aristotle, St. Augustine, Shakespeare, Einstein, and especially St. Thomas Aquinas are among the authors read.
There are no textbooks. There are also no lectures in the classroom. The curriculum is a sustained conversation in the form of tutorials, seminars, and laboratories guided by tutors who assist students in the work of reading, analyzing, and evaluating these great books. Students develop the lost tools of inquiry, argument, and translation — in critically reading and analyzing texts, in mathematical demonstration, and in laboratory investigation.
Equipped with these tools, the graduates are fortified to undertake any area of study, professional training, or vocation. Grounded in the arts of thinking and with a broad, integrated vision of the whole of life and learning, every subject becomes an open door. Even more important, alumni are prepared to live well the life of the free citizen and of the Christian.
‘Thomas Aquinas is an unusual place, tiny and philosophical, with no majors, and much reverence for the classical texts that frame and define its curriculum.’
The college has 370 students who study the same curriculum and graduate with a bachelor of arts in liberal arts. The curriculum focuses on the great books of Western civilization. Students read and analyze original texts of important thinkers in math, science, philosophy and other subjects.
That’s quite an education. But this fire has taught lessons in life that will endure a lifetime. And they are lessons that we all need to learn.
I am reading harrowing stories from friends of friends, from places I visited. This is where climate change gets close and personal. We need prayers, education and appropriate action. Only together will these things suffice. And we need effective action that is measured and proportionate, without retribution. The education here goes in all directions to converge on the central issue, as a mutual learning. All have to be parts of the solution, if there is indeed to be a solution. I heard far too many people using the fires as an instrument for their proselytising, expressing not one word of compassion or concern, and delivering lectures that were not only misleading in their one-sidedness but wholly counter-productive in confirming people’s suspicions that environmentalism has been hijacked by those with political causes to promote. Reading some express their taste for revenge and retribution, I gained a clear sense of people who are utterly incapable of winning political power by persuading people to their cause, and so satisfy themselves with a feeling of power allied to an image of nature hitting back at civilisation.
A message of thanks to me from Michael F. McLean, School President at Thomas Aquinas College:
“It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and not one that I’m anxious to have again, to tell you the truth,” McLean said. “It was unbelievable how quickly this fire moved.”
We, and I mean we, need to move just as quickly, in a way that is appropriate, effective and sensitive to the problem we face. And that means something much more than stating the science on climate change and dictating actions to people and communities as passive agents. For the umpteenth time I shall state that that approach is morally offensive, politically crude, sociologically illiterate and utterly counter-productive.
Can certain environmentalists, the ones who are more concerned to push their naturalism, atheism and scientism against religion and a religious ethics, please get this message, because it is loud and clear – you are attacking people who not only express a concern for the natural environment, but also the moral environment, and understand that the health of the one is bound up with the health of the other. I have cited Rabbi Sacks’ talk on this on another post. In The Climate Commitment, I rounded up statements on climate change from the full range of religions and religious leaders – they have the message and are not only on board, are trying to lead people. Attacks here merely alienate so many people that it leaves me doubting the sincerity of the climate commitment on the part of others; that is, they seem more concerned with the narcissism of lesser differences, their pet prejudices and political choices, than they are with the coming together in love to work for the common good. Those ‘others’ mean precisely that, people who don’t necessarily share your views and politics. And, short of a mass conversion of all to the one view, or a global dictatorship enforcing the single view, we have to learn to collaborate, a word which derives from the Latin, meaning to labour together. And, with respect to the religious ethic, I would add that this common endeavour is much more likely to happen if we see ourselves as enfolded within the Greater Love that moves all things. It is that Love that transcends the cycles that entrench us in our lesser differences. And no, I don’t think people who are a part of organized religion are ‘sheep,’ as one social media friend put it, at the same time as they were busily proclaiming that love is all we need and that there are no chosen people for God. I agree. And that love extends to the people derided as sheep too. And all creatures. What it’s all worth, if we can’t be kind to one and all? That’s what the belief in a personal God brings to this discussion, the God of Love as the God of personal relationships, that draws us out of ourselves to see God in the face of the other. I not only know the ‘sheep,’ I am one of them. And I see little love in such abusive comments. I seek always to be encouraging, trying to get people to identify the common concern in the particular angles they may take to social and environmental issues. There is, however, a terrible splitting, flattening, and narrowing of vision in the world, so that we are forced to take positions and sides that pitch us against each other. I seek to challenge and overthrow such reductionism by widening and deepening the vision of the world. With respect to ecology, I embrace a deep ecology in the sense of embracing a deeper sense of the natural world in terms of fact and value together, delivering meaning and setting nature within the sense of the sacred. Because, with all the knowledge and know-how in the world, and the best political will and legal force we can muster, without the springs of human motivation and action in place and firing, the problem will outrun us.
There are lessons here for all, not just in establishing causes, and proposing practicable solutions which all can support, but in shaping our reactions appropriately, with empathy and compassion. And that means without the ill-disguised relish and taste for revenge which scarred far too many commentaries on the part of supposed environmentalist friends. There was little love and friendship here. Little human sympathy and concern. And that has caused me to put some distance between myself and certain anti-civilization, deep ecologist naturalists who, for all of their expressed concern with ecological destruction, possess a strong misanthropic strain that renders any solutions they propose either an idle pipe dream or utterly repellent. Had such people been prepared to reach out beyond their small and narrow communities, they could have seen that every leader of every religious body on the planet is preaching a message of environmental stewardship and Creation Care, and made common cause. Instead, they deliver hectoring lectures detached from practices, propose solutions so detached from realities as to be impossibilities inviting failure, and indulge in atheistic abuse of religion that serves only to cut environmentalism off from the possibility of extending its roots in the greater community. I have had more to say on that unpleasant characteristic of certain forms of ecologism in other recent post. To come straight to the point made there, all those who are concerned with the condition of the planetary ecology need to see that they have to come together and work on the moral environment and the socio-relational environment, putting character formation and social formation together in devotion to a scale of values, with exactly the same passion they bring to protecting the natural environment. Work and commitment to the latter alone, in the belief that that the politics and ethics of the free society of flourishing individuals follows from ‘Nature,’ is a delusion that not only loses us the free society, but fails to prevent the destruction of the natural environment. Give me some mediation in relation to practices, institutions, structures and relations, not abstract entities of uncertain critical purchase and social relevance.