Students recount night of Thomas Fire at Thomas Aquinas College
Elena Zepeda saw the fire when it was just a glow on a hill next to the Thomas Aquinas College campus the evening of Dec. 4.
She was sitting in the coffee shop on the campus near Santa Paula when a friend came in and told her to look outside. Standing outside, they couldn’t see the flames yet, but they knew the fire was close — too close for comfort.
“I started running to go get stuff and people yelled at us and said, ‘No come to the commons right now,’” Zepeda said. “I had the feeling … that all of this was going to be burned down and none of our stuff would be left.”
Fire alarms whirred and chapel bells sounded, alerting the students that what would grow to be the largest officially recorded fire in California history was barreling down the hill straight for the small, private college.
“It was weird not even to be able to grab a wallet or anything,” Zepeda said. “I couldn’t get a single thing, so that was pretty scary.”
Zepeda left with just what she had on her that evening before the Monday night seminar.
“I don’t know how much we were in danger for our lives. It was kind of just scary for that reason,” Zepeda said. “But it was also scary just thinking of the college burning down, which is our home.”
The students, including Zepeda, evacuated the campus around 6:30 the night of Dec. 4. A half hour after they had left, the only road in and out of the campus was shut down. Several staff members including the president, Michael McLean, stayed behind to fend off the flames licking the campus perimeter throughout the night with firefighters.
The Thomas Fire burned for weeks, consumed more than 281,000 acres, destroyed more than 1,000 structures and engulfed cities in two counties but somehow spared the Catholic college nestled in the hills. The fire was finally 100 percent contained Jan. 12.
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The blaze got its namesake from the college when it started about a half mile from the campus.
“It was coming toward the campus from all directions. We were surrounded,” Clark Tulberg, the facilities manager at the college who stayed to help put out spot fires on campus after the fire started, told The Star in December.
The fire pushed right up to the edge of the access road and at one point, Tulberg said it was “raining fire” on the campus.
“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.”
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.
“I thought it probably was not going to be that big of a deal; they’ll put it out,” said Thomas Cain, a senior at the college. “We’ll evacuate, but we’ll be back in a day. I wasn’t overly concerned that it would burn down. ... I was pretty confident that it’d pull through.”
The college canceled final exams and students went back about a week or so later to get their belongings before going on winter break. Students returned several days before Jan. 8 to take the exams that had been postponed in December.
“Heading up the 150, I just saw this complete wasteland, and it was pretty crazy and then I got back and was like ‘The campus is still there, just untouched,’” Cain said. “It has to be everyone’s prayers and the hard work of the responders. I thought it was a strong testament for God’s care of this place like He wants it here.”
As of Jan. 15, students were back in class. They sat in their classrooms made up of anywhere between 10 and 20 students in wooden chairs around a big wooden table. They discussed the great thinkers and their texts and engaged in thoughtful discussion as they had before the fire. Notably, no student dropped out after the fire.
Outside one of the classrooms buildings, Siobhan Heekin-Canedy, a senior, recounted her experience leaving the school, her home, the night of Dec. 4.
“It was all kind of a blur, but I think I started gathering a few things in case we needed to evacuate,” Heekin-Canedy said. “The fire alarms started going off, then I stepped outside and it was just this huge blaze.”
Heekin-Canedy couldn’t help but think of the things she had left behind in her dorm, the things she didn’t think to grab in a hurry.
“It was pretty scary trying to just grab stuff to take with us. We didn’t know when we’d be coming back,” Heekin-Canedy said. “I was leaving with the assumption that I might not be able to retrieve any of my stuff, ever. … It sounds so silly, but I was panicking because I have this teddy bear that has belonged to my boyfriend since he was, like, 5 years old and as we were evacuating I was just like, ’Oh, my gosh, what if the teddy bear burns?’
“So I was, like, running back to the dorm to get it. … It sounds so silly, but I was just thinking, those little things with sentimental value, they just might not be here when I get back,” Heekin-Canedy said.
Everything on the main campus was spared — something the students and staff call a miracle. The campus was covered in soot and ash, and some crevices on the roofs of certain buildings are still blackened, but everything was standing.
Coming back to the campus, students had heard rumors about structures damaged and buildings lost. But when they saw for their own eyes that everything was intact, they were relieved.
“We were just so grateful. It was just really such a blessing. We couldn’t believe that the campus was still there,” Heekin-Canedy said. “It just does seem so miraculous. … There’s a bunch of rosemary bushes just behind the dorm, and they started to burn and it just stopped and, like, there was plenty of fuel for the fire and I guess there must have been firefighters there, but I just couldn’t believe how close it got.”
The college is still totaling the cost of damage to the lower campus, where there was damage to the president’s home and the grounds and surrounding trees.