ADAM BARON
Resident Director
Around the world there are certain places that awaken our imagination and serve as symbols of everything we associate with that particular region. Southern California and particularly Malibu is that kind of place for many. It is America’s paradise hub and the place where many of Western culture’s creative elite make their residence. Therefore when fires ran through “Shangri-La” last week and ran through greater Southern California, something of a sobering and sublime mood also laid claim on its people and pristine landscape.
The unbiased weather did not discriminate where the winds would blow or where burning embers would land. The result led to the spectacular reality and images of Mother Natures’ continuing reminded that wealth, power, beauty, and fame cannot protect us. Rather we have been humbled and are simply grateful to the brave men and women who fought these fires from land and air to preserve something of our way of life here. We now begin the task of counting our losses and rebuilding.
On the campus of Pepperdine University students have returned to classes and the tasks of writing papers and preparing for exams. Here everyone is indebted to the university leadership and emergency contingency plans they prepared in advance for such an occasion. Many students chose to leave campus, but for those who heeded the council of administration to stay, they witnessed nature’s fury and humanity’s best instinct to preserve and protect.
As a Resident Director I would like students who live on campus to know that we understand the importance of communicating information to students and assisting them during a natural disaster.
To meet this need, Housing and Community Living asks staff members, faculty, and students, who are willing, to volunteer to a part of the RERT (Residential Emergency Response Team). RERT members are not trained first responders but go through a brief training each year that provides volunteers with specific information regarding their role. Volunteers are asked to come to campus (if possible) or remain on the Malibu campus during these difficult times in large part to communicate timely and accurate information. Our greatest concern is the safety and well being of students. Therefore it is our exercise to ‘recommend’ to students that they stay on campus and, if necessary, to relocate to the cafeteria or the field house, where university officials are also located, in order to receive pertinent information.
I understand the anxieties but was surprised by how main students nevertheless chose to leave campus. I come from the Midwest where we mainly get thunderstorms, tornados and snowstorms. Therefore, this was my first fire experience.
Regardless, I felt confident with the university leadership, who have experienced this before, and the Los Angeles County Fire Department that executed their operations from the Drescher Graduate Complex. For many the fires were just a little to close for comfort, or they had friends and family from around the country watching events on CNN who advised them to leave. Nevertheless, as ironic as it may sound, we actually live in a very “green zone” of safety on campus and engineer very specific plans for all of our safety here in the beautiful and occasionally precocious Malibu.
There are many moving parts when something so daunting strikes at such a large area. No doubt there will be armchair editors ready to explain what and how things could have been handled better. In my view such questions miss the main point. If questions raised by the media or residence affected by the fires aim to get at improving response time and governmental engagement, those are fair questions.
However, we must also consider the human element and how ‘we the people’ use the land. I don’t mean to say that we caused the fires or get into a discussion about Global Warming. All I am saying is that paradise was here, along with the Santa Ana winds and the beautiful landscape, long before us. We’ve learned how to split an atom and fly a man to the moon, but we haven’t learned how to manage the weather, and I am not sure we ever will or that we are suppose to.
I am confident that we must continue to explore our place on this small planet and our indebted relationship to it. It is a slippery task but one reason I live here is to somehow grab hold of this relationship and honor it.
11-01-2007
