The Girls Camp U-Haul

Here's how our girls camp started on Monday:

Our stake goes to a camp about 3 hours north of us. They use school buses to transport the girls and Uhaul to transport the gear.

Monday morning, the YCL's (youth camp leaders) and 4th years go up. The YCL's set up camp and the 4th years participate in an overnight hike. So their stuff, along with all the food for 250 people for a week was in there. Luckily no one was hurt! The driver did his best to safely get the truck out of the road before he had to jump out onto the middle of the freeway.

The buses were turned around and girls dropped off at the church. Anything not burned or melted was loaded into another Uhaul and sent to the church to be sorted into the possibly salvageable and the not salvageable. (Everything in the truck had been sprayed/soaked with cancer causing fire retardant. All food and toiletries were an immediate loss. Other items were dependent upon the severity of soaking.) We had 5 leaders going to camp from our ward. Four of them were already on the mountain and were told to stay there. I was planning on going up Tuesday and there was another leader here who wasn't able to go to camp. We met at the church to help with the work.

I spent five hours going through bags with girls and sorting out what would be sent to a professional cleaning/restoration company and what would go into the big trailer of trash. The other leader spent that time meeting the girls from our ward and their parents, trying to answer questions and make sure everyone had sleeping bags, blankets, clothes etc. ready to go tomorrow. It was an unbelievable day. Some of the girls were understandably upset but most of what I saw was resilience and optimism.

Unfortunately, our ward supplies were on the truck and very little of it was saved. The leaders on the mountain went into a nearby town for supplies. I borrowed and bought everything else before leaving Tuesday morning. Let's just say that I was completely fried by the time I got to camp Tuesday afternoon.

All the girls from our ward made it to camp. All the girls I went through bags with made it to camp. The stake spent all night and the next morning putting camp back together (including re-purchasing something like $4,500 worth of food). It was truly amazing.

Tomorrow night: The Girls Camp Flood