California Fires

Unless you've had your head stuck in a hole, you have heard about the California fires. They started on Sunday morning in Malibu. I went to school at Pepperdine, a lot of you know, and the fires were on all sides of campus. Malibu Pres is a well known church just across Malibu Canyon Road from Pepperdine and a lot of students worship there, and it burned completely. My sister in law was on her way to drive through Malibu Canyon to sing with the worship team at Malibu Pres, only to be turned around because the road was closed. She didn't really know the seriousness of the situation until she went back home and watched her church burn on tv. My parents and I watched it here at home as well. A lot of my college friends were part of the Malibu Pres college group (as well as my brother and sister in law) and I'm sure they are saddened by the loss of the church building. Of course the church is the people not the building, but it is devastating all the same. The castle that they showed burning was one that was part of the Malibu hillside landscape. I never got to see it up close, but I saw it everytime I drove by on PCH. It was weird to see so many things burning that I knew from going to school in Malibu. We have some family friends who are professors on campus and they took these incredible pictures of the fires around Pepperdine. The first one is looking up the hill toward the new Drescher Graduate campus and you can see fires on the hill. The other three are taken from the Drescher Campus looking down over the rest of campus. The second picture is looking down over campus and over the ocean. The next two are looking out over campus in two different directions. Weird, weird, weird to see fire and smoke so close to my university. I have many friends that still live in the area, work at Pepperdine, or still go to school there! My sister is in her senior year at Pepp, but luckily she lives off campus and her home wasn't threatened. And she was in her home since it was a Sunday morning so she was safe. Still scary though. The campus was definitely being watched over by God because nothing was damaged on campus except for a few school shuttle buses (as far as I know anyway). No buildings were damaged or people injured. The campus was designed with fire protection in mind, and you can see that it worked! Sprinkler systems, water dense plants, structures built with tile roofs and other fire retardant materials. The emergency system that was set in place for times such as these, got all the faculty, staff, and students relocated from their homes and dorms, to the Fieldhouse, and the Cafeteria. Things went so smoothly that the media isn't even reporting how well it all went! I think the media loves disasters, especially at schools, where they can complain after the fact about all the things that went wrong. But everything went right at Pepperdine, so they don't even talk about what a success the school had in the middle of all the destruction in the area.


Needless to say I am glad that my friends and family down in the LA and Malibu area are safe, and that Pepperdine's campus was untouched. I am not trying to belittle the fact that so many homes and businesses have been destroyed, but I am trying to shed a little light on a story that the media is ignoring.