Beachfront camping for refugees
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Oceanside:
Not the ideal vacation perhaps, but for at least 60 families in the harbor area of the Oceanside waterfront, camping at the beach seemed a good alternative to hotels.
State park rangers told R.V. and camper owners flooding into the area Monday night that the rules had been suspended for the duration of the fires:
They could camp in the parking lot meant for boat trailers for free, so long as they didn’t let their dogs on the beach, lifeguards said.
Karen Perez, 39, of Fallbrook, her husband and their two retrievers, were among those who took advantage . They had parked their camper in one of the spots, flanked on each side by a line of R.V.’s, some double parked.
Most of the makeshift community were fellow Fallbrook evacuees, she said: “We’ve been comparing notes.”
Perez said the couple was getting a little bored, but the mood at the parking lot was mellow and amiable. People sprawled on the beach nearby, swimming, or flopped on folding chairs around their campers trading stories.
Other non-campers had flocked to the Oceanside beach and pier to seek relief from the throat-choking air, strolling along the pier, surfing, or just sitting on the beach and taking breaths.
The sun, however, was a small sinister red disc over the ocean peering through the smoke. The sky--darker by the moment as the flames roiled in Pendleton--was a strange, heavy, liver-grey color and seemed hang just at the tops of the palm trees and the boat masts, a kind of dusk at 3 p.m.
“This is not what we had in mind when we got the camper,” Perez admitted, eying the ash raining down on her two leashed retrievers, who kept tangling themselves among the folding chairs.
Just before 4 p.m., a cry of “water!” broke the sleepy mood. Joanne Chaffee, a nurse from a nearby Oceanside neighborhood, had rolled her dull black Toyota Camry into the parking lot and opened the trunk to hand out water .
She had come straight from her job as a home-health care worker, and was still wearing her medical smock and ID, and her face was covered by an industrial-type mask. It was not her first trip. The previous night, she had brought restaurant pasta, salad and cupcakes to the evacuees, spending in part her own money, and giving them away from a cart.
She got many takers, “Thank you! Thank you!” they said, as she passed the bottles out, and “I’m a home-care nurse too!”
A teenage girl in a blue tank-top, flip-flops, and legs covered with beach sand came up, asking if Chaffee knew where she could buy a mask. She and other evacuees seemed to treat Chaffee as their unofficial boss and concierge--maybe it was the nurses’ uniform.
Chaffee seemed to accept the role. She told the girl which stores might still have a few, then recommended the best bet, and gave her the address.
“One of my patients said, ‘You are being a mother again,’” she said shrugging. “It’s that maternal instinct.”
-- Jill Leovy