A two-alarm fire that sent flames shooting 75 feet into the Monday night sky destroyed three cabins and badly damaged a fourth at the Reform movement’s Camp Swig in Saratoga.
“They were burned to the ground,” said Emily Grotta, a spokeswoman for the Union of American Hebrew Congregations in New York, which runs the nearly 50-year-old summer camp in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
Among the buildings consumed in the blaze were units occupied by the camp’s off-season caretakers. The cause of the blaze, which apparently started in an unoccupied camper cabin, was not immediately known.
“It could have been an accidental fire, could have been electric, it could have been someone who went in and set the thing,” said Dennis Johnsen, an arson investigator with the Santa Clara County Fire Department. “Most likely it was probably an accidental” blaze.
Sandy Mosel, the assistant director who has served the camp for eight years, lost her belongings as well as two dogs in an outside kennel, and was “extremely distraught,” said Bob Smith, battalion chief with the county Fire Department. The belongings of a recently hired temporary site assistant, Roger Therriault, also were destroyed.
About 45 firefighters from several local agencies battled the fire, which was first reported shortly after 7 p.m. No one was hurt in the blaze.
“It was pretty extensive,” said Smith. “Everything that was burning, burned. It was just a matter of keeping it from getting bigger.”
In all, two campers’ cabins and two adult cabins along “faculty row” were burned, said Ruben Arquilevich, executive director of Swig and its sister camp in Northern California, Camp Newman.
“All that’s left are the pillars and the foundations,” said Arquilevich, who toured the devastation on Tuesday. “The rest is rubble.”
Because the remote camp is not within a public fire jurisdiction, the camp’s insurance company will conduct the follow-up investigation, said Mike Espe, an investigator with the California Department of Forestry in Morgan Hill.
Mosel and Therriault were away from camp when the fire broke out, camp and fire officials said. The camp has been closed since the fall while it undergoes a $6.5 million to $7 million renovation project.
The destroyed buildings were located about 100 yards from where construction work is currently taking place, Arquilevich said, and the cabins were not part of the immediate renovation project.
Camp Swig, which opened in 1953, normally hosts retreats and conferences in the off-season, though it had been closed for the renovation.
The upgrade is replacing cabins and bathrooms. The dining hall, program and administrative buildings are also targeted for renovations.
The entire project probably will take two more years, according to Arquilevich, adding that the blaze would not delay construction.
Up to 500 teens from throughout the western United States attend Swig each summer. But Arquilevich said the fire “will not affect summer operations at all.”
He said temporary housing will probably need to be brought in to replace the destroyed structures. That could be accomplished “in a matter of weeks, and we have at least six months to work on this,” he added.
Two camper cabins that normally accommodate up to 20 youngsters were burned, one of them completely.
The other lost cabins had housed visiting rabbis, educators, doctors and other professional staff over the camp’s history.
“It’s very sad,” Arquilevich said. “These were some very historical facilities that housed many wonderful individuals over the years.”
Arquilevich had no immediate estimate of the value of the burned cabins. “It’s going to take several weeks if not a couple of months to determine those figures,” he said.
Because of the camp’s remote location off Highway 9, “water supply was obviously a challenge,” said Smith.
Firefighters battled the fire with water pumped from the camp’s swimming pool and set up a “water shuttle,” hauling water in tanker trucks from the nearest fire hydrant.
A fund is being established to help Mosel and Therriault replace belongings that are expected to be only partially covered by the camp’s insurance, said Arquilevich. Checks can be sent to Sandy Mosel and/or Roger Therriault, c/o UAHC Camp Swig, 703 Market St., Suite 1300, S.F., CA 94103.