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BUTTE VALLEY — Preston Englant returned to Butte Community College Monday with his backpack but not his geology textbooks or a flash drive with a semester’s worth of class work.
Gone is his family’s Paradise home and everything in it. All that’s left is what was in his pack, which he brought to campus 18 days ago to get an early start on his studies as the Camp Fire tore through his town.
“Didn’t lose anything for chemistry, though,” the 26-year-old geology major said outside the Student Administrative Services building.
For this first time since the devastating fire, students returned to the sprawling 928-acre campus, built on a wildlife refuge, an equal distance from Chico, Paradise and Oroville. Although flames burned on three sides of the campus, it remained untouched. Its impact, however, has hit students, faculty and staff in nearly all college departments three weeks before the fall semester ends.
A total of 116 members of the faculty and staff lost their homes in the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history. The list includes five math instructors, the police chief and three of his officers, counselors, two-thirds of the financial aid officers and a college board trustee, College President Samia Yaqub said Monday.
Cal Fire officials announced they had finally fully contained the blaze on Sunday and by Monday night the death toll had risen to 88.
Butte College students, meanwhile, are spread as far as Wyoming, San Diego and Oregon. So far, college officials estimate 431 students lost homes, but they expect that number to rise as reports come in, given the school’s enrollment of 16,224. As a break to both students and faculty, finals week is canceled and a week of instruction will be held instead.
“This is a tumultuous time and a busy time ahead of us,” Yaqub said in a staff meeting Monday morning, which included alum Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea. “We have all gone through an experience that has changed each and everyone of us, changed our community so getting together to give hugs and get hugs, talking, sharing is really important.”
On Monday, students in gym shorts ran on the track and worked out in the campus’ weight room, once home to NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers, a Roadrunner for a year before transferring to Cal. Not far away, welding students — some who lost their welding leathers — returned to class. The student center was buzzing with students picking out new backpacks, canned food and meeting with counselors.
In the office of the College’s Foundation, 43-year-old Gabriel Martinez picked up a $25 Visa gift card. The college’s foundation has raised $100,000 and set up a grant application to give between $100 and $500 to affected students. A college GoFundMe campaign raised another $66,000. Even before the Camp Fire blaze, about 70 percent of students were on some form of financial aid, said Lisa DeLaby, director of Institutional Advancement.
Martinez, a fire science student who wants to work for Cal Fire, lost his rented home in Paradise, and his childhood home a few blocks away where his parents live is also gone. “I got married in that backyard,” he told the staff. Martinez said he saw smoke as he left for class but wasn’t in an “evacuation mindset.” “I left for school like a normal day.”
Two floors down in the Roadrunner Hub, a basic needs resource center, Renee Argetsinger has been giving out gas cards to students forced to live farther from campus. Student worker Alexandra Moretti has been tacking up Craigslist ads seeking college roommates on a bulletin board — cheaper rooms run about $400. But after the fire destroyed nearly 14,000 residence, “they just jumped up in price,” she said.
Englant said his chemistry professor spent most of class asking students what materials were lost and tried to go over lessons taught in the weeks before the fire. But he could tell she was thinking about the students who had not called her to check in.
“It was hard for her to teach,” Englant said. “Until she hears from everybody, she’s going to be in that mindset.”
With many students displaced and far from campus, Yaqub said instructors were told to allow them to complete assignments using an online hub used in each class where instructors and students communicate.
The California Community College State Chancellor’s Office had to deal with a similar situation last year after the Tubbs Fire affected Santa Rosa Junior College, where a few hundred students quit school and more dropped classes after the wildfire. Other college campuses have pitched in: a security guard arrived from Shasta College and financial aid workers from Sierra College are working remotely to help a department in which two-thirds of workers lost homes, Yaqub said.
On Monday, counselors met with students not only to keep them on track to graduate and transfer to a four-year school, but help with their grief. One questions counselor Brandy Thomas has heard: “What address do I put down on my college application?”
That’s a question 24-year-old Robert Arrington, a civil engineering student hoping to transfer to Chico State next fall, will face over the next month. Arrington and his roommates lost their home in Paradise and lately he hasn’t given much thought to the approaching deadline.
“What day is it?” he said before checking. “Oh, the deadline is four days away.”
The good news: The California State University system has extended that Nov. 30 deadline for fire victims like Arrington to Dec. 15.
