‘Temporary city’ base camp used for Lake and Apache fires closes down at Elks Event Center

SANTA MARIA, Calif. - The large-scale incident command post located at the Santa Maria Elks Event Center that has been used as the main base camp for fire crews battling two local fires throughout July officially closed down Wednesday.

At one time, the 107-acre site was home to more than 3,000 firefighters and other crew members who were in town to fight the Lake Fire , and later on, the Apache Fire .

The camp was created soon after the Lake Fire broke out on Friday, July 5. Within a few hours, the Event Center was transformed into a temporary city, and was a full-scale operations center for fire officials, as well as a location where firefighters could rest and sleep.

On Wednesday, just after sunrise, workers were quickly demobilizing the entire camp, which was set up throughout the entire Event Center property which is most known for hosting the annual Santa Maria Elks Rodeo in late May/early June.

"Everything is being broken down," said Lake Fire public information officer Erik Scott. "Tents are coming down, the tarps, the trailers are being put back on hitches and driving to other areas. All the information boards are being taken down. The porta potties are being brought away, so it's a complete, systematic, demobilization of this large city that was thriving just a few days ago."

With so many active wildfires burning across California and throughout the western United States and the rest of the country, a lot of the resources that have been stationed at the camp, either for personnel or physical, will now be redirected and redeployed elsewhere.

"There's 95 large wildfires that are burning across the nation right now," said Scott. "As the Lake Fire and the Apache Fire here in Santa Barbara County decrease, we now need to free up resources and people to go to other areas of more critical need. It's not just the tents and the yards and tables and chairs and kitchens that are going away, it's the personnel, and so they're going to be freed up, some who have been here working nonstop for 14 days will get hopefully up to a seven day of rest, but a lot of them, that just means you work in your normal job, but then they get the potential of being reassigned to another significant fire."

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