As the Park fire rages, volunteers bring rescued animals to a place called Camelot

As over 6,500 firefighting personnel continue to rein in the 28% contained Park fire, the crisis has somewhat abated in Butte County. But not for the animals in the region.

The fire erupted July 24, causing thousands of people to evacuate. It also displaced large animals like horses and cows. They have been housed at a place called Camelot.

After the Park fire broke out, the North Valley Animal Disaster Group’s large animal shelter was mobilized. Volunteers from the organization take care of the animals and, with permission of Cal fire, don Nomex protective suits and go behind fire lines to conduct animal rescue missions.

Last month, as the Park fire exploded, NVADG volunteers managed to rescue goats from burning embers and brought several family dogs to safety.

The large animal shelter is housed at the Camelot Equestrian Center in Oroville. The equestrian center is owned by the Mechoopda Tribe, which lends it to NVADG during a crisis.

“The tribe does an incredible job keeping everything well maintained,” Norm Rosene, a volunteer for the animal rescue organization, said. “When we need to use the facility it works perfectly.”

At the height of the Park fire, Camelot housed 65 animals: 39 horses, one donkey, 13 goats, eight pigs and four cows.

Now that thousands of people in Butte County have been allowed to return home, eight animals remain, including a pig and two cows.

“It’s exhausting,” Charlene Pritchard, the lead volunteer at the Camelot shelter, said. “You know, I think we’re on day nine. I’ve been working 16-hour days. But it’s also incredibly rewarding.”

Learned from Camp Fire

The Park fire is just the latest trauma for an area that has become accustomed to devastating fires. The Camp fire, which destroyed the town of Paradise, displaced over 4,000 animals.

“The Camp Fire was terrible, but we also learned a ton,” said Rosene, also a board member for NVADG.

Rosene’s property suffered serious damage during the current Park fire, though his home was saved. The day after he evacuated, Rosene was back rescuing animals, something he has done around the world as a volunteer, from the Poland-Ukrainian border to Tanzania.

Rosene pointed out that, while his property suffered serious damage, the home of the founder of NVADG, John Maretti, was destroyed during the Park fire. “I still have a home,” he said. “John was helping with the animals the next day. That’s dedication.”

Special care

Pritchard said that taking care of animals that have experienced trauma takes special care. She and the other volunteers have become especially fond of an 80-pound pig named Jean Luc.

“When Jean Luc came to us,” Prichard recalled, “he was so scared. He just kind of cowered in the pen we put him in. So we moved him to a little bit quieter of a pen and just kind of talked to him and offered reassurance.

“Now when we go in, he wags his tail, and he’s just so excited to see any of the volunteers. He has just had such a turnaround in personality since he came in. He’s definitely become my favorite.”

For the most part, volunteers know little about the backstory of the animals. In the case of Jean Luc, Rosene said there is a fierce debate as to whether Jean Luc may have been named after the fictional Starfleet captain Jean Luc Pickard or, perhaps, violinist and composer Jean Luc Ponte.

Pritchard said every fire, including the North Complex fire in 2021 and the recent Thompson fire in June (where over a hundred animals were evacuated), has its challenges. During one fire, she recalled a zebra was evacuated to Camelot.

“That was a little challenging,” she said.

Still, nothing could match the crisis around the Camp fire.

During the Camp fire, the Camelot Equestrian Center was in a mandatory evacuation area, so several makeshift shelters were used, including the Butte County Fairgrounds in Gridley, which served as a large animal shelter for 78 days.

“As you can imagine, it was so chaotic,” Rosene said, “but we learned from that chaos.”

Rosene said part of the chaos involved volunteers having to sift through dozens of binders with information about the animals, including what vet care they had received and the status of their owner’s property.

“One of our volunteers said ‘this is nuts,’” Rosene recalled.

That volunteer was Trevor Scaggs, who noted that tracking over 10,000 animals affected by the fire created 150,000 pages of documents. Scaggs, a software engineer, created a new tracking system called Shelterly, which is now being used around the world in fires, including the devastating wildfire in 2023 in Maui.

It’s also being used in the Park fire, tracking animals like the now beloved pig Jean Luc. Volunteers will turn to the software when the pig is hopefully reunited with his owner.