[jyl]

Looking at the wind forecast, seems like when f'casted windspeed is higher, f'cast wind is coming more from the SW, and when f'casted speed is lower, f'cast wind is coming more from the S-SW. At this point I think you want SW more than S-SW.

Watching for damage reports from Echo Lake and Echo Berkeley Camp area; Echo Summit Lodge so far has survived intact per media video this am.

This is the second camp my kids have been burned out from - my daughter was a 17 y/o staffer at Berkeley Tuolume Camp (north of Groveland, south of Yosemite NP) when it burned in the 2013 Rim Fire. With ash falling and the mountainside glowing, the teenage staff were packed into cars, city trucks, and hastily requisitioned buses and rushed away, leaving most of their things. It was traumatic for them, the next year and every year since staff and former staff have returned to the site to camp and remember.

Berkeley's family camp program moved to the Berkeley Echo Camp and the kids built it from a dilapidated, dispirited youth camp to a terrific, popular family camp. My daughter went from dishwasher at Tuolume to running the whole food and dining operation at Echo, my son ran the Echo maintenance department this summer, my wife has taught art classes to campers.

After 8 years and with lots of community support, Berkeley Tuolume Camp has been rebuilt and will reopen in 2022, about the 100th anniversary of its founding. The city had expected to be running the two camps concurrently, but it now looks like Echo Camp will have to start the long rebuilding process.

In 2014 my daughter and I drove up to Yosemite, illegally entered the remnants of the Tuolume camp, and dug out a memento that survived the fire. I've saved it to mount on a plaque and return to the reopened Tuolume camp.

When the staff was evacuated from Echo Camp two weeks ago, most of them figured it was just due to smoke and that they'd be back soon to retrieve their things and close the camp up for the winter. My daughter, the only staffer left from the original Tuolume camp, warned the others to save everything they could. In the end I think they got almost all of the memorabilia and precious stuff out, stuffed into the kids' cars and city trucks. The city sent Parks staff and city firefighters up to prepare and defend Echo Camp , but they had to pull out yesterday, with spot fires burning right across the road from the camp. So now we wait for news and to find out if we'll need to do another retrieval trip next year.