Teri Ellen Westra says the Big Basin General Plan’s emergency routes for her neighborhood are laughable.
Teri Ellen Westra, Ph.D., says she met the Santa Cruz district superintendent of the California State Parks system at Little Basin campground last week, hoping that he would prove her wrong.
Westra, a clinical psychologist who lives on Little Basin Road, doesn’t believe State Parks’ emergency plan for the park is adequate—which, she says, puts hundreds of campers at risk every weekend should a wildfire occur. One did, in fact, occur on Aug. 12, ignited by an improperly extinguished campfire. No one was hurt.
“If it would have happened on a Saturday, we would have been in big trouble,” Westra says.
The Big Basin General Plan names the Tanbark Loop Trail/Pine Mountain Road as an alternate emergency evacuation route for Little Basin, if Little Basin Road isn’t accessible. Westra says Pine Mountain Road — a narrow, windy road that’s unpaved in places — is too steep and deeply rutted to allow a two-wheel drive vehicle to get from Little Basin campground to Big Basin in case of a fire.
State Parks officials, however, say otherwise. In a July 28 letter to Westra, District Superintendent Chet Bardo says the Pine Mountain fire road “is in adequate condition and passable in a two-wheel-drive vehicle with moderate clearance. Recommended improvements include brushing both sides of the road and repairing the poor drainage and gullying that exists within the first 100 yards after the pavement ends within Little Basin.”
So on Aug. 14, Westra met Bardo at the campground. She wanted him to drive the road with her, and show her that “300 Priuses really can drive it, and there is indeed a safe route out of the park.
“He’s driving one of those nice Chevy Impala white sedans,” Westra recalls of their meeting. “He refuses to go up the road because he doesn’t want to get his car stuck.”
After Bardo left, Westra tried to drive the Pine Mountain Road escape route in her pickup that doesn’t have four-wheel drive. Her truck didn’t make it.
Bardo did not return phone calls seeking comment.
The solution, as Westra sees it, is simple. “Either show me I’m wrong, or see that I’m right, and close the park down. I want people to love the forest. I want them to support it, but not at the expense of human life and not at the expense of quality of life of my whole neighborhood.”
She says her concerns — voiced to State Parks; Little Basin concessionaire United Camps, Conferences and Retreats (UCCR); and county officials, among others — have thus far fallen on deaf ears.
Westra’s activist streak started early. When she was 6 years old, she wrote a letter to President Nixon demanding he return Alcatraz to its indigenous inhabitants.
Her Little Basin campaign started in 2010, when State Parks began holding planning meetings about the Big Basin General Plan. A year later, the campground and cabins opened to visitors.
Neighbors, meanwhile, watched the park’s usage skyrocket. It was originally owned and developed by Hewlett-Packard as an employee retreat, with 100 to 200 people visiting quarterly, Westra says. The new state park property, however, managed by UCCR, has at least that many visitors every weekend.
Robin Musitelli, Supervisor Bruce McPheron’s analyst, says Public Works and State Parks looked into Westra’s fire and safety concerns about Pine Mountain Road. “It is adequate and passable in a two-wheel drive car,” she says.
Mike Carr, UCCR president and CEO, says guests’ safety is top of mind at UCCR, and Little Basin is no exception.
“There’s a large meadow, what we call a safe zone, if there ever was an emergency,” Carr says. “From there, our guests and campers would take direction from emergency personnel who would direct them to the safest escape route. It’s not that complicated.”
Robert Mallory and his wife lived on Little Basin Road for more than 30 years before selling their property in June.
“I could see the writing on the wall,” he says. “Once the park changed hands, I could tell things were going to change drastically in terms of the amount of people coming out here. In the old days, the park had a hometown feel. Now it’s more of a corporation.”
He says Westra’s work is “awesome — I just hope she actually gets somewhere. It’s kind of like David going against Goliath. She’s a smart cookie and she has a lot of energy, so I hope she’s able to help the Little Basin.”
