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  • Flames consume part of Camp Alexander Mack’s main building, which houses the cafeteria, administration center and housing for camp staffers. LONDA BONTRAGER | CONTRIBUTED

    Camp Mack fire
July 12, 2010

Community begins to rally after Camp Mack disaster

By ROGER SCHNEIDER THE GOSHEN NEWS

MILFORD — The anguish at Camp Alexander Mack occurred in the early morning hours of Sunday. On Monday morning, the work began.

The camp’s cafeteria, administration center and housing for camp staffers went up in flames around 4 a.m. Sunday. Twelve staff members sleeping on the third floor at the back of the large complex were awakened by smoke alarms. That early alarm allowed all but one staff member to flee the building by the stairs. The last staffer, Keith Morphew found the stairs too hot and he escaped through a second-floor window onto a ladder provided by people gathering below.

Monday morning Morphew, dusted with the black soot from the burned building, went in and out of the remains to salvage hymnals and a few Bibles that weren’t consumed by the flames or ruined by the water used to fight the fire.

“We are still going to do summer camp. That is our mission,” said camp administrator Rex Miller as he stood outside the burned building.

Miller was busy taking calls on his cellular phone from supporters and the media. He was also coordinating the setting up of temporary offices and a dinning area.

“Throught the incredible gifts of the people in the community, that is happening rapidly,” he said.

After nine fire departments worked most of the day Sunday to control the fire, the initial emergency was over. The effort then turned to continue running the camp and feeding the 130 children who arrived Sunday afternoon for a week’s stay at the Brethren Church camp.

Monday morning Miller and his staff found others in the community cared about them and their mission and offered to help. A crew of Amish men arrived and brought with them a kitchen trailer,  a portable walk-in cooler on a trailer and erected a giant tent to serve as a temporary dinning hall.

“It’s incredible,” was all Miller could say about their help as staff members hauled in picnic tables from across the camp to serve as dining tables under the tent.

Miller said a lot of local people have been impacted by the loss of the building, which is known as Becker Lodge. Thousands of people attended the camp as young people or are tied to it through their churches.

“We have had a lot of calls. A lot of people have talked to us about it,” Miller said.

The damaged building dates to sometime in the 1920s, Miller estimated. The camp was founded in 1925 on the shady shore of Lake Waubee. That lake, which has served as a summer playground for campers and as a baptismal for converts to Christ, helped limit the loss. Fire crews set up a pumping station at the nearby town park and refilled their tanker trucks for the short shuttle to the fire.

Back at the Milford Fire Department volunteer firefighter Scott Mast arrived Monday morning after a short night’s sleep. He said some firefighters were on the scene until 1 a.m. Monday. He grabbed a cold soda out of the department’s refrigerator as he shook away yawns. “I need some caffeine,” he said.

“It was a sad thing to see it go,” Mast said of the camp building fire.

The station smelled like the mix of burned shingles, plastic siding and wood, the smell carried in by the long fire hoses laid out of the floor to dry. The same smell drifted out of the burned building and across the campground.

Terry Thompson walked along the back of the building, taking in the scene of destruction.

“My wife went to this camp quite often,” he said.

Thompson lives nearby and stopped by the camp to wonder at the disaster. “What a mess,” he said.

He felt the loss deeply.

He recounted how his father-in-law was a Brethren pastor at the camp. He pointed out the exact spot in the shallow part of the lake where his father-in-law baptised his son Richard, as if it had occurred yesterday.

Now yellow “caution’ tape rings the building and is tied off at a historic church bell mounted on a stone pedestal.

Firefighters were able to salvage the camp administration’s computer service that contained records. But Miller was waiting for an insurance adjuster to find out if the buidling will be declared a total loss. It is insured for replacement value.

No cause for the fire has yet been determined.

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