While packing her suitcase to visit family last Friday, Utah State University student Megan Campbell received a call from an unknown number at nearly 11 p.m.
“I was like, ‘who in the world is calling me at 11 o'clock?’ And it said Logan, Utah under the number," she said. "Literally, what went through my head was it has to be an emergency if someone's calling me this late.”
Campbell’s intuition was not wrong — she had received the very first reverse 911 call of the night. This was her first day in her new apartment, having just moved out of the evacuation radius.
“One of my best friends was in that radius," Campbell said. "I called my friend and I was like, ‘Hey, I heard about the evacuation. Do you need help?’ … And they were like, ‘What are you talking about?’”
Campbell said she let several people spend the night at her house to keep them safe from the fire. But she’s not the only person that stepped up.
While the Canyon Road Fire didn’t burn any buildings, it destroyed eight vehicles — vehicles belonging to the Western Conservation Corps, a nonprofit organization that teaches young adults conservation skills.
Participants of the program had been living out of their cars, and as such, nearly all their belongings were burned and destroyed.
After hearing of this, Eleni Robinson, a volunteer with Cache Valley Mutual Aid, asked for donations of clothes, shoes, camping gear, and journals through social media.
Less than two days later, they posted another graphic saying they had to pause physical donations after receiving what they called an overwhelming amount of donations — 270 items and $2,000.
Robinson sent a statement expressing their gratitude.
"I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of support that's been shown," they wrote. "It was a quick turnaround and we are continuing to keep in touch and adapt with the UCC crews needs. We hope folks continue to contribute to the crew through the dedicated fund and stay in touch with Cache Valley Mutual Aid. We have a lot of folks in need of support and are always looking for more helping hands. We can't thank the community enough for really stepping up."
Campbell said she takes pride in Cache Valley’s willingness to step up.
“All the people that I know took action to take care of other people, and I thought that was really cool," Campbell said. "People took care of people.”
While they are no longer taking physical donations, Cache Valley Mutual Aid is still accepting monetary donations.
