Small Camp Bartlett community hit hard by Thomas fire

Residents of the small, rustic community of Camp Bartlett were left wondering if they will be able to rebuild after the Thomas Fire destroyed many of their homes.

Five of the community’s 12 cabins, all nestled in the woods east of Ojai, burned earlier this week, said Christy Woodhams, whose family has owned property there for 40 years.

She and several family members were displaced and are now staying with other relatives.

They evacuated Monday evening “only with our dogs and the clothes on our backs,” Woodhams said.

“When we left, we never thought we wouldn’t be coming back,” she said Thursday. “We just thought we would just go to safety.”

Pete Scharff, 78, has lived at Camp Bartlett for 15 years. His home did not burn down.

“We had to get evacuated a couple times before, but the fire wasn’t anything like this scale,” Scharff said.

Some of the cabins date back to the 1930s. The camp supplies its own water and is not connected to a sewer system.

There’s a dancehall still standing that was rumored to have once been a speakeasy.

Woodhams got married there. She said she, her son, her aunts and uncles all grew up at Camp Bartlett.

“It’s like we had our own little commune out here,” she said. “We did dinners together every night. It was like our own little world our here.”

She and her cousin Scott Ohnemus lived in a three-bedroom cabin he purchased four years ago. Ohnemus poked through the home’s rubble Thursday uncertain whether modern zoning regulations would allow him and others to rebuild.

“I don’t expect to find anything salvageable. We’re way past that point,” he said. “It looks like my wood-burning stove is the only thing that made it.”