San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Caldor Fire evacuees’ belongings intact in school bus — their home
SOUTH LAKE TAHOE — Joseph Philipson gripped a propane tank in his left hand as he climbed up a silver ladder leaning against the back of an old yellow school bus one smoky day late last month.
With an assist from his partner, Ashley Bonetti, on the ground below, Philipson lifted the tank onto a metal deck fixed to the bus’ roof.
The deck, lined with a carpet of artificial grass, is normally a place Philipson and Bonetti relax and breathe some fresh air. But on that recent day it was filling up with propane tanks and other household essentials as the couple prepared to evacuate from the Caldor Fire, which was raining ash all around them.
“That’s our backyard, basically,” Philipson said of the rooftop deck as he climbed down the ladder.
Unlike most of the other people who fled the Caldor Fire and left their homes
behind, Philipson and Bonetti drove away with their possessions packed inside a rare kind of mobile home they’ve had for nearly four years.
They’re among a niche and close-knit community of nomads who live in dwellings they call “skoolies” — school buses that have been converted into RV-style homes. Several such people, including Philipson and Bonetti, were living in the South Lake Tahoe area when the Caldor Fire crept closer in late August.
Philipson, a 37-yearold independent photographer whose work has included documenting a historic California wildfire, said climate change was a big part of why he decided to turn an old school bus into his home. Years ago, he realized he wanted to offload his pricey Southern California rent, but he couldn’t imagine settling in any fixed location because of the climate-fueled disasters he saw unfolding almost everywhere he went.
“I don’t want to be somewhere where my house is going to burn down in a wildfire or have no water delivered because of a drought,” Philipson said as he stood outside the bus, surveying some of the belongings he needed to pack: cat litter, laundry detergent, a few bags and boxes of miscellaneous items.
Philipson estimated that he and Bonetti have invested about $60,000 in their school bus home, including buying the vehicle and upgrades such as outfitting the deck, installing solar panels on the roof and gutting the interior to transform it into a living space.
From the outside, Philipson and Bonetti’s dwelling maintains many of the trappings from the days when it ferried schoolchildren to and from campus. There’s the hallmark yellow paint, the tinted windows, even the faded outline of letters above the windshield that once read “SCHOOL BUS.”
But the traditional bus door has been replaced with something that much more closely resembles the entrance to a house — door handle and all. And the interior looks like it might as well be a luxury RV or even a small apartment.
Rows of seats for students have been replaced by modern cabinets and countertops, along with appliances such as an all-in-one washer and dryer. They have a shower, refrigerator, a small oven and a queen-size bed. The floor is composed of wood repurposed from an old school gymnasium.
Over the years, the couple has stationed their bus home in a variety of places, including Rochester, N.Y. — where they met —Arizona, Maine and the Southern California desert. In June, they decided to set up alongside the home of Philipson’s cousin in South Lake Tahoe.
Every year, they join droves of other people at a bus-home celebration of sorts called Skooliepalooza, a festival held in the Arizona desert just beyond the California border.
“I see it as a social experience of shared anxiety of climate change,” Philipson said.
Sarah Plummer, another resident who was living in a South Lake Tahoe school bus home before the Caldor Fire, said climate change was not the reason she and her husband ditched a standard home for one inside a bus. For Plummer, 29, the transition had more to do with the allure of leaving behind her Chicago life in favor of a more mobile one. In South Lake Tahoe, her husband was working as a handyman while she worked part time at a company that curates charcuterie boards for tourist groups. Plummer and her husband, who have invested more than $40,000 in their bus since acquiring it about three years ago through a government surplus website, hit the road in early 2020. They spent time in Arizona, Southern California, Utah, Texas and Chicago before they found a spot this year in South Lake Tahoe, which was appealing because of its ideal summertime weather.
The couple were able to park their bus in the backyard of a home whose owner was also making a school bus home. They planned to stay in town until mid-September — then the Caldor Fire changed everything. The stunning weather they had been drawn to turned smoky and the air quality plunged to unhealthy levels. Even before all of South Lake Tahoe had to evacuate, they were planning to drive their bus to Carson City, Nev., to keep safe.
While her decision to live inside an old school bus wasn’t motivated primarily by climate change, Plummer said she wouldn’t be surprised if the skoolies’ way of life catches on as the effects of rising temperatures unfold. Already, she said she’s noticed more people in standard homes or apartments begin to question the very future of humanity as their communities are repeatedly battered by extreme weather events.
“I think there’s going to be a lot more people who choose to live nomadically,” Plummer said. “Eventually, it might not be about if (a place) is comfortable — it might be about whether it’s livable.”
Bonetti said a major motivator for her about the increasingly unstable climate, and the threat posed by its extreme weather events, was the 2017 Thomas Fire, which her partner photographed. The blaze destroyed more than 1,000 buildings in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties and was at the time the largest wildfire in California history.
“It was definitely my moment,” recalled Bonetti, a 36-year-old former communications worker who is now a travel agent.
She had a similar moment when the Caldor Fire ignited, destroying hundreds of homes and threatening tens of thousands more as other parts of the country and world faced hurricanes.
“That’s the climate crisis,” Bonetti said.
But as distressing as she found the situation, she could take comfort in one thing: Her dwelling wouldn’t burn. She and Philipson drove away from the danger behind them — and back to the Southern California desert where they first turned the bus into a home.