The 287-room Rancho Bernardo Inn provided temporary shelter at discounted rates for about 180 displaced residents—and nearly 100 of their pets—from the nearby town of Ramona. It also served as housing and meal headquarters for several hundred firefighters and police officers during the week of October 22, 2007.

“It was an unusual time. It wasn’t our regular guests coming here for R&R. This was their life,” says John Gates, GM, Rancho Bernardo Inn.

The Ramona residents who arrived on October 21 were offered a complimentary breakfast, but weren’t able to enjoy it because the hotel was evacuated before dawn. On Monday, October 22, the only people left to care for the property were Gates and a skeleton crew of about a dozen bellmen, security staff, and managers.

“We had places on fire a couple of blocks from here, and we

RANCHO BERNARDO
were seeing flames from our golf course. I was thinking, ‘When do we leave?’” Gates says.

The Inn received a full food and beverage delivery the previous Friday, so supplies weren’t an issue. But the fire knocked out power to half the property, including one of their major food and beverage storage areas, which caused $10,000 worth of food spoilage. Since there were no cooks at the hotel, Gates and his staff became impromptu culinarians for the week, feeding the police and fire personnel who lived at the Inn while they fought nearby flames in eight-hour shifts around the clock.

“It was kind of like when you’re at home, and the power goes out and you go to the refrigerator and say, ‘The ice cream is going to spoil, so let’s eat ice cream.’ We figured out how to turn on the slicer and made a bunch of cold cuts. Another day, we made ribs, then burgers,” Gates says.

In addition to cooking, Gates and his crew answered phones, cleaned, and watched for looters. The hotel was open for business again by Thursday.

“No one complained. I was really impressed by our team’s ability to get creative and rally. They stopped being bellmen, for example, and became a cleanup person or a security guard,” says Gates. “I also found that our chefs are much better than our food and beverage directors at cooking.”—Michael Costa