California Climate conference attendees rescued by fire fighters after being stranded by heavy snowfall

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https://www.sfgate.com/weather/article/firefighters-rescue-conference-snow-big-bear-20226553.php

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San Bernardino County firefighters had to rescue attendees of a climate action conference near Big Bear on March 13 after they became stranded due to heavy snowfall.

The incident occurred at YMCA Camp Whittle in Fawnskin, the department said in a post on X. Some of the 300 attendees tried to reach buses waiting near cleared roads by trekking through approximately 2 feet of snow, but the buses became stuck almost 2 miles away from the camp near San Bernardino County Fire Station 96, the Los Angeles Daily News reported.

San Bernardino County Fire Capt. Anthony Muscarello described the immediate chaos to the Daily News. “Within a few minutes, we had a couple hundred people standing in a blizzard in front of our station, waiting to get on these buses that were getting stuck and didn’t know the best way to get down,” he told the outlet.

Firefighters used the station’s snowcat to evacuate “dozens” of attendees who had remained at Camp Whittle before nightfall, the X post said, just as the facility had run out of food. In a video shared by the department on X, Muscarello greets stranded attendees by saying, “I heard you guys needed a ride,” as the firefighters arrived in the snowcat.

Muscarello told the Daily News that people that had left faced a long trek. “It took them like an hour to walk down in a blizzard, in 2 feet of snow, and these people weren’t really prepared for anything of that nature,” he said.