Kirk Gafill, an owner and general manager of Nepenthe, said the restaurant is losing thousands in sales while under an evacuation order due to the Timber Fire.
Kirk Gafill
This is an as-told-essay based on a conversation with Kirk Gafill, an owner and general manager of Nepenthe, a restaurant on California's Big Sur coast that is under an evacuation order due to the Timber Fire. Gafill is also the president of the Big Sur Chamber of Commerce. This story has been edited for length and clarity.I live on property at Nepenthe, but when I first became aware of the fire on Saturday, my wife and I were at our home in Monterey Bay, where we often spend weekends. Every fire makes you sit up and pay attention, but I was hoping it wouldn't be very impactful and that it might take care of itself.By mid-morning Sunday, I went down to Nepenthe. We had very good visibility and could see that the fire was pretty active, and the air attack, or planes fighting the fire. It was very dramatic. When a tree goes up, it's like a Roman candle. We could see it was expanding. When the evacuation orders started coming on Sunday evening, we began to treat it as a full-blown threat.We have workforce housing with about 30 units, so when the mandatory evacuation came in, we communicated with our staff, and most of them relocated temporarily. Myself, my son, and a small handful of employees have stayed on the property or have been driving in, providing facility security and maintenance, and continuing preparation in the event the fire takes a turn for the worse and comes closer to us.This is our peak period. Every day we're not open this time of year is a $65,000 to $70,000 loss in sales. We are in a wait-and-see mode and evaluating when conditions will improve to the point we can reopen for guest service.
