Crestline? Where’s Crestline? Is that a part of Big Bear? What about Blue Jay and Twin Peaks? Are those towns as well? Where? These were normal, everyday questions mountain residents were faced with in the past whenever the area of their hometowns was questioned. These towns were just dots on a map. However, one devastating ordeal swept through the communities and changed everything. Now, the San Bernardino mountain communities are easily identified, and Rim High School is the second-most distinguishable high school in America, just under Columbine High School. Unfortunately though, the mountain’s world-wide familiarity can only be blamed upon the heinous tragedy known as the Old Fire.

How far does this popularity reach? The facts are quite surprising. Just as students returned to school on Monday the 17th, and the Welcome Back assembly commenced, the student body was informed by Mr. Bonanno that the Scottish Embassy contacted the school, since the Rim High mascot is the Fighting Scot. However, this was not the last of the countries that made the Old Fire a catalyst to introducing the mountain communities to the world.

The International Herald Tribune, one of the leading newspaper companies in Paris, France, printed an article on Thursday, October 30. The article described the wildfires threatening Lake Arrowhead and Big Bear and how drastically the winds affected the ability of the helicopters to take flight. It was also mentioned through classroom chit-chat that Mr. Nicholas, the art teacher who retired last year and now resides in Paris, woke up one morning to find a picture of Rim High School near the billowing clouds of smoke and orange haze on the front page of the Paris newspaper.

Furthermore, countless other countries have also taken an interest in this horrifying event. The Irish Independent, a well-known newspaper in Dublin, Ireland, published a spread about the Old Fire reaching the “outskirts of the popular weekend getaway resorts around Lake Arrowhead.” In Buenos Aires, Argentina, a newspaper titled the Buenos Aires Herald wrote headline news pertaining to the recent horror of the evacuations in the San Bernardino Mountains. In addition to these, Mr. Urbaszewski, teacher of television and video production at Rim High, utilized an Apple PowerBook G4 to create an Internet web-log with information and photos centering around the Old Fire, which apparently spread to locations as far as Tokyo, Japan.

While the news of the Old Fire did reach many distant places, it was also quite a front-page story in the U.S. as well. It even prompted Rim High graduates to publicize their opinions in newspapers about the destruction caused by the fire. H. Hering, editor of the Albany Democrat-Herald in Oregon, shares of his past as a Rim High School student. Hering explains how special starry nights and memories of good times in his old Crestline home were forever to stay as only those, due to his cliff-side home becoming forever lost among the other wreckage in the area created by the fire. “ For the most part, the fire news from Southern California was just recent news to me,” states Hering. “ It became personal when we ran a photo on page one of columns of fire and smoke edging up to Rim of the World High School outside of Lake Arrowhead.”

While the Old Fire caused a media-frenzy up here in the San Bernardino mountains, allowing the mountain communities to become the hottest topic on every news channel in the Southland and almost every headline in the world, such publicity was not worth the cruel devastation caused by the Old Fire. However, it comes as a surprise that while this world and its people still have controversial issues to sort out with each other, societies continue to join together for support in times of need and the aftermath of tragedy.