Tropical Birding Guides Suffer Loss of All Equipment in Ohio Fire
May 18, 2010
Port Clinton, Ohio

3RBCers who were at Magee Marsh will be distressed to learn that the Tropical Birding tour guide volunteers who were at Magee Marsh lost all their gear, passports, etc., in a fire. More info can be found at the following blogspot - http://www.thebiggesttwitch.com . These folks really enhanced our visit, said Jack Solomon, who was there and availed himself of lots of their help. Donations can be sent to Black Swamp Bird Observatory * 13551 West State Route 2 * Oak Harbor, Ohio * 43449 *. Make checks payable to Tropical Birding

Right after the fire, many folks contacted The Black Swamp Bird Observatory, wanting to get more information. Here are some of the coments from the BSBO Facebook page:

Black Swamp Bird Observatory - The folks at BSBO are celebrating the lives of friends this morning. Material things can be replaced, even though it will be a long and costly process, but the most precious things survived and for that we are profoundly thankful. Our thoughts are with our friends from Tropical Birding who lost the majority of their gear and passports in a fire yesterday. May 18, 2010.

Reply - I have a suggestion. These guys donated their time for the Biggest Week, right? How about taking all of the email addresses for the people that attended, send an informative email about the situation and request that if anyone wishes to make a donation to help these guys out, you are including an address? If even a fraction of those people respond with a donation, it could help a little with replacing their lost equipment. These guys were terrific, always friendly and helpful.

One of our 3RBC members, Joan Tague, wanted a little more information regarding the story, so she emailed Tropical Birding to get the full story on the fire.

May 23, 2010

60 members of our Pittsburgh bird Club, the Three Rivers Birding Club, recently travelled to Ohio the visit Magee Marsh and were very impressed by the help and professional quality of the guides that volunteered their time to the Biggest Week festivities. We have just learned that there was a trailer fire that destroyed the belongings of many of the guides. We will be publishing our newsletter soon and will have a member meeting in the next two weeks.

Do you need any help or support? I want to get the word out our members, especially those who learned so much from you.

So any details you want us to share, let us know. What was lost? Was it mostly personal equipment? Can we send a donation? Do you have a write up on the full story? We have some sketchy info from blogs and the BSBO Facebook page. Any information that you send to me will be shared with all of your friends in Pittsburgh.

Joan Tague
Pittsburgh, PA

This is the response that she received from Iain Campbell, the president of Tropical Birding:

May 26, 2010

I am so glad that your members all enjoyed the Tropical Birding guides and the Biggest Week. We have a bit of a dilemma in the company, as these things started as a way for the guides to bring more people into birding, and more exposure to Tropical Birding with the final goal of having more people on tour. We have all become so engrossed in this kind of interaction that it has almost morphed into, doing the tours to subsidize getting more people into birding. Not exactly the way Warren Buffet would do it.

Yes the fire was a treat. If it had have been the loss of one telescope I think we would be more upset than we were. Standing at the fire site knowing that everything went up the loss was so great all I could do was put my hand to my mouth and say oops. After spending a lot of time with the fire marshals, they informed us that if we had have been asleep or in the trailer at the time, we would have almost certainly have died. None of the insurance policies that any of us had will cover it, with a multitude of reasons why it was someone else´s responsibility, and they recommended suing. That really goes against the grain for us as the people who were kind enough to let the volunteers stay there also lost a lot.

Besides all our non birding personal items such as my favorite coat, we lost 5 top end binoculars, 3 top end scopes, three computers, 4 professional camera setups, 2 video cameras, and worst of all four passports. In short it pretty much sent us to our knees. The guys were all pretty upset, but after one day off just to relax, all wanted to get out on the boardwalk with borrowed binoculars and keep showing people birds.

What truly amazed us is the support that we got from all the people in the area, and that made everything much easier to handle. The generosity and caring that Americans show when someone is hurt is what truly sets them apart from others. As a company I was uneasy about accepting help and did not want to appear that weak, but I do appreciate any help for the guides who lost gear. If people feel like helping sending a note to BSBO will be great. But more than cash, spreading the word about this kind of project and encouraging people to visit the areas we are trying to promote birding, really shows appreciation for what we are trying to do.

Cheers and many thanks,
Iain