Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Too frail to escape disaster
Poor seniors were likeliest to die as Camp fire raged
PARADISE, Calif. — Dorothy Mack had crippling back pain and deteriorating eyesight. Helen Pace used a walker and breathed from an oxygen tank. Teresa Ammons suffered a stroke in 2017 and couldn’t drive.
Although each woman had a different frailty, their final circumstances were strikingly similar: They were all seniors on fixed incomes, they all lived alone, and they all died when the Camp fire roared through their mobile home park.
Experts say the incineration of Paradise, a sleepy town of 27,000 nestled in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, is a case study in what can go wrong when a landscape that’s prone to wildfire is disproportionately populated by those who are least likely to escape.
Like the women who died in Ridgewood Mobile Home Park, most of the 86 people who died in the fire were seniors. Of the 69 bodies that have been positively identified, 53 were over the age of 65 — or 77 percent.
This grim fact comes as no surprise to those who study the impacts of wildfire.
The U.S. Fire Administration estimates that older adults are more than twice as likely as the general population to die in fires. And a quarter of Paradise residents had a disability, which is more than double the statewide rate.
Decades of research confirm that the physical limitations that accompany advanced age make it much more difficult to escape disaster, but so do the social isolation and stubbornness that experts say are common among the elderly.
And when poverty accompanies old age — as it did
for many in Paradise — the risk of death is compounded.
Now, as planning and policy officials attempt to draw lessons from the extreme loss of life and property in Paradise and surrounding Butte County towns, advocates say that emergency preparedness needs to be expanded in a way that addresses issues specific to those seniors who are drawn to live in areas of high fire risk.
“We have to fundamentally change our approach to emergency management,” said L. Vance Taylor, chief of the Office of Access and Functional Needs at the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services. “The old way isn’t enough to meet this new normal, this new dynamic.”
When the Camp fire marched through Paradise last fall, an estimated 25 percent of Paradise-area residents were 65 or older, according to the latest U.S.
Census Bureau estimates. That compares with 14 percent statewide.
The city had long attracted retirees with limited incomes seeking picturesque surroundings. Many lived in retirement communities such as Ridgewood, a quiet and clean mobile home park surrounded by pine trees.
Some people moved there for the community, said Cathy King, who managed the park from 2014 to the summer of 2018. But most made the choice out of necessity.
That was the case for 68-year-old King, at least.
“You know they aren’t as well made,” King said of mobile homes. “But at the end of the day, you find a place you can afford and hope for the best.”
According to fire officials, mobile homes — particularly those built before tougher building regulations were enacted in 1976 — burn faster due to the materials
they’re made from, like aluminum and particle board. And mobile homes in parks have little space between them, making it easy for flames to jump from one dwelling to another.
Of the 53 seniors who have so far been identified as having died in the Camp fire, at least 22 lived in mobile or manufactured homes.
As the Camp fire raced toward the retirement community, some residents had their friends in mind as they fled. Residents blared their horns, knocked on doors and offered rides to those who couldn’t drive. They convinced their more stubborn neighbors that this was, in fact, a matter of life or death.
Mack, 88, Pace, 84, and Ammons, 82, didn’t make it out.
No one knows for sure why the women didn’t leave, but family members and King have theories: Mack liked to sleep in, and she
may have still been in bed when fire engulfed the park. Ammons was a recluse who usually wouldn’t answer the door, and she didn’t drive. Her remains were found a couple feet from her doorstep.
It is also possible that because all three of these women spent most of their time alone, they may not have received the second or third door knocks from friends that might have provoked them to leave.
“There were a lot of close relationships in the park,” King said. “Those particular women didn’t have them.”
When people are socially isolated — as many elderly and disabled are — they are more likely to get left behind, experts say.
A California state law passed in 2016 requires each county to consider access and functional needs in its evacuation plan. The law does not specify, however, how in-depth those efforts should be or how much
money should be spent on them.
In Butte County, this took the form of the Special Needs Awareness Program, or SNAP, first developed by the town of Paradise and adopted by the county in 2008.
Butte County’s sheriff’s office has access to a map that plots the addresses of SNAP participants — 4,000 at the time of the Camp fire, according to officials. In an ideal scenario, the map could be used to deploy resources to the county’s most vulnerable residents first, said Cindi Dunsmoor, who leads the Butte County’s Office of Emergency Management.
As it stands, the county’s evacuation plans are not tailored in any way to the SNAP database. In practice, SNAP was more about “helping residents to learn to help themselves,” Dunsmoor said, such as making sure they knew who to contact in an emergency.