Evacuation anew for Sonoma elderly
Buses speed past embers to carry assistedliving facility residents
With flames lighting up the surrounding hills, a stream of elderly residents from the Oakmont retirement community shuffled out of the Santa Rosa facility early Monday, many clutching walkers or canes, or pushed in wheelchairs. Buses lined up to take them out of the neighborhood as the fires raging in the Wine Country prompted a mandatory evacuation.
Oakmont’s 4,500 residents were forced to flee along with people in surrounding areas along Highway 12.
At 10:30 Sunday night, Oakmont resident Lille Hamerschlag, 88, got the evacuation order from her neighbor, Doreen Deleon, who got a Nixle alert.
It came much more suddenly than the last evacuation of Oakmont during the Tubbs Fire in October 2017. But on the plus side, Hamerschlag had her evacuation drill down. Deleon came by in a car and they made a clean escape, headed for San Rafael.
“Within 15 minutes of mandatory evacuation they were out,” said her daughter Kari Hamerschlag on Monday. “We were very scared last night, but we are the lucky ones.”
The less lucky ones were the people evacuated from Oakmont Gardens, the assisted care facility. They had to wait for buses and made a much slower departure, not leaving until midnight, Hamershlag said.
One woman in a purple robe had a black shirt on a hanger clinging to her walker as she ambled toward a bus. Another woman in a wheelchair was in flowered pajamas with a white teddy bear in her lap as the smell of smoke wafted through the early morning hours.
Some people had suitcases — go bags prepared as they boarded the buses. But many emerged emptyhanded, their faces covered with masks as Santa Rosa police officers helped them board the buses.
Towering flames shot up over a hill as the buses headed toward winding Highway 12 into Santa Rosa where they would stop at the Veterans Auditorium.
As one bus sped toward the auditorium, spot fires had already jumped more than a mile from the ridge and ignited both sides of Highway 12. The bus continued without stopping, as winds shot embers across the roadway. The Santa Rosa CityBus driver, who declined to give her name, said she had been called to help in the emergency.
“It was just scary,” she said, describing how it felt like branches were slamming against the sides of the bus.
“My boss drove during the 2017 fires and gave me the courage. And of course God helped,” the driver said. “I was just so happy to help.”
For Oakmont residents Doris and Armin Tietze, this was the third — and most harrowing — evacuation they had been forced to take in the face of approaching flames.
“It was scary, and I didn’t expect it to be so close,” said Doris, 91.
The evacuation reminded the German couple of living through World War II.
“But I’ve never seen fires like that,” she said. “It’s too close for comfort.”
The pair brought small bags and mostly medicine and planned to, once again, stay with their son, Chris, at his Corte Madera home.
“We’re happy to help out,” Chris Tietze said, as he walked his parents to his car parked in the crowded Veterans Auditorium parking lot. “But it’s pretty scary this happens so often.”
Oakmont’s retirement homes were swept up in the October 2017 Tubbs Fire, which killed 22 people elsewhere. One of the homes, Villa Capri, was destroyed, and another, Varenna, was damaged. Both have been rebuilt.
The homes’ residents were evacuated safely. But lawsuits by four Villa Capri residents, and by Sonoma County and the state of California, accused Oakmont of failing to take safety measures or conduct the needed evacuations, and said many residents would have died if family members and firefighters had not been there to protect them.
The residents’ lawsuit was settled for an undisclosed sum. The county and state settled their suit Sept. 3 for $500,000 and an agreement by Oakmont to prepare new disaster and evacuation plans and appoint an independent monitor to supervise compliance for five years.
“We hope that any facility with vulnerable individuals is either evacuating or making proper preparations,” Sonoma County District Attorney Jill Ravitch said late Monday morning.
Hamerschlag lives in her own home on Oakmont grounds, and during the Tubbs Fire the mandatory evacuation lasted two weeks.
“We are hoping this time will not be that long,” said her daughter, aware that it might also be worse than a lengthy evacuation.
“My mom’s house may not survive,” she said, with her mother in the car, bravely listening in, en route to a possibly lengthy stay at Hamershlag’s home in Oakland.