Fleeing fires amid heat, pandemic
There were no novices at the SonomaMarin Fairgrounds in Petaluma Monday.
The dozen or so evacuees who parked in the grass lot here had already done this at least once — or twice — before.
Their cars were cluttered with clothes, pets and sleeping pads. At least one couple lounged on camping chairs as they monitored the news from a tablet.
“We’d never dealt with anything like this, until the Tubbs Fire,” said Jonathan Andre, who said he, his wife and their pug Zora have evacuated four or five times before.
Andre, who lives in Bennett Valley, said he and his wife woke up around 8 a.m. Monday morning to see evacuation notices on their phones.
“The next thing you know, they’re, knock knock knock… ‘you gotta go!’ ” Andre said, referring to the deputy who evacuated them.
Andre was among the 54,000 people who had evacuated from the Glass Fire in Napa and Sonoma counties as of Monday afternoon, according to the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services. Some were being sent to 143 hotels with more than 1,500 rooms secured by the state as officials tried to minimize group shelters because of the coronavirus. But some evacuees were waiting it out at evacuation centers. The Glass Fire, which erupted Sunday morning and spread quickly through extremely dry grasslands, destroyed dozens of homes and threatened thousands more.
Evacuees faced not only coronavirus risks but a heat wave Monday. With flames threatening the northeast quadrant of the city, government officials chose to close an evacuation point they had set up at the Santa Rosa Veterans Memorial Building on Maple Avenue. Evacuees were instead being asked to go to the Petaluma Fairgrounds or the 50acre RV and tent campground at Sonoma Raceway, off Highway 121.
Melanie Collins and Chris Rossow, a married couple from Oakmont, were the only two evacuees in the middle of a large, empty field across from the Sonoma Raceway Tuesday afternoon.
Temperatures at the field had sweltered into the upper 90s and shade was nonexistent, but it was far away from the fire zone and smoke was not noticeable.
“If we had to grade it, I’d probably say a Cminus,” Chris Rossow joked.
Rossow and Collins have lived in California for about a year. Both competitive bicyclists, they moved to Sonoma County for its ample hills and mountains. But after already having to evacuate their home twice, Rossow said he might consider moving somewhere else.
“The unrest really gets to you,” he said. “Now we’re starting to think, well, should we look somewhere else?”
Rossow and Collins gathered their bikes and cat, Sophie, before evacuating around 10 p.m. Monday night. With a small tent on top of their red Mazda SUV, they anticipate they’ll be able to rough it out for a few days. Collins, who served as a firefighter in Maryland for nine years, knows all about how destructive fires can be.
“Last night, we were like, everything we own is going to burn,” she said. “But still, we have each other.”
Others were also weary from repeat evacuations. Andrew Carpenter, 63, sat in his white Ford pickup truck Monday at the Sonoma Marin Fairgrounds in Petaluma, ready to go nowhere soon. Carpenter thinks it’s the third or fourth time he’s been through this. “I lost track,” he said. “So many fires are popping up, and it’s not the lightning that’s doing it.”
The evacuations have now become more of a nuisance than a terror, he said.
“I was in the navy for 8½ years,” he said. “This doesn’t scare me.”
But he added that the heat was nearly unbearable.
Also at the fairgrounds was Gloria Young, 55, who woke up at about 11:30 p.m. Sunday to someone banging on her RV window, yelling at her to evacuate.
But the RV that she parked in Santa Rosa’s Howarth Park wasn’t running, and she had no other way to flee, Young said as she sat, barefoot and in the shade with her rat terrier, Spunky.
“I’m afraid of fire,” Young said. “I think this is one of the scariest things in my life.”
Young was only able to grab her purse, her other dog’s urn and Spunky’s blanket before she fled.
“I’m already homeless,” Young said through tears. Those items “might not be much, but it meant a lot to me.”
Young said she had to walk a few miles before she could hitchhike a ride to the Petaluma Veterans Building.
The space was filled, however, so Young boarded a bus to the fairgrounds. Young said she’s hoping tonight she can make her way back to Howarth Park.
“I don’t have any money,” she said. “But I’ll get on the bus somehow.”