When Wildfire Breaks Out, Who’s Responsible for Elderly Evacuees?

September 28, 2020. It’s the middle of the night, at the Veterans Memorial Building in Santa Rosa. About 200 senior citizens are outside, sitting on folding chairs or in their wheelchairs. Just waiting. Most of them were in bed just a few hours before, until a massive wildfire came racing toward their retirement community. Many of them had been through this before in the 2017 Tubbs Fire. That fire was a reckoning; with nature, with our state and county leaders, with the companies we pay to take care of our elderly loved ones. And still, three years later, we are leaving hundreds of frail seniors in the literal cold while wildfire threatens their community and the last place in their lives they will call home. The California Report’s health correspondent April Dembosky and science reporter Molly Peterson spent a year investigating long-term care homes around the state to see how they're planning for wildfire, and if it's enough. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices