Californians head back home to altered lives, communities

Associated Press

PETALUMA, Calif.

Some have lost loved ones. Many have survived near-death experiences. Others have lost their homes and a lifetime of possessions.

A week after fleeing raging wildfires, tens of thousands of emotionally ravaged Californians have drifted back home to find their lives and their communities dramatically altered.

At a Red Cross shelter in Petaluma on Tuesday, 69-year-old Sue Wortman recalled the words that raced through her mind when she fled the flames near her home in Sonoma.

“We’re all going up in smoke,” she thought at the time. Since then, she has been walking around in a daze.

Firefighters gained more control Tuesday of the massive wine-country wildfires, even as other blazes erupted in mountains near Los Angeles and Santa Cruz.

Meanwhile, officials and trauma experts worried about the emotional toll taken by the grueling week of major blazes.

Wortman has been living in her RV outside the Petaluma shelter, while hundreds of other evacuees sought refuge in tents and trailers and on cots inside the fairground facility.

Wortman said she sought comfort among friends and with her dogs but knows that feeling won’t last.

“I think it’s really going to hit when we go home and see the destruction,” she said.

The fires that swept through parts of seven counties were the deadliest and most destructive series of blazes in California history. At least 41 people were killed and 6,000 homes destroyed.

An estimated 100,000 people were evacuated at the height of the fires, and about 34,000 remain under evacuation. Many have yet to find out if their homes are still standing.

“There’s still a lot of shock and numbness when you’re in the middle of it. You’re in the high-gear of trying to cope,” said Peggy Ledner-Spaulding, head of outpatient behavior health services at St Joseph’s hospital in Santa Rosa, one of the cities hardest-hit by the fires. “But now we’re starting to enter into the next phase, as they have control over the fires. That shock and disbelief starts to wear out, and we have a lot of stress and anxiety and grief and worry.”