Rural poverty and disability as peril in the California wildfires

The Los Angeles Times today ran a feature story about the three civilians (by that I means not fire fighters or PG & E employees) killed in the LNU Complex Fire spanning Solano, Napa, Sonoma and Lake counties as fires have raged there for the past 8 days.  This is the fire that's been declared the second largest in California history.

The dateline for this story is Lake Berryessa, but that is not even a Census Designated Place.  It is just a lake.  The lake is, however, surrounded by some settlements, not all even Census Designated Places, including Spanish Flat, one of the communities hardest hit by the recent wildfire.  That is where this iconic photo was taken, and here's an excerpt from the New York Times description of what happened to the folks who live there:

Much of the lakefront community of retirees and young families who commute to landscaping, winery and service jobs in wealthier corners of Napa County had been reduced to a thicket of tangled steel and ash.

In any event, the LA Times story by Anita Chabria (formerly of the Sacramento Bee) features, compassionately, these rural fire victims, their precautions and their demise.  (They are also named but described in much less detail in the New York Times coverage.)  What I also see here, though, is a depiction of rural vulnerability intersecting with other vulnerabilities:  disability, low-income, elderly, spatial isolation.  Here's an excerpt from Chabria's story:

Normally, there is no cellphone signal in these parched hills that form the basin for Lake Berryessa, a reservoir that runs 15 miles across Napa County’s Vaca Mountains. But that evening, [70-year old Mary Hintemeyer] was able to reach her oldest child, Robert McNeal, who lives 13 miles away in the closest town, Winters. He told her to get out. 

As they spoke, she turned back toward the mobile home where she lived with her disabled boyfriend, Leo McDermott, and his son, Thomas. Behind it, on the ridge that loomed above her, she saw smoke — another fire coming out of nearby Wragg Canyon, which she thought had been contained. 

“She said, ‘Oh my God, it’s coming over the other side toward me,’” said McNeal, remembering his last conversation with his mother. “‘I have to go.’”

Among other things, this story is a reminder that places thought of as rich in the national imaginary--Napa Valley, for example--are also home to low-income folks, sometimes eking out a living in their own little slice of the American dream.   Hintemeyer had worked the customer service desk at the Vallejo Times Herald, but also cleaning homes.  Belly dancing was a hobby.  Her 71-year-old boyfriend, Leo McDermott, was wheelchair bound.

As for many rural residents in California, there was no effective system to warn them of the wildfire danger.  These are also the themes from the 2017 and 2018 wildfires in, among other places, Mendocino, Butte, and Sonoma counties.