Garden Grove evac: Were the disabled left behind?

By Kelly Barrett, especially for CalMatters

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When the officials ordered tens of thousands of residents to be evacuated during the chemical emergency at Garden Grove in Orange County last month, the instruction was simple: leave now.

But for many Californians, leaving isn’t easy. For some it is impossible without help.

Consider the bedridden senior who relies on a caregiver to be turned, cleaned, fed and treated. What happens to the disabled resident whose electric wheelchair cannot fit into a regular car, the hospice patient on oxygen, or the medically fragile person who cannot safely sit for hours in a crowded shelter?

The emergency at GKN Aerospace methyl methacrylatea flammable chemical used in plastics and resins. Exposure can cause respiratory problems, nosebleeds, nausea and skin reactions, and hospitalization.

State officials declared a state of emergency and 50,000 people were urged to follow evacuation orders. Shelters, care centers and hotlines were announced.

But the hotline is not an evacuation plan. The shelter list is not a medical accommodation plan. And calling a care center doesn’t answer the deeper questions: care for whom, at what level, and for how long?

Public information showed where the general public could go. But it did not make clear where home care recipients, hospice patients, bedridden residents, people dependent on oxygen or the homebound elderly should go if standard shelter is not safe or realistic.

A standard shelter can work for someone who can walk, drive, carry a bag, sleep in a crib, use a public restroom, take medication, and tolerate crowds. This is not the reality for people with severe disabilities, complex medical needs, or dependence on a caregiver.

For a person receiving services at home, the caregiver may be the reason the person is able to eat, use the toilet, take medication, and stay alive outside of an institution. For a hospice patient, evacuation isn’t just a journey—it’s a medical transition. For someone dependent on oxygen, a hospital bed, wound care or dialysis, the gym floor is not safe.

The emergency in Garden Grove should force California to confront a larger failure: The state has no visible, enforceable system to prove that medically vulnerable residents are identified, contacted and transported safely during mass evacuations.

Each county should be required to maintain a realistic evacuation plan for “access and functional needs.” Not a binder. Not a web page. A working system.

This system should include confidential coordination with home support services, elder protective services, hospice agencies, home health agencies, nursing homes, regional centers, and major medical programs. It should include accessible transportation, medical transportation, caregiver access, oxygen support, medication support, wheelchair loading, handicap accessible bathrooms, language access, and medically appropriate shelter.

After any major evacuation, counties should be required to publicly report what happened.

How many home care recipients were in the evacuation zone? How many hospice patients are there? How many are home health patients? How many residents depend on oxygen, wheelchairs, ventilators, hospital beds, dialysis or daily care?

How many did not have a vehicle? How many were contacted directly? How many are taken to affordable shelters, medical shelters, hospitals, medical facilities, hotels or family homes?

And how many are left to figure it out for themselves?

These are matters of life and death.

This is not an attack on firefighters, police or emergency workers. They often risk their lives while larger systems fail around them.

At issue is whether California’s emergency planning includes people who cannot run, drive or sleep safely in a standard shelter. California is talking about aging in place, disability rights and equity. These promises mean little if disaster planning assumes that everyone can evacuate on their own.

When California tells people to leave, it needs to have a plan for the people who can’t leave on their own. The disabled, the elderly, the housebound and the medically vulnerable are not afterthoughts. They are part of society.

The question now is not just what was inside that chemical tank. Also, who made sure that the people who couldn’t run weren’t left behind?

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.