While the scope and scale of loss from the Los Angeles wildfires is unimaginable, try to imagine the horror of being left behind. Senior citizens and people with disabilities who are disaster victims are too often neglected in disaster planning. As has happened in LA, family members struggling to save themselves and others make the hard choice to stay in the midst of the danger, or to leave loved ones too difficult to transport behind.
As of this writing, the fires are still ongoing so reports are anecdotal. In Altadena, Anthony Mitchell, a 67-year-old amputee who used a wheelchair, refused to leave his adult son with cerebral palsy alone at home. They were incinerated while waiting to be evacuated. In Malibu, a 32-year old former child star, Rory Sykes, who was blind and had cerebral palsy, could not be assisted to escape by his mother, who had a broken arm. He urged her to leave. He died of carbon monoxide poisoning.
These early stories will no doubt be eclipsed by stories that continue to pour out of the nightmarish hell that is parts of LA County.
Emergencies like fires can happen anywhere at any time. My friend Paul Hearne attended Hofstra University in New York when the high-rise dorms opened in the late 1960s/early 1970s. He had osteogenesis imperfecta and used a wheelchair or gurney when his legs were in casts, as they were when we met in the summer of 1967. He and the other disabled students were forced to live on the first floor. The University and the Hempstead Fire Department thought this was the best way to safely house students with mobility impairments. Never mind that the dorms had elevators and were accessible—it was just plain unsafe to allow students with disabilities to reside above the first floor. The students with disabilities were offended, and correctly asserted that their rights were being ignored. They went above first floors all the time, they pointed out, and their university experience was being ruined by this unnecessary segregation. They demonstrated and prevailed and the dorms have remained accessible and integrated since.
Of course, the first floor is safer than the floors above, but people with disabilities assume risks others don’t because of the nature of disability as well as the restrictions imposed on mobility by terrain and architecture. People with disabilities would like to assume as little risk as possible while enjoying integrated, accessible surroundings. This requires advance planning by government, family members, and people with disabilities themselves.
Some years ago, a suburban county published its plan for evacuation of the citizenry in the event of radiation from the Indian Point nuclear reactor. Everyone within a 50-mile radius of the facility would have to leave. In the section about people with disabilities, the plan included a registration section for people in wheelchairs. A bus would pick them up at their houses and take them to a high school, but because of space constraints their wheelchairs would be left behind. We inquired of county disaster planners what the people who need wheelchairs would do once they got to the high school. After a long pause, they said they recognized that the plan needed
work and thanked us for our input.
More recently, power failures caused by Hurricane Sandy in New York City trapped thousands in multi-story buildings dependent on elevators, and left thousands without drinking water that needed to be pumped to upper floors. Paratransit services were discontinued before mass transit services were cancelled—stranding many with disabilities.
The lesson: plan ahead. Urge government officials and family members to do the same. For instance, United Spinal Association sued Washington, DC and succeeded in altering the city’s emergency planning services to include provisions for intellectually, emotionally, and physically disabled people.
The Los Angeles fires are so vast and so unprecedented that until last month most could not foresee the possibility. That is even more reason to make your own plan at the same time as you encourage your local government to plan for the completely unexpected.
Opinions expressed are solely those of the writer(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Able News at The Viscardi Center and/or The Viscardi Center.