By Kelley Barrett, Special for CalMatters
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When officials ordered tens of thousands of residents to evacuate during the Garden Grove chemical emergency in Orange County last month, the instruction sounded simple: leave now.
But for many Californians, leaving is not simple. For some, it is impossible without help.
Think about the bedridden senior who relies on a caregiver to be turned, cleaned, fed and medicated. What happens to the disabled resident whose power wheelchair cannot fit in 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 involved methyl methacrylate, a flammable chemical used in plastics and resins. Exposure could cause respiratory issues, nosebleeds, nausea and skin reactions and hospitalization.
State officials declared an emergency, and 50,000 people were urged to follow evacuation orders. Shelters, care centers and hotlines were announced.
But a hotline is not an evacuation plan. A shelter list is not a medical placement plan. And a call to a care center does not 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 clearly show where recipients of in-home supportive services, hospice patients, bedbound residents, oxygen-dependent people or homebound seniors were to go if a standard shelter was not safe or realistic.
A standard shelter may work for someone who can walk, drive, carry a bag, sleep on a cot, use a public restroom, manage medication and tolerate crowds. That is not the reality for people with serious disabilities, complex medical needs or dependence on a caregiver.
For a person receiving in-home services, a caregiver may be the reason that person can eat, use the bathroom, take medication and remain alive outside an institution. For a hospice patient, evacuation is not just a ride — it is a medical transition. For someone who depends on oxygen, a hospital bed, wound care or dialysis, a gymnasium floor is not safe.
The Garden Grove emergency should force California to confront a larger failure: The state does not have a visible, enforceable system proving that medically fragile residents are identified, contacted and transported safely during mass evacuations.
Every county should be required to maintain a real “access and functional needs” evacuation plan. Not a binder. Not a webpage. A working system.
That system should include confidential coordination with In-Home Supportive Services, Adult Protective Services, hospice agencies, home health agencies, senior housing sites, regional centers and medical baseline programs. It should include accessible transportation, medical transport, caregiver access, oxygen support, medication support, wheelchair charging, disability-accessible bathrooms, language access and medically appropriate sheltering.
After every major evacuation, counties should be required to publicly report what happened.
How many in-home care recipients were in the evacuation zone? How many hospice patients? How many home health patients? How many residents depended on oxygen, wheelchairs, ventilators, hospital beds, dialysis or daily care?
How many had no vehicle? How many were contacted directly? How many were taken to accessible shelters, medical shelters, hospitals, nursing facilities, hotels or family homes?
And how many were left to figure it out themselves?
These are life-and-death questions.
This is not an attack on firefighters, police officers or emergency workers. They often risk their lives while larger systems fail around them.
The issue is whether California’s emergency planning includes people who cannot run, drive or sleep safely in a standard shelter. California talks about aging in place, disability rights and equity. Those promises mean little if disaster planning assumes everyone can self-evacuate.
When California tells people to leave, it must have a plan for people who cannot leave on their own. Disabled, elderly, homebound and medically fragile people are not afterthoughts. They are part of the public.
The question now is not only what was inside that chemical tank. It is also, who made sure the people who could not run were not left behind?
This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.