The timing of the evacuation order could not have been worse.
Galen Buckwalter and his wife, Deborah, were alerted around 9.30pm on Tuesday evening that the rapidly spreading Eaton fire near Pasadena, California, was endangering their home and they should immediately flee to safety.
Galen, 68, is paralyzed from the chest down and uses an electric wheelchair for mobility. Normally, he drives with his van that accommodates the chair, but as the extreme southern California windstorm was fueling the flames north of his home, his vehicle was sitting in a repair shop.
Earlier in the evening, he felt confident that the fire in Eaton Canyon would not travel all the way to his Sierra Madre neighborhood by the hills. Now, he was unsure how he could get to safety.
Galen thought about getting in his wife’s car without the chair, risking losing his mobility and facing the destruction of an essential device that could take months to replace.
“Leaving his chair behind, it’s like leaving behind part of his body,” said Deborah, 72. “It is his legs.”
The couple of 28 years did not think first responders would be able to rescue him and his chair. In the past, they have called paramedics for help when Galen needed to be transported to the hospital only to discover they had no way to transport his chair. A friend reminded Galen of Uber’s wheelchair-accessible vehicle (Wav) option, but when he logged on to the rideshare app, he saw there was no way to get a car to him inside the evacuation zone.
Running out of options and time, Galen put on an orange jacket, and at about 10pm, headed out into the night alone, deciding he would travel several miles to the nearest train station.
“I bundled up and took off through the wind and the darkness,” he recalled on Thursday evening.
“I was terrified watching Galen set out in the dark as the wind was so ferocious and debris was flying, and I could see the red smoke in the distance,” said Deborah. “In this high-stress, really dangerous situation, we just wanted to be together.”
The journey was perilous. Galen quickly realized he couldn’t use the sidewalks, which were littered with fallen tree limbs and other debris, so he entered the roadway, hoping that any evacuating cars would see him: “I had to take my chances. It was totally surreal, almost post-apocalyptic. The hills were just ablaze on my right, the power was off, there was no light, and there was crap blowing through the streets and winds were the strongest I’ve ever experienced in Sierra Madre.”
After a mile of traveling and dodging obstacles, he reached a local theater and realized he was no longer in the evacuation zone. He tried Uber Wav again, then waited. Some passersby asked if they could help him, but he had to explain that they couldn’t transport his 400lb chair, and he couldn’t leave it behind.
After about 20 minutes, an Uber driver showed up. His wife, meanwhile, finished packing her car, took a photo of their home in case she never saw it again, and dropped their dog at a friend’s house.
The two reconvened at a hotel, only to find it had no vacancies. At their third hotel stop, and after having to navigate getting another Uber Wav, they finally found a hotel in downtown Los Angeles that had availability and an accessible room. They settled in around 3am.
Their home has remained in the evacuation zone, but as of Thursday evening the fires had not reached it. Many others have fared worse during the unprecedented windstorm that has left firefighters stretched thin across the region as they battle relentless, simultaneous blazes. The Eaton fire, after two days of raging, had burned more than 13,600 acres, destroyed more than 4,000 structures and killed at least five people.
The Buckwalters’ ordeal, the couple said, was a stark reminder of how people with disabilities are left behind in disasters. “We have no system in place. When you’re disabled, you and your people are on your own,” said Galen, a research psychologist who has been using a wheelchair since age 16 after an accident. “In emergencies, disabled people are the last to get services. The conversation needs to at least be inclusive of how to integrate people with a broader range of needs into the planning.”
Seated in their hotel room where they evacuated, Deborah, a clinical psychologist specializing in neuropsychology, noted that even after they escaped the immediate danger, it was hard to find any option for housing that night that could accommodate their needs. Watching the press conferences where authorities give detailed information about what to do about pets and animals, she said she wished those news briefings also incorporated leaders with expertise in rescue services for people with disabilities.
Galen wasn’t the only wheelchair user needing rescue from the Eaton fire. Harrowing footage from Tuesday night showed staff at a nursing home evacuating patients in a chaotic scramble as embers flew nearby.
As the couple waits for news about their home, they have also been in contact with their daughters – one unsure if her house has survived the Pacific Palisades fire near Malibu, and another in Pasadena, sheltering friends whose homes were confirmed destroyed.
During the extreme stress of their evacuation, Deborah said she never lost hope that Galen would make it to safety on his own:
“Galen is so friggin’ resilient and strong. He’s gone so bravely into so many situations that I really trusted he was going to be OK.”
