Napa County Fairgrounds' RV park was closed from regular operations in order to house Valley fire evacuees.
The Valley fire raging through Northern California has now become the third worst in state history, in terms of the number of structures it has claimed. According to news sources, the blaze has burned through over 76,000 acres, destroyed 1,783 structures and threatened almost 7,000 others.
On the night of Sept. 12, Carlene Moore, CEO of the Napa County Fair Association, received a call from the county while she was away at a wedding. They wanted to open the Napa County Fairgrounds, Calistoga, Calif., as an evacuation center for the thousands of Lake County residents who were forced to evacuate their homes.
“And, of course, I responded ‘yes,’” said Moore.
Another event, California Breathe’s bicycle rally was already on the grounds and not scheduled to leave until Monday. But they got out quickly and left behind food and other items that could be helpful. Then, at midnight, people started arriving.
“The only way I can really describe what was happening is that volcano movie with Pierce Brosnan,” said Moore. “You know, the lava is coming and every lane of the road is headed south away from it. Literally thousands of people from Lake County were fleeing their homes.”
Napa County Fairgrounds is working to ship 350 pallets of donations to Lake County.
The regular shelters were insufficient to handle the sheer number as the fairgrounds reached a peak of over 1,000 people one night. Initially, the American Red Cross was running the center, but a problem arose when they would let only people without pets and animals into the indoor shelter. One night it rained and there were fewer than 30 people registered in the American Red Cross shelter, because they refused to leave their pets. Moore said they were also turning away volunteers and donations after a certain point. Moore arrived on Monday, Sept. 14 and immediately took over.
“My primary concern was public health, welfare and safety,” said Moore. “Once we got those areas addressed, then we started working on the other elements.”
Moore rearranged the camp, redirecting traffic from the middle of the buildings and organizing volunteers and donations. The chaos took a couple of days to get under control, Moore said. Their RV park was opened to the incoming vehicles and campers, though the majority of people were housed in tents.
“They gathered in little communities,” said Moore. “You almost could have hung a street sign, because whole neighborhoods gathered together and found one another.”
Showers, toilets, cleaning stations and medical stations were set up, including access to mental heath services. The state also sent in a team that worked with Moore and the staff to help identify evacuees who had accessibility issues, so they could help mitigate those and ensure they had access to everything they needed.
“We didn’t know if they'd lost everything or nothing, but in most cases these people lost everything they had,” said Moore. “We tried to give them a safe place, food in their belly and people they could talk to.”
Napa County enacted its emergency operations center at the fairgrounds.
Napa County and the surrounding communities pitched in to house, feed and entertain the evacuees. People opened their horse stables to take in horses, as the fairgrounds was unable to house large animals. A corner of the grounds was designated for insurance companies and other tertiary services that came to help their clients with filing claims and other things. A dog washing station came for two days, a mobile hair salon offered free haircuts, and some entertainment options even showed up.
“People wanted to be able to offer the evacuees reprieve from having to think about their situation,” said Moore. “Our local film festival group came in and did an outdoor movie one night, and different musicians came in and played music.”
With the help of a volunteer chef, they provided 1,000 people with three hot meals a day, including some gourmet offerings from local restaurants, bakeries and wineries.
“It was like, in essence, the most disorganized fair you’ve ever seen,” said Moore. “You’ve got vendors, food services, medical services, entertainers coming in and insurance companies and they were like the arts and crafts group for the day. We truly could not have done it without the support of our county. The list of individuals, businesses and nonprofits that we have to be thankful to and are so appreciative of is huge. We’re still gathering it.”
Throughout it all, Moore said they hardly had a problem as far as safety goes, other than one fight.
Slowly people have been leaving the fairgrounds to return to Lake County or other housing, and they plan to close the evacuation center on Sept 24 after breakfast. Only about 30 evacuees are still on the premises. Before the closing, Moore said they worked closely with officials to make sure each person had the appropriate transportation, housing and anything else they needed. They will be transporting around 350 pallets of leftover donations to Lake County in the next few days.
They have been working with the county and the California Conservation Corps for the last week to get the grounds back in order and all the equipment broken down and squared away. The plan is to have the place back to normal by Sept. 28.
Moore said the state will be reimbursing them for such things as power and trash, but the loss of revenue they experienced from the last two weeks will affect them. Their nine-hole golf course and RV park will have been closed to the public for two weeks. A couple of local meetings were canceled and this weekend they were scheduled to host an AMA race at their speedway, but it has now been indefinitely postponed.
“We’re a nonprofit organization that runs on a break-even budget every year, so the loss is pretty significant,” said Moore, “but it never came into our thought pattern when we were called upon to open the fairgrounds. It’s only now that I get asked that I think about it.”
Ironically, Moore said her board was actually on a retreat Sept. 11-12, working with consultants on a master plan and considering if the fairgrounds was capable of acting as an emergency response center. Then that night they got the call.
“It was like, wow!” said Moore. “Now we’ll really be able to download what this property needs and doesn’t need in order to accommodate a large emergency response. I called Becky Bailey Findley who’s the executive director of CFSA and she had been our facilitator and said, you’re never going to believe this one. I’m sure the next meeting we have for looking at that my board is going to have a lot to contribute for the emergency response aspect of it. Like boots-on-the-ground type of experience.”
Though the fair staff has never had to do anything like this before, Moore said they are now working on creating a plan in case it happens again, so they know exactly who to call and what to do from the start. The industry showed their support as some people from San Diego County Fair with experience in like situations came for a couple of days, as well as workers from other local fairs. Unlike her staff, county workers are trained through an incident command system that Moore now sees value in initiating.
“I’ve learned al lot about this stuff over the last few days, and it’s actually something that, going forward, I’m going to be encouraging the fair industry to be a part of,” said Moore. “In a crisis, when you have that structure in place, it brings order to the chaos.”
Mostly, Moore said she is so thankful to the community, county and state for their quick and thorough response to what could have been a worse situation without their help.
“In an evacuation, you have people coming, and they’ve never been through this before,” said Moore. “Then you have community members and groups coming in, because when they hear that people are losing their homes they want to help. I’m really proud of our community that we were able to step in and say, we’ve got this and could take care of these people better than anyone else.”
Interviewed for this story: Carlene Moore, (707) 942-5111
