Your Red Cross Update

by Kathleen Maclay, Red Cross volunteer

A tired Rose Santana went from table to table at the crowded Local Assistance Center (LAC) in Lucerne on Monday. She was looking for help and getting it.  Signing up for Social Security, getting a temporary ID from the Department of Motor Vehicles, learning she needed a letter confirming she had lived in a motorhome on a friend’s Upper Lake land off White Rock Canyon Road from which she evacuated due to the Mendocino Complex Fire.

Santana, 64 and a Lake County resident since 1991, needed one more thing: a place to store her belongings – all contained in two rolling suitcases and a duffle bag. Read more

By Patricia Kemp, Red Cross Volunteer

Connie Sager didn’t hesitate when her phone started buzzing Aug. 3 with evacuation alerts. She scooped up her tiny dog, Taz, and headed for safe shelter. It was the third time this year Connie fled wildfires. But this time she had no home to return to in Spring Valley.  The Mendocino Complex Fire swallowed the place she lived for 35 years. What remained were melted bedframes, a charred refrigerator, and clothes smoldered to gray ash.

“My house is a total loss, red-tagged. I’m not processing it yet,” she said. Read more

By Kathleen Maclay, Red Cross volunteer

When orders came to evacuate Lucerne, a community of 3,000 on the southeastern edges of Clear Lake, Robert Peterson and his two young daughters were ready to skedaddle.

“We had the car packed and all the kids’ stuff loaded,” he said Saturday morning, less than 24 hours after he and his family fled the town he’s called home for eight years. A  resident for a dozen years in this county where some say wildfires “are the new normal,” Peterson said the urgent departure marked his first-ever evacuation. Read more