Residents of Sonoma County homeless camp evacuated before Glass fire’s flames hit

At Los Guilicos Village, Sonoma County’s permanent homeless encampment in east Santa Rosa, 60 residents were evacuated Sunday night in the face of a fast-moving wildfire, which had destroyed at least four units by daybreak, said Chris Grabill, the director of the camp operated and managed by St. Vincent de Paul.

An orange glow spotted by staff over the mountain ridge to the east prompted a flurry of calls and texts to Grabill’s phone 10 minutes before 9 p.m., kick starting the campsite’s emergency evacuation plan into action, Grabill said.

Staff began knocking on residents’ doors, telling them to prepare to evacuate, giving first notice to those with health issues that made it harder for them to collect their things, Grabill said.

Grabill raced to the Pythian Road site from his home in Roseland, first picking up Santa Rosa Councilman Jack Tibbetts, the executive director of St. Vincent de Paul. As he drove, his phone lit up with a notification that the village was under an evacuation warning. Another alert, minutes later, ordered people in the area to leave, he said.

“At first I just thought, we have to follow protocol and take an abundance of caution,” said Grabill. “But it quickly sunk in, like, ‘Oh, wow, this place is definitely in danger and the road is filling up with people.’”

The two arrived about 9:30 p.m. and jumped in to help the group of eight staff and security guards that were loading some residents into a fleet of vans stationed at the homeless encampment. Other residents got rides with neighbors. Everyone was gone by 10:30 p.m., Grabill said.

The fire would hit the camp within hours and jump Highway 12 by 1:30 a.m.

“Anyone who started freaking out and getting that panic paralysis, there was always someone else to say, ‘Hey, this is really hard but we have to go,’” Grabill said. “I think it really helped that people had been through hard things together on the street before.”

Some of the residents from the village were placed in two Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds, Grabill said. Ten of the residents at the village were sent to the Alliance Redwoods Conference Grounds in Occidental and another group was placed at the Guerneville Park and Ride, where a temporary homeless camp was already in place.

Others slept in their cars at the fairgrounds or were able to stay with relatives.

“I’m just so grateful we were able to get everybody out before something bad happened,” Grabill said. “There were a lot of people who were freaked out but at the same time they got it done. They really did rally together.”