Kincade fire, combined with evacuations and PG&E outages, triggers traumatic stress

It wasn’t a troop of Nazi soldiers with rifles that forced Anna Vandermei, 81, out of her apartment building on West Steele Lane hours before the sun came up early Sunday morning.

And yet when Kincade fire risks forced her to evacuate her west Santa Rosa apartment, Vandermei heard the echo of a familiar fear. It was a feeling of uncertainty that took her back to 1944, when she was 6 and forced to leave her home in Arnhem, Holland.

“It brought a lot of memories back,” Vandermei said Tuesday, as she sat outside the temporary evacuation center at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds’ Grace Pavilion.

For Vandermei, who also had to flee her home during the 2017 North Bay wildfires, Sunday’s evacuation was her third. Vandermei’s fear, triggered by the Kincade fire, is what one local mental health professional called the “echo effect” of trauma, in which there’s a recurrence of similar traumatic experiences.

During the past week, Sonoma County residents have been forced to cope with anxiety and stress of fire risks, the related mandatory evacuations and school closures, PG&E’s intentional power shutdowns and poor air quality, among others. For some, this triggered recurring feelings of dread and other physical and psychological effects.

Since the 2017 firestorm, a number of local organizations and agencies have spearheaded mental health programs to address the effects of recurring wildfires in the North Coast. These include the Wildfire Mental Health Collaborative, an effort spearheaded by the Healthcare Foundation of Northern Sonoma County. The collaborative seeks to address the county’s long-term mental health recovery needs. There’s a self-help website for fire survivors called mysonomastrong.com and a mobile app version of the site, both offering information on how to cope with post-disaster stress.

“I think this community was not really over the fires that happened two years ago,” said Marryellen Curran, mental health director for Santa Rosa Community Health, which operates multiple community clinics in the city.

For Dayren Torres, 17, that could be seeing a red traffic signal glowing in the fog.

“I kind of like stay in a little bit of shock. I start messing around with my fingers, pushing my hair back. I get shortness of breath. My heart starts pumping,” said Torres, who along with her family was evacuated from their home in the northeast side of Windsor.

Torres, who volunteered Wednesday at the evacuation center at Santa Rosa Veterans Memorial Building, said she tries to calm herself to get over her physical symptoms.

Torres and her family lost their Mocha Lane home in Coffey Park two years ago during the Tubbs fire. Her mother, Daysi Carreño, said the fear of that October night resurfaced last week when they were forced to evacuate Windsor.

Carreño said after the 2017 fire, her daughter Dayren started experiencing depression and anxiety. She lost a lot of weight and became increasingly isolated.

“She used to be a very happy girl,” Carreño said. “After (the fire) she did not want to be around people or family. Her grades suffered, she lost interest in school.”

In response to the Kincade fire, the Lomi Psychotherapy Clinic on B Street in Santa Rosa is offering counseling services to those experiencing grief, depression, anxiety and trauma. The nonprofit clinic is offering the counseling session free to those who cannot pay.

Curran, the mental health director for Santa Rosa Community Health, recently launched a mental health workshop near the Grace Pavilion at the fairgrounds. The workshops are part of the Sonoma Community Resilience Collaborative, which to date has trained more than?200 volunteers who help people learn coping skills.

These skills, aimed at relieving the physical effects of stress, trauma and anxiety, include soft belly breathing, shaking and dancing, guided imagery, and drawing.

Sonoma County Supervisor Shirlee Zane, a former marriage and family therapist, said anxiety has a strong physiological effect on our body.

“Your heart beats fast, you have shortness of breath and you can feel very achy, like you have the flu, headache, muscle stiffness, fatigue, sleeplessness, restlessness,” Zane said. “You can get an overall feeling of dread.”

Doreen Van Leeuwen, president of the Redwood Empire chapter of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, said the Kincade fire has left many local residents feeling anxious and sleep deprived.

“When people are not getting enough sleep, they’re functioning in an impaired state,” Van Leeuwen said. “Other people sleeping in a shelter are not getting good sleep, either. Even if you’re staying with relatives, you’re feeling out of sorts. I think that also affects your ability to manage or regulate your emotions ?or moods.”

Kathy O’Connell, 60, of Monte Rio, said her reaction is flight. O’Connell was among those who evacuated to the fairgrounds. After county Sheriff Mark Essick lifted the evacuations Wednesday in most areas, only?5,788 people still were under orders to stay away from their homes by nightfall.

O’Connell attended a Sonoma Community Resilience Collaborative workshop Wednesday.

“I have PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) from domestic violence,” said O’Connell, who was evacuated Saturday. “This whole thing triggers the PTSD symptoms. For me, I want to run. It’s fight or flight and I don’t fight. Your mind will start speeding up and you can’t do anything quick enough.”

She did “guided visualization” exercises during the workshop, where someone had her imagine she was in a small meadow with a breeze blowing, and where she could hear the soft sounds of a brook.

“It slows you down, it slows your breathing and that is what helps you slow your mind,”