Gov. Newsom doles apples, apologies at emergency food distribution in Santa Rosa

Gov. Gavin Newsom, by this point in the fire-and-power crisis so frequent a visitor to Sonoma County that he could be considered local, doled apples and apologies Wednesday morning at an emergency food distribution in Santa Rosa.

“Sorry about all this,” Newsom told Ocotlan Libreros, a Kaiser Permanente nurse, as the Redwood Empire Food Bank handed out free groceries in a parking lot at the Kaiser campus off Sebastopol Road in southwest Santa Rosa.

“He shook my hand!” Libreros exclaimed as the governor stepped away to speak to others and to express his regret at all that so many in the region and far beyond are enduring.

Dressed casually in blue jeans and sneakers, Newsom told Rikki Lee Shuck of Santa Rosa and her three kids, Gillian, Ryker and Caius, who’d come for food, “It’s starting to get better, which is good.” He told them and others in the queue he was sorry for all that’s going on.

Asked why he was so apologetic, the governor replied, “People shouldn’t have to live like this.”

He was in Santa Rosa, along with State Sen. Mike McGuire of Healdsburg and Assembly members Jim Wood of Santa Rosa and Mark Levine of San Rafael, for the first-ever disaster response by the regional food bank’s “Engine 1,” a specially outfitted big-rig truck and trailer.

The food bank partnered in the food distribution with Kaiser, which shifted some services to its campus on Mercury Way following the evacuation early Sunday of its medical center on Bicentennial Way and Highway 101.

Kaiser and the Redwood Empire Food Bank distribute food regularly to residents of southwest Santa Rosa who are in need. Wednesday’s distribution, open to the public and ?accompanied by a media crush because of the governor’s presence, was prompted by the vast numbers of residents who’ve been evacuated from or have lost their homes, or have no power.

“I think you can see there’s a huge need for food,” said Wood.

For a time, the assemblyman and the other elected officials joined the volunteers who placed groceries in cardboard cartons held by the people who lined up near the food bank’s truck.

“I’m the apple guy,” the governor told one beneficiary of the distribution. Levine handed out yams, Wood celery and McGuire pears and carrots.

In addition to saying he is sorry for the misery and disruption that’s accompanying the Kincade fire and the electrical power shutoffs by PG&E, Newsom pledged to hold the utility company responsible for its role in the crisis.

Pleading that no one take out anger and frustration on PG&E employees in the field, he said, “We’ll hold PG&E, the corporation, accountable.

“We’ll make sure that there are brighter days in the future. We, I assure you, are not allowing any of this to be the new normal.”

Though “Mother Nature has joined the conversation” and California suffers impacts of climate change, Newsom said, “that does not mean we have to live in these kinds of conditions where our lights are going off as often as they have been.”

When he apologized to Rincon Valley resident Meggan Williams, a Kaiser Permanente medical assistant, for what she’s had to put up with, she assured him, “It’s not your fault.”