by Karen Telleen-Lawton, Noozhawk Columnist January 28, 2025
My parents, both 94, were sleeping comfortably in their Altadena retirement community when the Eaton Fire started. They were hustled out of bed before 6 a.m., instructed to leave immediately for an evacuation center.
They dressed but brought nothing with them — no medications, toiletries, electronics or underwear.
Evacuation Lesson 1: Keep a necessities bag at the ready! Staff checked them off as they boarded a line of buses. Dad thought they were overreacting — until they passed the first block of houses on fire.
My sister found them at the Pasadena Convention Center, among over 1,000 evacuees. With no power at their house, my sister and brother-in-law brought them to my daughter’s house to join their rambunctious household of five, all sequestered inside by thick smoke outside.
I drove down, stopping to pick up supplies and emergency medications called in by a friend.
Lesson 2: keep an accurate list of medications in your wallet. (Good work, Dad!)
My parents were still in independent living, but my mom’s dementia had been making life difficult of late. Now her confusion escalated.
Every few minutes she approached one of us, saying, “How nice it’s been to be here but we’re going home now.”
Every few minutes we explained about the fire. That night in a fold-out sofa, she got up twice to tuck the sheets in the other way, and then back, telling Dad they were sleeping in the wrong direction.
After a few days we moved them to Carpinteria so Emily’s family could return to a semblance of normal. One of the first nights, Mom got up several times in confusion.
The first time I heard her walking down the hall calling, “Mom, mom!” I coaxed her back to bed. The next couple times she was flipping lights on and off to adjust the heat.
When I found her in the closet touching the furnace, I spoke more firmly. “Marjorie, they want us to go back to bed,” I commanded.
“She looked at me and obeyed. After a few minutes I heard her whisper, “It’s nice and warm in here.” She slept through the night.
Trauma is especially hard on the elderly. Dr. Kartik Prabhakaran, surgical professor at New York Medical College, researches the Shock Index (heart rate/systolic blood pressure) in geriatric patients facing severe trauma. His group has found more than a 12 percent increase in risk of mortality for each 0.1 increase in the SI index.
Thomas Rando, deputy director of the Stanford Longevity Center, studies the causes of this link between age and fragility. Why does the body heal less efficiently with age?
Dr. Rando’s team has found a misfiring chemical signal that seems to prompt otherwise healthy stem cells to make the wrong kind of repairs in elders with tissues damaged by surgery or trauma.
His team’s hope — and ours — is that “we may be able to turn those bad instructions off, and help older people heal more efficiently by making sure their cells are receiving the proper instructions,” Rando said.
Now that we have somewhat of a routine established, Mom doesn’t need to be right by Dad’s side constantly. Days are long, but sometimes special in this unexpected full-time caregiving period.
We brought them to an SBIFF preview of “Paddington,” attended mostly by families with young kids. Mom giggled and guffawed with them, smiling her way through the movie.
A photo album of a family get-together for their 70th anniversary is another lifesaver. It is new and beautiful, and a joy each time she peruses it.
Reading news stories about those who died in the Eaton Fire, I see that the vast majority were elders. In the anecdotes, their relatives had urged them to evacuate even when they hadn’t received an evacuation warning or order.
I believe my parents would have been similarly reticent. The community’s management insisted, however, ferrying them to safety.
Their building didn’t burn, so they will be able to return eventually. But the tragic fatalities reveal the importance of Lesson 3: Overcome their resistance to evacuate your beloved elders.
Karen Telleen-Lawton, Noozhawk Columnist
Karen Telleen-Lawton is an eco-writer, sharing information and insights about economics and ecology, finances and the environment. Having recently retired from financial planning and advising, she spends more time exploring the outdoors — and reading and writing about it. The opinions expressed are her own.
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