And for families who might ordinarily flee to the homes of relatives or close friends, worries about the virus have complicated those decisions.
[Track Californias coronavirus cases.]
Chelsea Sterrett wrote in an email on Thursday that her family was ordered to evacuate as the River Fire, south of Salinas, approached.
She and her husband are both high school teachers who were in the midst of their first week of virtual learning; their children were set to start school online the day the mandatory evacuation order came.
So the parents packed up their three children (ages 7, 5 and 1) and a dog, and left to stay with family friends they hadnt seen in months because of the pandemic.
The immediate crisis of the fire was bigger than our concerns about Covid, she wrote.
Kevin Susco wrote in an email late last week that his daughter-in-law asked on Tuesday if she and her son, who were under an evacuation warning in Boulder Creek, could stay with him and his wife in Palo Alto.
Their son, he said, is an Army Reservist currently in Kuwait.
Weve been together only briefly since the pandemic, because my wife and I are both in our sixties, and we take the threat from the virus seriously, he said. But we didnt think about it too much before we said, sure, come over if you need to evacuate.
[See the latest updates on the fires here.]
Some who are at particularly high risk of getting seriously ill or dying of Covid-19 are confronting difficult choices, however.read more
California’s Crises Converge: Fleeing Wildfires in a Pandemic
