The website, MySonomaStrong, lets users self-assess their potential traumas and connect to resources anonymously.  

Some natural disaster survivors will not go to traditional treatment centers because they don’t want to deal with the feelings associated with the trauma, or survivors are in a place without mental health services, said Josef Ruzek of the National Center for Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. 

Online tools can reach a large population in a variety of languages for low cost, Ruzek said. 

Ruzek helped develop MySonomaStrong and an app, Sonoma Rising, for the wildfire survivors. He said the programs can be used not just to help people acknowledge and track individual progress, but also could be integrated into traditional therapy. 

The website and app let users self-assess their potential traumas and connect to resources anonymously. 

Todd Player of MySonomaStrong said the website can “meet people where they are.” 

Susan Dunn uses MySonomaStrong to track her progress and monitor how she is feeling after a fire destroyed parts of her neighborhood. 

Certain sights, sounds and smells can act as a trigger for Dunn. 

“Oh, I smelled smoke. Now it’s happening again for me,” Dunn said.

Although she did not lose her house, she said her entire community was traumatized, with symptoms that won’t go away. 

“There’s been lots of trauma in that neighborhood, during the fires, and you just don’t take anything for granted after an experience like this,” Dunn said.

Player said the response grew after the second year because of 2018 wildfires in neighboring counties, and says that over 3,000 people now use the website.

“To some who look at web sites like Google or Facebook which get millions of visits per day that doesn’t seem like a lot, but I like to remind people this is mental health counseling not social media or an e-commerce site,” Player said. “If I took any provider and lined up even 100 people outside their door who wanted to talk about services or wanted actual therapy, they would feel inundated and that would be a huge number. So I look at that and say it’s really quite successful at reaching people who need help.”

He said driving through the county is still surreal. 

There might be three or four houses clumped together, with nothing left except the fireplace and the foundation, Player said. “You can drive another 250 feet, and they’ll be houses that are completely unscathed.”

Ruzek said there is a growing interest and need for mental health-related to natural disasters, but involving the internet is a very new development. He sees a future where survivors can use their phones to help learn coping skills, connect to other survivors and check their trauma. 

Surrounding counties and California government are asking the Healthcare Foundation Northern Sonoma County to replicate the website and app for their communities, said the foundation’s CEO Debbie Mason.

She said this September, the foundation will start advertising more heavily for the anniversary of the fire. 

“We constantly need to be in front of people so that when they decide they’re ready for help, they know where they can get the free tools to get help,” Mason said. 

Mental health professionals in Sonoma are especially worried about its residents because of economic stress after the fires, said Mason.

The average daily rate in April 2019 is down a little over 4% compared to the same time last year.

When the fires hit Sonoma, 2017 was the first year the county didn’t experience any population growth since 1860. Over 3,300 people moved from Sonoma County in 2018, according to World Population Review.

Mason said people are still leaving.

“Everybody is feeling it,” said Mason, adding that even mental health professionals are overwhelmed with the need in Sonoma. “Everybody feels exhausted. We’ve got a community that’s really, really hurting right now.”

Sarah Beth Guevara

Sarah Beth Guevara is a senior at the University of Oklahoma where she is finishing a degree in journalism and a minor in vocal music. She currently serves as president of  the National Association of Hispanic Journalists at OU. She is also a Gaylord Ambassador. The bilingual journalist has interned with the Enid News and Eagle and News 9. She’s also written for OU Nightly, Gaylord News Oklahoma, Monkey Cage….and [UNFILTERED], a student media project with KWTV News 9. In the fall she will be a wire reporter for Gaylord News in Washington, D.C.

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“It was bedlam,” recalled Elfin Forest resident Nancy Reed. “Absolute bedlam.”

After being trapped in traffic during the 2014 Cocos Fire, Reed is among many looking to avoid previous evacuation woes. Reed, who scrambled to load her animals and connect her trailer to her car, was unable to evacuate due to traffic along the road. Other residents were unable to make multiple trips back to rescue all of their animals after mandatory evacuations began. 

Reed owns five horses, two dogs and two cats. She credits Jazzi, her 18-year-old competitive riding horse, with helping her through her husband’s death in 2006. 

“There is no way in hell I am leaving her with a fire,” she said. “No way in hell. You wouldn’t do that with your child. You would do whatever you had to do if it was your child.”

Wendy Said, a horse trainer in Harmony Grove, loaded her donkey and two horses in her 40-foot trailer the evening before the fire closed in. She waited two hours to pull out of her driveway and onto Country Club Road, a dead-end passageway that feeds onto the main road. 

“It’s a mess every single time,” Said lamented. “I’ve lived here for 33 years; it gets worse every time.”

Reed and Said are among two neighbors who conducted a census of horses in Elfin Forest Harmony Grove. Coordinating with local and state officials, Reed is working on plans for staging areas when the next disaster strikes. 

“We’ve got to do something better because you cannot let family members perish,” Reed said.

Elfin Forest and Harmony Grove are home to more than 500 horses, according to the neighborhood census, which also includes chickens, goats, and alpacas. When fires strike, residents are at the mercy of the unpredictable nature of the burn — as well as crowded traffic conditions that are exacerbated by cattle trailers and multiple trips required to evacuate pets. 

Residents fear future neighborhood developments may further complicate evacuation. The town council has sued San Diego County over two proposed developments — Valiano and Harmony Grove Village South — that, combined, would add more than 700 homes to the area. Council Chairman JP Theberge said the developments’ approvals violate a “good-faith promise” by the county that it would not approve more housing in the area.

Both of them surround Harmony Grove Village, a 700-home development approved in 2007. The site is estimated to be completed in 2020, according to the company website. Theberge said the new residents have become a part of the community; however, he’s unsure how a full neighborhood will factor into evacuation. 

“We’re still not clear on what’s going to happen when the next fire comes and we have 750 homes already built,” Theberge said. 

Said, whose property is near the site for Valiano, describes the proposed development a “tomb.”

“How would we, in the best case scenario, get our horse trailers onto Country Club Drive?” she asked. 

Said and Reed, both longtime residents of Elfin Forest Harmony Grove, attribute the success of Elfin Forest Harmony Grove, as well as the support they’ve received on forming protocol, to the shared culture of autonomy and ownership.

“This is a resilient community,” Reed said. “People take care of one another. They care about one another.”

Kailey Broussard

Kailey Broussard is a master’s student at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. As an undergraduate, Broussard reported on historic flooding in south Louisiana, as well as fraternity hazing at her alma mater, the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Her work has won regional recognition from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Southeast Journalism Conference. She also served in various reporting and editing positions at the university’s student publication, The Vermilion. Her previous work can be found in The Advocate, The Current and The Independent. View her work on her website here.

kaileybroussard.com

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“People describe it as one of those little snow globes,” said Stu Brown, the director of parks and recreation of the town that welcomes 20,000 to 30,000 guests on any given weekend throughout the year. 

“It’s living in an endless winter,” he added. 

Even in the middle of summer, whether it be piles on the side of the road, up on the mountain tops or at the resort, snow is visible in Mammoth Lakes year-round. 

The town’s success is dependent on snow, but even Brown said too much of a good thing can turn bad.

“Everyone likes beautiful snowfall,” he said. “Unfortunately, when it gets carried away, that becomes the problem.”

Brown said snow is the community’s source of economy, it also sometimes creates major transportation problems for the four-square mile resort town located 300 miles northwest of Los Angeles in the Sierra Nevada mountains.

While most people think of police, firefighters and paramedics as first responders, in snow country, snow removal crews are first responders when emergency vehicles can’t get through to accident sites or hospitals because of snow-packed roads.

Todd Murphy, the town’s public works maintenance manager, and his crew of snow blower operators play a crucial role in assisting fire and police in moving around the snow-covered streets of Mammoth Lakes.

“I always tell people… our roads aren’t cleared to remove the berm [of snow] in front of your driveway, our roads are cleared to get first responders and emergency personnel around,” Murphy said.

While heavy snow can cause problems, it also serves as one of the community’s best lines of defense against wildfires, Brown said.

The snow helps suppress wildfires by covering smoldering brush and preventing the spread of flames. 

The town has seen 55 feet of snowfall during a single winter season in recent years, making for around-the-clock snow removal at some points. 

“A long winter — it’s kind of the best case scenario for California’s extreme summers these days,” said Brown. “That’s why I think everybody is kind of OK with it.”

This year, the town experienced its sixth snowiest season in the past 20 years when 41 feet fell between October and May and arrived in uncharacteristic ways. 

For one, nearly half the town’s snowfall for the year came in a single month.

“207 inches in February,” said Brown. “Divide that by 28. That’s — that’s a lot of snow every day.”

And as winter looked like it may give way to spring, May brought 32 inches to the town, breaking the month’s previous record of 27.5 inches from the 2010-2011 season.

This late-season snow allowed Andrew Schimmel and Jordan Roseberg to make a trip in June from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, to snowboard in shorts and Hawaiian shirts at Mammoth Mountain Area where the idea of an endless winter will be on full display until resort officials plan to close for the season in August.

Christian Gravius

Christian Gravius is a recent graduate of St. Bonaventure University where he majored in journalism and minored in English. Gravius covered high school sports for the Olean Times Herald in New York, and worked as a marketing intern at the world’s largest YMCA in Estes Park, Colorado. Gravius covered the St. Bonaventure Bonnies in the 2018 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament in Dallas. Gravius won the top award in the Jim Murray Memorial Foundation competition for an essay he wrote about a former teammate’s running career before and after a life-changing accident. Gravius will pursue a master’s degree at South Dakota State University in sports and recreation administration. See his work here.

christiangravius.wixsite.com/website

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