Natural disasters have a way of throwing the inequality faced by people with disabilities into sharp focus. Several stories in the media about people with disabilities who have been victims of the wildfires in the Los Angeles area have illustrated this.
The Guardian reported the story of Galen, a full-time motorized wheelchair user. Galen and his wife of twenty-eight years were ordered to evacuate their home near Pasadena as the raging Eaton wildfire was closing in. But the accessible van that Galen usually uses to get around was in the repair shop. He couldn’t ride with his wife, who is not a wheelchair user, because her car wasn’t wheelchair accessible. So Galen drove his wheelchair a long way through dark streets—alone—until he eventually reunited with his wife outside of the evacuation zone. The couple then had to go to three hotels before they could finally find one that had an available room that was accessible enough to accommodate him.
But Galen seems to be one of the lucky ones—he survived. The Los Angeles Times reported the story of Anthony Mitchell Sr. of Altadena. He was an amputee and his son Justin had cerebral palsy. They died while huddled together, trying to shield themselves from the Eaton wildfire. Mitchell’s eldest son told the L.A. Times that Anthony and Justin, who didn’t have the ability to flee the evacuation zone by themselves, died waiting for assistance that never came. “I’m angry at what happened to my father because it shouldn’t have happened. The institutions let him down,” the junior Mitchell told the L.A. Times.
Both of these stories point to the reality that any time there is a natural disaster that requires the activation of a response plan to save lives, there will always be people with disabilities in the area who need to be rescued, too. But we may well need more assistance to get out of harm’s way than the hypothetical average Joe that most existing plans are designed to serve. And at a time when we need help the most, we’re often abandoned, left to fend for ourselves.
This isn’t new. During the 2017 California wildfire season, for example, which displaced more than 100,000 people, caused $12 billion in damages, and took forty-seven lives, “people with disabilities struggled to receive evacuation information and find adequate transportation and shelter,” according to a 2023 report from the National Council on Disability (NCD). What’s more, “professional caregivers were ordered to evacuate and unable to work.” And, as I reported in my column for the December 2024/January 2025 magazine issue of The Progressive, this problem isn’t going away anytime soon as we see more and more climate disasters.
“During an emergency or major disaster, people who live with physical, sensory, mental, or cognitive disabilities are disproportionately affected,” The NCD report states. “When an emergency occurs, people with disabilities typically have fewer reserves to draw upon, their options for housing and health care are more limited, and it can be harder to recover once the immediate emergency has passed. The increased prevalence of extreme weather events will further destroy these reserves and further hinder people with disabilities’ ability to ‘rebound’ after an extreme weather event.”
What if evacuation vehicles and temporary housing for displaced people are not wheelchair accessible? What if deaf people cannot hear the emergency information that is being broadcast?
The federal Americans with Disabilities Act requires government agencies and emergency planners to provide people with disabilities with access to emergency programs, services, activities, and facilities. But that obligation appears to be routinely ignored by emergency planners.
When emergency plans and the people that are supposed to implement them aren’t flexible enough to accommodate the additional needs of people with disabilities, we become even more likely to be left behind. Our loved ones who can escape more easily than we can will be faced with the excruciating choice of either abandoning us or sticking with us and endangering their own lives.
In a culture where everyone’s life is truly valued and equally considered to be worthy of saving, situations like that would never occur.