For workers, a day’s work can mean the difference between having money for food or not

The rhythmic metallic clang of construction rang through what should have been a ghost town.

Amid a heavy smell of smoke from the Kincade fire burning just miles away, work continued for many people in the mandatory evacuation zones of Santa Rosa on Tuesday.

Contractors hammered. Landscapers dug holes. Crews removed port-a-loos. All amid an air quality index measured unhealthy, with officials warning locals to stay inside.

“We still need to make money,” said landscaper Jordan Stokles, taking off his hat and wiping sweat from his brow.

In disasters like the wildfires scorching northern and southern California, choking the air with smoke and ash, day laborers and domestic workers have always been disproportionately affected.

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In northern California, more than 185,000 people were ordered to evacuate their homes and work sites over the weekend as the Kincade fire raged across the wine country hills. While many in the region were able to heed the warnings, many workers stayed behind.

“It’s an agricultural community and everything is very time-sensitive when it comes to harvesting the crops,” said Ariel Kelly, the chief executive of Corazón Healdsburg. “We have those visa workers on temporary agricultural visas and they’ll be concluding their stay because this is the end of the season. There’s this concern that ‘if I don’t finish the job, I won’t get paid’…I know that after the first wave of evacuations happened last Wednesday night and a number of them were at our shelter, they were still leaving to go back to work.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Vineyard workers watch the Kincade fire burning in the hills above Geyserville, California, 24 October 2019. Photograph: Peter Dasilva/EPA

As the climate crisis intensifies the wildfire threat across the state, advocates warn these discrepancies will only get worse.

“For a lot of day laborers and household workers, not having a day’s work often means the difference between houselessness or not,” said Maegan Ortiz, the executive director of el Instituto de Educación Popular del Sur de California. “Not having a day’s work is actually a big deal. Not working means not having money for medication for a chronic illness. Not working means not having money for food.”

In the Coffey Park neighborhood of Santa Rosa, several construction crews were at work on Tuesday, many of them rebuilding homes that burned down during the 2017 Tubbs fire that leveled the neighborhood.

Josh Strand was cruising the neighborhood, which he said had been “technically” evacuated in totality. He was emptying the portable toilets on construction sites along street. The air was thick with the smell of fire, but Strand said he wasn’t too worried. “Two years ago it was worse. I had to wear a mask. It’s not so bad this time.”

Advocates in southern California have similarly warned that workers are left exposed as wildfires rage in and near Los Angeles. “I’m hearing stories from Los Angeles where the owner just forgot to tell the worker not to come into work that day,” said Lucas Zucker, the policy and communications director for the Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy. “You have safety exposures for workers where they may have less access to information about what’s going on and the risk they’re under, or they may be compelled to stay, whether it be their own economic necessity or their employer asking them to stay.”

Complicating many workers’ decision of whether to show up for work is their legal status in the country. They’re not eligible for federal aid if they are affected by the disaster, or unemployment. Nor do they necessarily trust they can bring any complaints to the correct authorities without putting their immigration status at risk. And for many, language barriers prevent them from getting accurate or trustworthy information.

In the Sonoma county wine region, there are more than 38,000 undocumented people, said Christy Lubin of the Graton Day Labor Center.

During the 2017 fires, undocumented residents, fearful of the authorities, fled toward the coast instead of to evacuation centers with services, forming an encampment of 1,200 at Bodega Bay, Lubin said.

“You see the national guard, you see increased law enforcement presence, and it’s always scary,” she said.

The UndocuFund, a fund that provides relief for undocumented residents affected by wildfires, has been reopened by immigrant service providers and advocates for the county.

In Los Angeles, Ortiz’s organization is tracking instances of workers continuing to work in impacted areas and assessing how to aid those in need. She already knows of one instance of a house cleaner in respiratory distress.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Fire burns near Getty Center in Los Angeles on 28 October 2019. Photograph: Qian Weizhong/Barcroft Media

Last year during the Woolsey fire, which charred up nearly 97,000 acres and killed three, Ortiz’s organization collected stories from more than 500 workers about having to work through the wildfire.

“The stories we heard last year were workers being given hoses and being asked, ‘Hey, keep the fire away’,” she said. “Families evacuating and saying, ‘Hey can you stay and watch my dogs?’”

She says her organization is still struggling with the after-effects from the Woolsey fire. In the aftermath of the destruction, everyone looked at the decimated mansions without comprehending the loss of jobs that came with it.

“The homeowners have insurance and are able to rebuild or move to a different place,” Zucker said. “The worker has essentially nothing. With domestic workers, we saw people in really desperate situations, just people completely unemployed in a moment’s notice, with no unemployment benefits and no access to any government aid.”

While day laborers and domestic workers will always experience a disproportionate impact in a disaster, Ortiz pointed out that the reason for this is that they are disproportionately affected by circumstances every day.

“The situation that day laborers and domestic workers find themselves in is a climate-accelerated disaster because there is already a crisis that is happening,” she said. “Even when there’s not a wildfire, it’s the same sad thing. It’s just exacerbated by these horrible climate situations.”

