Every North County family knows the drill by early fall: the wind picks up, the air gets that particular smell, and everyone checks their phone. What most families have not done is think through how an evacuation actually goes when the person you are evacuating uses a walker, relies on an oxygen concentrator, or has dementia and does not understand why you are asking them to get in the car at 2 a.m.
That gap is worth closing before the season, not during it. Here is what is specific to older adults, and specific to San Diego County.
Register the cell phone, not just the landline
San Diego County’s official emergency notification system is AlertSanDiego. The step families skip is registration: you have to actively register cell phone numbers and email addresses to receive alerts for a given address. If your parent has cut the landline, which most people have, they may not be in the system at all.
Register your parent’s address and phone, and register it under your own contact information too, so that you are notified about their neighborhood even if you live in a different one. Also install the SD Emergency app, which shows evacuation zones, shelters, road closures, and active hazards on a near real-time map. During a fast-moving fire, that map is more useful than the news.
If your loved one is Deaf, Blind, or hard of hearing, the county also participates in the Accessible Hazard Alert System, which delivers alerts in accessible formats.
If anything at home runs on electricity, tell SDG&E now
This is the single most overlooked item on this list. If your loved one depends on powered medical equipment, an oxygen concentrator, a CPAP, a nebulizer, a powered wheelchair, or has a qualifying medical condition, they should be enrolled in SDG&E’s Medical Baseline Program.
Enrollment does two things. It gives the household an additional energy allowance, which keeps more usage in the lowest-priced tier and lowers the bill. It also flags the address as medically sensitive, which matters during a Public Safety Power Shutoff. Applying requires a completed application and a signed form from their doctor, sent to [email protected].
Do this in September, not in October when the wind advisories start. It takes a doctor’s signature, which takes time.
Build the go bag around medications and documents
The general advice about go bags is easy to find. What is specific to an older adult is the paperwork, and it is the part people forget in a hurry:
- A current, written medication list with dosages, not just the pill bottles
- Prescriptions themselves, at least a week’s worth
- A copy of insurance cards and photo ID
- Contact information for their doctors and for family
- Copies of advance directives or a POLST if one exists
- Spare glasses, hearing aid batteries, and any assistive device that is easy to leave behind
- Backup power for medical equipment, and a car charger
Keep it somewhere a caregiver or neighbor could find and carry out without a phone call.
Plan for the evacuation actually taking much longer
This is the honest part. Getting a person with limited mobility or moderate dementia out of a house is not a ten-minute operation. It can take 45 minutes or more, and it does not go faster because there is urgency, it usually goes slower, because stress makes dementia symptoms worse and rushing increases fall risk.
The practical implication: for a household with an older adult who needs help moving, the right trigger to leave is an evacuation warning, not an evacuation order. Decide that in advance, in writing, so nobody is debating it at 2 a.m.
A few things that genuinely help on the day: pack one familiar item, a blanket, a photo, something that anchors a person with dementia in an unfamiliar place. Put an ID card in their pocket, not just in the bag. And identify the destination ahead of time, ideally a relative or friend inland, because a public shelter is a hard environment for someone with cognitive changes.
Heat is the quieter risk
Wildfire gets the attention, but heat causes more problems for older adults in North County, and inland communities run considerably hotter than the coast. Older adults are less likely to feel thirsty, and several common medications affect the body’s ability to regulate temperature. During a heat event, a daily check-in on someone living alone is not overcautious. For questions about cooling centers and other local disaster resources, 2-1-1 is the number.
One more pair of eyes
Much of this comes down to somebody noticing: that the alert never came through, that the medication list is two years out of date, that the go bag is behind three boxes in the garage. If a caregiver is already in the home on a regular schedule, folding these checks into the routine is straightforward, and it is one of the more genuinely useful things regular non-medical care does that never shows up on a service list.
Source: alert and preparedness details per AlertSanDiego (County of San Diego Office of Emergency Services) and San Diego Gas & Electric’s Medical Baseline and Access and Functional Needs programs.
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If you are worried about how an older parent in North County would manage during an evacuation or an outage, a Care Consultation with our team at SYNERGY HomeCare of North County can help you build a realistic plan around their actual mobility and memory needs. Call us at (760) 990-4289 to set one up and learn more about fall and injury prevention at home.
