Kincade fires impact workers economy in Sonoma County
Farmworkers, construction workers, painters, servers, car salesmen, all the greater labor forces of Sonoma County woke up this past Thursday ready to go to work, but with an economic downturn that affected their pockets, after almost a week without income due to PG&E power outages and evacuations enforced to prevent the spread of the Kincade fires.
In Healdsburg and Windsor, employees of El Farolito and El Gallo Negro, respectively, were ready to get stuff done, but PG&E had not reconnected the gas at 11:30 am, needed to heat the tortillas, boil the beans and roast the meat. "After a week of anguish and without work, people arrived ready, but without gas, there is nothing to do," said the owner of both establishments, Pedro Díaz.
“It's very sad because there was a lot of news that the electricity would come back, but they don't say anything about gas anymore. Unfortunately, workers are day-to-day with what they earn in a month, now with a week of missing work, it becomes more difficult to stay afloat,” he said.
It's clear that the security measures adopted by PG&E were for the well-being of the community and that there were no deaths or major disasters during the disaster, he said but criticized that local enforcement have not allowed him to save the food he had stored in refrigerators.
“We are throwing out about a ton of food. That is like $10,000 per business", he said, but if they had allowed him to enter for food during the evacuations, he could have distributed it among his workers or relatives, or given it away in the form of meals to the community. "They never let us in," he said.
Restaurant workers aren’t the only ones who have been affected. Martina Álvarez, an indigenous Triqui from Mexico, is a grape worker at a Freestone vineyard, west of Sonoma County. She lost a week of income, something that discourages her. “This is sad. It isn't just that we couldn't return home or what I'm going to lose without work since Friday, but also all the expenses one spends when evacuating: cost of gas, food, clothes, personal items,” she said in Spanish.
Alvarez didn’t even have time to take clothes or food with her when she left her home, after returning from work in the vineyards when a mandatory evacuation was announced on Friday night by Sonoma County Sheriff's Office. With seven family members, she, her husband, and five children, all needed food and clothing for the six days that they were evacuated, from Friday to Wednesday.
“I'm going to lose half of my paycheck, around $900. For me, that’s really a lot of money. It makes me want to cry, ” she said by phone, calling from the Veterans Building in Petaluma, where she was displaced with her family.
Margarito Pérez, a contractor, focuses on masonry work at his Santa Rosa based-company MG Masonry. He calculates that he and his three workers lost more than $5,000 in just three days without work.
“If we lose a day of work in a week, that causes us to lose some of our budget and it affects us because we are then delayed with timelines and when we come back somehow the material is more expensive, and then we are spending more time on these projects and can’t charge more,” said Pérez, after being without work Monday to Wednesday, waiting to see if he could return to his duties in Calistoga this Thursday.
“It’s been disheartening, but you have to be strong. You can't always be on it,” said Pérez. Echoed Diaz, the restaurateur: “Many people were psychologically affected because they didn’t expect it. People have been quiet, almost disoriented.”
Pérez ruminated that there will be thousands of workers whose pockets were hit, as well as their mental health. “It's not just me. I know many people who are struggling. My brother-in-law is a contractor painter. My son and his construction company. The good thing is that there were no other kinds of losses, but the panic and emotional tolls are still there.”
Subscribe to our weekly newsletter on this link.
Reach La Prensa Sonoma’s Editor Ricardo Ibarra at 707-526-8501 or email ricardo.ibarra@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @ricardibarra.
