Sonoma County gambled on mega-evacuations; it seemed to work, but left many residents unhappy
BODEGA BAY, Calif. - Rob Lawrentz and Angel Brown, a retired couple from West Virginia, were on their dream vacation, cruising the California coast on Highway 1. She had never seen the Pacific Ocean. He wore a shirt that said, "Almost Heaven."
On Tuesday afternoon, after a four-hour drive north from Monterey, they pulled into Bodega Bay, the little fishing town where Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" was filmed. It was deserted, and the lights were off at Bodega Harbor Inn, where they'd booked a room weeks ago.
"We pulled in, and it was like, 'Uh-oh,'" Brown said.
"It's usually a bad sign when there's no cars," Lawrentz added.
The vacationers were 40 miles from the Kincade fire burning in the Mayacamas Mountains northeast of Healdsburg. But Bodega Bay had been vacated.
The couple had driven straight into what could become a new normal: a mega-evacuation zone.
California wildfires over the
