By Karen Sternheimer

This year has been particularly challenging for the elderly people in my neighborhood, or I should say my former—and hopefully future—neighborhood. The Los Angeles firestorm earlier this year wiped out more than 16,000 structures, including my own. It also destroyed my 87-year-old mother-in-law’s home of 60 years.

While it’s impossible to know exactly how many people aged 65 or older lost their homes, we do know that older people were more likely to die as the result of the fires. Of the 30 deaths listed on the Los Angeles County Coroner’s website, 23—nearly 77 percent of victims—were 65 or older. Mobility issues can make evacuation more difficult, especially for people who don’t drive.

My mother-in-law had previously given up her car and her driver’s license, and if not for a family member driving across town when the fire first broke out (but before the formal evacuation order), she might have been trapped too. Her 91-year-old neighbor evacuated with her after the neighbor’s son was unable to enter the evacuation zone to get her. The two left with just the clothes on their backs.

Both women ended up living in apartments for a short time, but the transition was difficult. As I wrote about a few years ago, isolation can have particularly devastating effects on the elderly. They had been in a close-knit community for decades and knew most of their neighbors. My mother-in-law could take a short walk to the end of the block or sit on her front porch and see several neighbors who would say hello and stop to talk. When she had previous medical emergencies and an ambulance would come, the neighbors would stop by to see how she was doing when she came home.

Moving can be difficult at any age, but having to suddenly relocate and cope with the loss of her home has been traumatic. The unfamiliar people and places were particularly isolating, so she hired a caregiver to stay with her indefinitely. This not only ate up much of her savings, but we later learned that the caregiver had forged checks and stolen thousands of dollars more—money she later returned after being confronted by a lawyer. The stress of both events still lingers months later.

Both she and her former neighbor are now neighbors again, having moved into the same assisted living facility. This too has been a difficult transition for my mother-in-law, who has struggled to socialize with her new neighbors. Eating in a community dining room seems to overwhelm her, although her neighbor appears to be creating a more robust social life from my brief observations. People manage grief and trauma differently, and the grief of losing her decades of connections to the past—including family photos and possessions of family members that have passed on—are particularly difficult for her.

As I wrote about in 2018, many of my neighbors were original residents in my community, which was built in 1973. Several are in their 90s and are faced with both displacement and an uncertain future. There are plans to rebuild, but the process will likely take years. They may or may not be able to come back.

Other neighbors are at or nearing retirement age and may have to delay retirement because of the fires. A recent news story reported that 70 percent of fire victims faced difficulty getting their insurance companies to reimburse them, and a similar percentage were underinsured, meaning their insurance would not cover costs of rebuilding.

All of us are scattered and have had to create new social ties or work to maintain contact with our neighbors. Those of us that are working have professional ties that remain, but for retired people the challenges are steep. One of our neighbors in his 70s had been scaling down work in preparation for retirement but has returned to full-time work because of the fire. Another friend nearing retirement is reluctant to return, feeling traumatized by the evacuation experience.

Isolation is not inevitable, as this uplifting story of a 100-year-old woman who lost her home in the fire and is thriving in a new location demonstrates. Her success is likely the result of a healthy lifestyle–she had even “earned more than 200 medals and induction into the USA Badminton Hall of Fame,” and a long career that kept her intellectually engaged until she retired at age 88.

As I wrote about last year, my grandmother was particularly skilled at maintaining social ties, until she couldn’t. Her declining vision and hearing made interacting with friends all but impossible. Even those with robust social networks might find that an unexpected event creates isolation, which some of us are more prepared to cope with than others.