As storms and power outages struck West Marin, the elderly, the homeless and displaced travelers struggled in the state of emergency. A severe weather shelter opened in San Rafael, but few of the coast’s homeless choose the crowded environs of an urban shelter over rural West Marin. The Olema Campground, where many lower-income travelers stay as they pass through, has been closed for weeks due to flooding, and even the elderly residents of a Point Reyes Station apartment complex say the outages left them vulnerable and fending for themselves.  

On Monday, a man who goes by the name of Walter Jennings stood under an awning behind the West Marin Community Thrift Store as rain poured around him. He had caught a bus from Kentfield earlier that day, headed for the Point Reyes Library. He said he had no intention of going to the emergency shelter over the hill. 

“It’s full of sick people and lots of drug users,” Mr. Jennings said. “I’d rather be in the rain than a place like that.”

Alma Sanchez, the food pantry manager at West Marin Community Services, said they serve up to 100 people and families on an average week, but that number rose to over 150 after power outages spoiled people’s foods. Ms. Sanchez said the homeless were the most affected population, some having to sleep under violently shaking trees to shield themselves from the rain. 

“Many said they were afraid for their life,” Ms. Sanchez said. 

Marin Health and Human Services and the care team from Community Action Marin alerted the organization that it would provide transportation to the shelter, but Ms. Sanchez said many of the homeless people in West Marin are reluctant to leave for more populated areas because they feel unsafe. She said West Marin should have an assigned building to act as a shelter in the event of emergencies like this month’s storms. 

“This would help the homeless as well as families who feel in danger,” Ms. Sanchez said.

Many families who frequent the food bank said they were terrified that one of the trees surrounding their home would fall. “If people know that there is a place they can shelter during emergencies like this for even one night, they might feel safer,” Ms. Sanchez said. 

Across Mesa Road, the 23 elderly residents of Walnut Place experienced power outages intermittently on Wednesday, Jan. 4—the day the bomb cyclone hit—until power shut off at 8 p.m. and didn’t come back on until 6 p.m. on Friday. Management at the EAH Housing-owned complex used a generator to keep hallway lights and outlets working, but residents said inside their apartments, nothing worked.

“It’s difficult because everything is electric here. The heat, the stove, the telephone. There was electricity in the hallway,” said Katarina Burda. “Things sometimes feel like they are in place to prevent lawsuits, not for our wellbeing. It was a hard time for everyone.”

Gail Greenlees is 84 years old and has a fractured foot. She uses a boot to get around, but her motion is limited. Living on the second floor during the power outage meant she had to walk down the stairs when the rain stopped to make it to the grocery store after her food had gone bad. Ms. Greenlees told the Light that when people asked for a cooler or expressed concern over their food to the resident services coordinator, she advised them to not open their refrigerators often to keep things cool. A cooler would not be provided. 

Peggy Day, another resident at Walnut Place, asked her daughter to bring her a large cooler, which they placed in the hallway for residents to share. Ms. Day said managers had allowed such a practice in past power outages. But when managers placed a note on the cooler that read “Please return this cooler to its home,” residents felt their needs were being neglected. Sarah Culmer, the resident manager, said there was a communal mini-fridge in the lobby that residents were able to use. She said hallway coolers were a fire safety hazard. 

“We have a rental agreement,” Ms. Culmer said. “I took over in August [after] we had managers in the past that didn’t really go by the rental agreement, so a lot of things weren’t enforced.”

Residents told the Light they were not aware of the existence of the mini-fridge, and Ms. Day said it was too small to hold everyone’s food. Many expressed their desire for better communication. Ms. Culmer said the power outage prevented her from being able to call residents or send emails. 

Ms. Day’s list of grievances about the complex and its management is long, and she said it has made speaking out difficult.

“Everyone is sick at the moment,” Ms. Day said. “Two people have major fractures. Lots of strokes and heart attacks—a resident just died recently. We need a greater support system than this.”

On the morning of Jan. 4, sandbags were piled around the Olema Campground office, the laundromat and the post office, with drainage tubes spread across the crude fortress. A man traveling by van from Humboldt County sought asylum for the evening, but staff had to turn him away.

The campground has been closed for almost two months, first shuttering to prepare for winter rains on Dec. 1 and now due to continuous flooding that has overwhelmed the campground’s resources. Only the business’s 15 employees have remained onsite. The post office flooded after January’s storms, but the laundromat has been out of service for over a month. Gabi Bell, the campground manager, and her staff have been working to open back up, but last weekend they cancelled 35 reservations they had hoped to accommodate. 

Ms. Bell was back home in Germany when Olema Creek began to flood in December. Once January’s storms began, all 185 sites were underwater.

“It was not a great vacation,” she said. “When something happens in the daytime here, it’s the middle of the night over there.”

At the rain’s peak, the campground stood more than a foot underwater, and floodwaters spilled into the adjacent parking lot of Sacred Heart Church. The flooding is a result of sediment buildup in Olema Creek and two drainage ditches running through the campground. Ms. Bell said the site floods several times each winter but not usually for this long. In October 2021, she had to evacuate employees during an atmospheric river. She was grateful not to have to evacuate her employees this time.

“This is where we live. If we have to leave, we have nowhere to go,” she said. 

Postal services for Olema have been assumed by the Point Reyes Post Office, as they’ve been in the past. Ms. Bell said roughly 30 to 40 families use the laundromat, which finally reopened on Tuesday.

In the past, staff from the National Park Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Marin County have walked the creek, determining that it was unsafe during heavy rainfall, Ms. Bell said. The county told her the only options were for the owner to sell the land to the park, pay for a study to clean up the creek’s ditches and dredge sediment deposit, or close for the winter season, she said. Cleaning up the grounds after flooding is expensive and only a short-term solution, she added. 

“It would be nice if we could get help,” she said.