STUCK AT DYSFUNCTION JUNCTION: A CALIFORNIA NIGHTMARE
This article was published in the July 25, 2026 issue.
By Andrea Walker
We are now closer to the one-year anniversary of the Pack Fire than we are to the terrible day it occurred.
For many people outside of McGee Creek, the fire has faded into memory. For those of us who lived through it, the recovery is still unfolding daily.
I am writing because this is no longer just a story about the hardships of our community. It is a test of whether Mono County will learn from its mistakes before another community finds itself standing exactly where we stand today.
As I write this, two wildfires are burning just south of us. With the extremely dry summer we are experiencing, there is no telling where or when the next wildfire will break out. This should concern every resident of the Eastern Sierra.
Storytelling is important for healing and it is important for us to learn from history. So, here we go.
The first signs of trouble came during the fire itself. After a campfire was left unattended by the Forest Service, strong winds stirred it back up and drove it rapidly down McGee Creek, leaving local responders with very little time to save the structures in its path.
Then came the evacuation.
Communication systems surrounding the evacuation failed. Many residents received no official evacuation warning, leaving families confused and uncertain during one of the most frightening moments of their lives. In an emergency, communication saves lives. It should never be left to chance or treated as an afterthought. I’m grateful to my CHP friend who told me that if I was home, it was time to leave.
Fortunately, the community’s strength was a bright light of love and hope, friends took us in, our local businesses and churches stepped in to help organize relief efforts and donations, and the Mammoth Lakes Chamber of Commerce rallied people near and far to raise an incredible amount of money to distribute amongst the fire victims.
Unfortunately, the dysfunction within the government response continued long after the flames were extinguished.
Immediately after the fire, with no snow in the forecast, local volunteers stepped forward, ready to help their neighbors begin cleaning up. Instead, they were told by Mono County Officials that they could not assist because they could not meet environmental requirements— you’ll see the irony of that later in this letter.
We understood the importance of protecting the environment, but we also live in one of the windiest places in Mono County. We found ourselves pleading for permission simply to remove twisted sheets of burned metal roofing before they became airborne hazards for our neighbors and for drivers on Highway 395.
From the very beginning, our community was met with restrictions and bureaucracy at a time when we desperately needed urgency and common sense.
Families spent the holidays displaced in unfamiliar homes. Month after month, emails and questions went unanswered. As winter turned to spring, communication remained absent and inconsistent. When responses did come, they often felt as though they had been written by AI, lacking personality or compassion and leaving many residents wondering whether anyone truly understood the urgency—or the humanity—of what they were experiencing.
Despite it being a very small community, it took seven months just to organize a debris removal program. Once the County finally prepared a contract for bid, it had to be rewritten multiple times because of errors and oversight, delaying the process even further and continuing to consume what should have been the heart of our rebuilding season.
Breaking ground and getting families home again should have been the County’s highest priority. Instead, fire recovery felt like an afterthought—something added to the agenda rather than being the agenda itself.
Now that cleanup is underway, additional concerns are emerging.
Local contractors have uncovered buried foundations, rebar, nails, and other debris beneath properties that had already been cleared by the awarded contractor and approved by County employees as good to go. Homeowners trusted that “cleared” meant ready to move forward. Instead, some could face additional costs, delays, and another layer of uncertainty hiding the ashes and dirt.
At the same time, residents report that the contractor overseeing the cleanup is assessing potential environmental hazards, such as asbestos, through visual inspections versus proper soil testing.
Residents also believed tree removal would be included as part of the cleanup effort. They invested all of their insurance debris-removal funds only to learn that they would still be responsible for removing the burned trees and vegetation themselves.
We’ve been clearing burned trees from properties in McGee, where it currently costs up to $400 per ton to dispose of vegetation debris. By chance, my husband ran into a friend at the landfill who told him that vegetation debris from the Inn Fire recovery had been accepted free of charge. Had they not crossed paths that day, we never would have known there was such an inconsistency in how these two fire recoveries were handled. Keep in mind these fires occurred only months apart. Why was one community given that relief while the other was not?
There have also been incidents in which the contractor directed construction traffic through private property without permission, damaging private drives and disregarding property rights after being misinformed by county employees.
Those of you who know me know that I love and admire each person as an individual, but as an organization, there is something systemically wrong with all of this.
Standing alone, any one of these issues might be dismissed as an unfortunate mistake. Together, they reveal something far more concerning: a pattern of delayed action, poor communication, inconsistency, inadequate oversight, and missed opportunities to ease the burden on families who have already lost so much.
Trust is built through competence, communication, and accountability. Truth is, each delay, each unanswered email, and each newly discovered problem has chipped away at that trust.
Rebuilding homes is difficult enough. Building a home in this county has serious issues—but don’t get me started there. Rebuilding public trust is even harder.
Our community has completely lost trust, and it feels as though the exhaustion and vulnerability that come with trauma have been taken advantage of.
When disaster strikes, people are not operating at their best. They are grieving. They are overwhelmed. They are trying to navigate insurance claims, permits, contractors, temporary housing, financial uncertainty, and the emotional weight of losing the places where they built their lives.
That is exactly when our public officials and government should perform at their highest level. Shocked and traumatized residents should not be left to discover problems, demand answers, and hold the system accountable.
This is when leadership matters most.
The conversation we should be having is not simply about what happened in McGee. It is about what happens to the next Eastside Canyon that ignites.
The question is not if another major wildfire will impact Mono County. The question is when.
When that day comes, is this the response you want for your community?
Do we want another community to experience months of uncertainty, delayed action, inconsistent communication, and costly mistakes? Or do we expect our leaders to acknowledge where the system failed and make the changes necessary to ensure the next response is faster, more transparent, more accountable, and more compassionate?
This letter is not about assigning blame for a wildfire, although I’d love to know who that person was. Unfortunately, where we live, fires happen. It is about expecting our public officials and government to learn from experience and do better next time.
Every resident of Mono County, the Eastern Sierra and the whole western United States has a stake in this conversation because the next wildfire won’t be coming back to McGee—it will come for another community.
I’m not just writing for my immediate neighbors. I’m writing for everyone who calls this beautiful place home, for all of us who live amongst the sagebrush and the pines.
This isn’t just McGee Creek’s story. It’s a question of whether Mono County is willing to learn from its mistakes before anyone else finds themselves standing where we stand.
So now I ask the question every resident should be asking:
Do we have the leadership, systems, and preparedness in place to respond better next time?
Last year, the people of McGee deserved a recovery marked by urgency, competence, communication, and compassion.
In the future, every community deserves a leadership that has already learned these lessons—not a governing body that is still repeating them.
Andrea and Scott Walker and their three children were displaced without water and power for five months and now live amongst the ruins of their McGee Creek community. Andrea has owned Stellar Brew in Mammoth for 17 years.
