As the Eaton Fire ravaged part of Los Angeles, Galen Buckwalter said he had no choice but to ride his wheelchair through the dark roads of his Sierra Madre neighborhood — after the city was left without power.
The streets were sprinkled with branches and debris, the wind howling and thick clouds of smoke approaching behind him, he said, but he tried to remain calm and focused with just one goal in mind: make it out of the evacuation zone.
Buckwalter, who’s 68 and quadriplegic, relies on his powerchair to move around and be independent. He has a customized van, outfitted to load and fit his wheelchair, but on the day he needed to evacuate the van was getting repaired at a shop nearby…