MIDDLETOWN >> For the first time ever, a foreign country opened a diplomatic mission in Lake County, if only for half a day.
A small meeting room at Twin Pines Casino and Resort in Middletown served as an extension of the Mexican Consulate of San Francisco Thursday afternoon to expedite replacement of official documents lost by Mexican Nationals in the Clayton Fire.
About 50 people took advantage of the temporary consulate to get on-the-spot, replacement documents, including passports, visas and consular identification cards.
“The fire affected some of our nationals here who needed replacement documents for identification purposes,” said Wilma Gandoy, Consul for Protection and Legal Affairs at the Mexican Consulate in San Francisco. “That’s what we’re doing right now. The Consulate of Mexico is here to help.”
Inside the small room, what space wasn’t taken up by tables and chairs was occupied by four cameras on tripods for ID photos.
“It’s not uncommon for us to take our services out of San Francisco to meet the needs of Mexican nationals,” Gandoy said, although it was the consulate’s first time in Lake County.
She said the consulate found that after the Valley Fire last year, many Mexican nationals had to travel to San Francisco to get important documents replaced. For those without transportation, this became a difficult trek to make.
So even though firefighters are still battling the Clayton Fire that devastated Lower Lake, “We decided it was necessary to come here right away and provide services,” Gandoy said. “We have records on file so that helped a lot. Most people have some documentation.”
She said some pf the people they saw Thursday didn’t lose their residences but lost documents in the confusion during the last-minute evacuation of Lower Lake and parts of Clearlake.
The temporary consulate also served as a counseling center of sorts, with many of the evacuees wanting to tell their stories to consulate staff.
“We’ve heard a lot of very personal stories today,” Gandoy said.”People are talking about what they lost, with many people losing their homes and pets.”
She said some people are talking about how difficult it is to maintain a job while living in an evacuation center.
This was Gandoy’s first time in Lake County. In fact, she just recently transferred to San Francisco from the consulate in Boise, Idaho. Helping Mexicans who are Clayton Fire survivors was her first assignment since the transfer.
One who took advantage of the local consulate was Daniela Ponce of Lower Lake. Asked if she lost anything in the Clayton inferno, she broke into sobs and said, “I lost my house. I lost everything.”
She learned about the local consular event from a friend, who brought her to Twin Pines. She doesn’t have her own transportation and said it would have been “very difficult” to get to San Francisco.
“I’m very glad they opened this,” she added.
