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Article snippet: BODEGA BAY, Calif. — Sue Ann and Wynne Herron come here at least three times each year, to recharge with strolls on the secluded, unspoiled beach, their dog Maxx by their side. Isau Sandoval comes regularly to clear his mind after a week’s work scrubbing vehicles at a car dealership, casting his fishing line in the calm water. “We always feel that the longer we stay, the better it is,” Mr. Herron said on Friday. “But not on this occasion.” This week, the Herrons, the Sandovals and hundreds of other people used the beach for a different kind of escape. Chased from their homes by the region’s epic wildfires, they turned an idyllic strip of shoreline just a few hundred feet wide into an ad hoc evacuation center and a micro version of the Northern California menagerie. Immigrant farmworkers, who slept in cars and tents, lined up to receive free hot meals next to lawyers who came in brand-new recreational vehicles. Children from upscale neighborhoods of Santa Rosa and Sonoma snapped together donated puzzles with kids from blue-collar enclaves. About 70 miles north of San Francisco and 20 miles west of Santa Rosa, Bodega Bay is a fishing hamlet of about 1,000 year-round residents, where Dungeness crab is trapped several months of the year. Despite the vacation homes sitting atop cliffs overlooking the bay and a golf course, it is an unassuming place not much changed from when Alfred Hitchcock filmed some scenes from “The Birds” here. It also sits off Route 1 on the coa... Link to the full article to read more