California Wildfires: Restaurant Owner Ignores Evacuation Orders and Stays to Feed First Responders and Victims

As firefighters continued to battle raging wildfires in California, a restaurant owner determined to help ignored evacuation orders and stayed behind to ensure that first responders and those who had lost their homes in the disaster had a place to eat.

Marco Gonzalez, who owns Tavern 101 Grill & Tap House in the Agoura Hills community near Los Angeles, told Newsweek that he didn't even have to think about the decision to keep his restaurant running as the Woolsey fire approached his neighborhood on Friday.

"There wasn't a thought. It was just something that I did," Gonzalez said. "I said I had to go open the restaurant in case the first responders needed somewhere to go and eat."

Since then, Gonzalez said his restaurant had provided free meals to hundreds of first responders and residents affected by the wildfires since Friday.

"Some of those guys told me they hadn't had a warm meal for three days," Gonzalez said of the firefighters who showed up at his restaurant to recharge after spending days fighting the wildfires tearing through the state.

But, Gonzalez said, his door was open "not just for the firefighters and police department" but also to the many residents who had lost their homes in the disaster.

"My whole staff is working to make sure that they can have a good hot meal," Gonzalez said.

The restaurant owner said he believed his restaurant had served as many as 2,000 people since it started handing out the meals on Friday.

After initially ignoring an evacuation order, which has since been lifted, Gonzalez was given permission to stay behind and continue working to feed the hundreds of first responders and residents in the area.

He said that he had not yet been able to return to his own home nearby but had been told by firefighters that it was still intact after the Woolsey fire tore through the area, destroying the homes of his neighbors and friends.z

Since opening his doors to first responders and others in need of a meal, Gonzalez said donations for his initiative, which was first reported by CNN, have poured in, with people contributing more than $50,000 to a Venmo account set up by the restaurant owner's sister-in-law to help the staff at Tavern 101 Grill & Tap House to continue to serve free meals.

Gonzalez said people from across the country had also shown up to give a helping hand.

"It's just an unbelievable thing how people have reached out and cared about what I was doing for the community," Gonzalez said.

"People from the community came together and really, people from all over. I was even getting people coming from New York and just everywhere," he said.

Thanks to Gonzalez's efforts, as well as those of his staff and supporters, the restaurant owner had been able serve warm meals of "barbecued chicken and ribs with coleslaw, beans and cornbread" to first responders and residents.

The restaurant owner said he was still grappling with the reality of the destruction the wildfires had caused.

"You really don't get a feel for what it is, the devastation, unless you are walking through these neighborhoods," Gonzalez said. "It just feels out of a movie, really... You would never imagine something like this."

Read more: New California Fire Spreading Rapidly in San Bernardino County

There are three major fires burning in California: the Camp fire in Northern California, in whidh 48 people died, and the Woolsey and Hill fires, which are both burning in Southern California.

Combined, they represent the deadliest fires in California history, with dozens of people killed and more than 200 people still missing.

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar declared a public health emergency in California because of the wildfires.

The declaration came after President Donald Trump issued his own emergency declaration for the state after he faced widespread criticism over a tweet saying, without evidence, that the state's "poor" forest management was to blame for the Camp fire north of Sacramento and Woolsey fire near Malibu.

For his part, Gonzalez said he had been too busy trying to keep first responders and others well-fed to pay attention to how the U.S. government had been handling the natural disaster.

He said he only wants those affected by the wildfires to know that his restaurant's door is open, with his staff standing ready to offer some comfort during a difficult time.