SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Ken Burnett had not seen his wife Yanjun Wei and their two children since 2019.
Wei and their two children left for Wuhan, China, to visit family in November. After the holidays, everyone was supposed to reunite in Hong Kong.
But that never happened.
The coronavirus [Covid-19] broke out and the Chinese government put the entire city of Wuhan, 11 million people, under quarantine.
After almost running out of supplies in Wuhan, Wei said she finally received the call that her and her kids would be evacuated. She said during the 30-hour flight back to the United States, she was unable to contact her husband, who lives in San Diego. But once Wei and their two children arrived at Travis Air Force Base for quarantine, she connected with Burnett and the two-week countdown began.
According to authorities, Wei and their two children are just a few of the 350 Americans who fled the coronavirus zone in China and have completed a 14-day quarantine at California military bases, paving the way to go home.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says a group of 180 people at Travis Air Force Base in Northern California and 166 others at the Marine Corps Air Station Miramar near San Diego were medically cleared to leave Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2020. The agency says they pose no health risk.
There have been at least 15 confirmed cases in the U.S.
When Burnett knew when his family would arrive at Sacramento International Airport, he booked a flight to from San Diego to see them for the first time in months.
Burnett’s flight landed at the Sacramento airport minutes before his wife’s bus arrived directly from Travis Air Force Base. Talking to her on the phone, she directed him to the exact spot where the bus would stop.
Walking towards the bus, Burnett’s anticipation grew by the second.
“I couldn’t sleep last night, the anticipation was too much,” Burnett said.
After waiting patiently for the evacuees to get off the bus, the moment he had been waiting for finally happened.
First, his three-year-old son Rowan came into sight, then moments later, his wife and their one-year-old daughter Mia stepped off the bus. After the kisses and long hugs, the family walked into the airport to wait for their flight home to San Diego.
“We were scared we were going to be there for who knows how long,” Wei said when asked about her experience in Wuhan during the outbreak.
Wei said her main concern was her children. Her daughter Mia missed her one-year vaccine appointment in the U.S. while they were abroad. She added a lot more Americans are waiting to be evacuated and she feels grateful that they were able to get home safe.
“We were very lucky to be on that flight,” says Wei
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