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| A panoramic iPhone photo of the devastation on Hemlock Street in the Coffey Park area of Santa Rosa on Tuesday, October 10, 2017 |
In the wake of the cataclysmic inferno that ravaged the region throughout the second week of October, 2017, those who were wiped out face the monumental task of rebuilding their lives as those who survived materially unscathed seek to make sense of the chaos and wonder at the randomness of the universe that spared them total ruin while destroying friends, family and neighbors.
Countless friends and
acquaintances were taken out as the aftermath rippled out into the community.
Everyone knows someone who was burned out of their homes or businesses in this
wide-ranging disaster that continued for more than a week as firefighters from
all over and the National Guard worked to put out fires and keep some kind of
order.
When the fires started Sunday
night (Oct. 8), I was driving back from northern Oregon after a brief visit
with family. I stopped for fuel in Cloverdale and arrived home around 9:30. My
wife Colleen and I could smell smoke and went to bed wondering if there was a
house on fire in the neighborhood.
At around 1:45 a.m. Monday, I
awoke to my computer rebooting, which it did twice more before I finally shut it
off. I drifted back into an uneasy sleep, subconsciously hearing the winds
battering the house, thinking it was Google installing upgrades I didn't know I
needed. But it turned the electricity was blinking on and off as the fire
consumed transformers and wiped out a big chunk of the system in northwestern
Santa Rosa.
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The carport from a neighboring mobile home at Rancho San Miguel Mobile Home Park blew off in the winds that drove the firestorm in Sonoma County on Sunday, October 9, 2017
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At about 4 a.m., a neighbor came
and pounded on our door, ringing the doorbell and calling for us to get out. I
opened the door and the howling wind was swirling through the trailer park, blowing
debris and adding to the soundtrack of the dramatic moment. The horizon behind
our neighbor—who looked like an apparition from Hell due to the light cast by
the fires—was glowing bright red and there was a thick pillar of black smoke
billowing up above. We could hear explosions and helicopters and tried to
comprehend as he told us “the fire had reached Kohl’s,” about a mile north of
us.
We had no idea what fire he was
talking about, but the smoke and explosions convinced us to gather a few
possessions and get out.
Refugees
We packed up our cats and a
couple of the strays that live in the neighborhood and left the house with no
idea where to go. My first instinct was to head for the Veteran’s Hall and
Fairgrounds that were already being used to house evacuees/refugees.
Since we had the cats and the
hall was filling up so fast, we decided to get a motel room somewhere out of harm's way. We lucked out and found one in Petaluma. The freeway was already a
parking lot, so we took Petaluma Hill Road instead. It was relatively clear, so
we were able to easily get out of town. When we hit the stretch south of Santa
Rosa near Sonoma State University, we saw a line of fires along the ridges to
the east and fire departments staging in the predawn hours.
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| Our old neighborhood on Tuesday, October 10, 2017 |
We were told it would be 2:30
p.m. before we could have access to our room, so around 7 a.m., we joined
several other refugees in the parking lot near Starbucks on McDowell Avenue and
tried to use their internet connection to no avail.
I went into Orchard Supply
Hardware to see if they had pet supplies we needed. Their pet section was
woefully inadequate for our needs, but there was a very somber and sympathetic
man at the door handing out bottles of water to anyone who entered the building.
Apparently, refugees had been pouring into Petaluma since 4 a.m.
We found the PetSmart and were
fortunate to get in right before a rush of people started clearing the shelves
of necessities for pets that were part of the flight. We then proceeded to the
Motel 6 to wait for our room in the parking lot. After three hours waiting with
other people wearing whatever clothes they ran out of the house wearing, we
squeezed into the room and waited. As we unloaded our car, one of the strays we
wanted to save managed to get away. We were never able to find her.
Waiting out the storm
We lasted the night in Petaluma
and then decided to head home early Tuesday morning to wait it out or prepare
to flee for an extended period of time.
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| The remains of our old house at 3670 Hemlock Street |
Our mobile home park, one of a
triumvirate of retirement parks in the immediate area, was in an evacuation
zone, but it was as safe as anywhere else in town at that point. The park
across the freeway, Journey’s End Mobile Home Park, was almost completely
leveled by the firestorm, as was the Coddingtown Mobile Estates. I received
texts from friends and family members expressing shock and sympathy about our
loss, but was able to tell them that it was not our park that was destroyed.
We settled in expecting to have
to live days or possibly weeks without electricity, gas or internet and with
bad cell service.
Sifting through the wreckage
That Tuesday, a friend who was
not evacuated came by and we rode our bikes around our old Coffey Park
neighborhood, which no longer exists. Literally. It is a burned out husk that
looks like it was razed by repeated bombings. It was a melancholy ride as we
rode through the toxic air and heard stories from friends and acquaintances
wandering dazed among the ruins.
We went home to hunker down in
the dark, but somehow the electricity came back on Tuesday night.
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| Inside Journey's End Mobile Home Park on Wednesday, October 11, 2017 |
Wednesday morning, after the
sheriff's press conference, I headed out to survey the damage within a mile of
my house. The air was heavy with the smell of burned plastic and likely toxic
building material, the destruction unbelievable: Round Barn; Equus; the Hilton;
K-Mart; Arby’s; Puerto Vallarta Mexican restaurant, and Mountain Mike’s Pizza
were just a few of the landmarks in the neighborhood that vanished in a puff of
smoke and a pile of rubble.
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| Journey's End |
I walked around for a couple of
hours and all of a sudden there were helicopters overhead and a big cloud of
smoke rolled in, turning the late morning into twilight. I practically ran the
mile home and told my wife we had pack and prepare to evacuate at any moment.
If we had not had electricity by then, we would likely have headed to LA to
wait out the fires and we considered the possibility of Sacramento. Apparently
though, the smoke was from a backfire lit to create a fire break for the battle
going on in the Larkfield/Wikiup area that was also decimated in those few
hours on Monday.
Fortunately, we didn't have to
leave that day and on Friday they lifted the evacuation order for our area.
Aftermath
Now, much of what we know as
Santa Rosa simply no longer exists. The places we run and hike on a regular
basis are nothing but charred remnants. Historical buildings gone. Poof: Just
like that.
For me, Colleen and our cats,
the extent of our disaster was a night as evacuees who survived with nothing more
than a few hours of inconvenience, without gas for our water heater or internet
to keep us informed or amused.
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The view of the remains of the Hilton Santa Rosa from
Journey's End MHP on Wednesday, October 11, 2017
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But there was a deeper sense of
loss for us, as the house where we lived around the corner from Coffey Park for
15 years—owned by friends who became more like family—went up in a ball of
flames along with the rest of the neighborhood we called home and grew to love.
My morning walks, designed to
get the best view of the Fountaingrove hills, are now forever changed. The
solid outline silhouetted by the morning sun is now the jagged, evil grin of a Jack-o’-lantern.
The streetlights and various light twinkling from the houses on the hill that I
always associated with the comfort of civilization are simply gone. In their
place is a line of burned out trees and the ruins of multi-million dollar homes
that don’t look quite right and take a moment to process.
At this point in time—a week
from the start of the fire—it is not advisable to walk out the door without a
mask because the air is toxic from smoke and when the wind dies or changes
direction, we get more ash raining down on us covering the cars and house with
a chalky patina of filth.
We're okay physically, but there
is a pall and malaise overhanging everything, but alongside that is a sense of
community and camaraderie that we're going to have to hang onto in order to
rebuild and recover from this.
Northwest Santa Rosa in the wake of the fires
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| You're hired. Here, take this mop and go clean up that mess |
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| Surveying the damage from the Hilton wreckage |
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| Fire extinguishers outside of Journey's end MHP |
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| Remains inside of K Mart on Friday, October 20, 2017 |
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| SPC Masaru Kikuta (left) and PV2 Mikah Leyvas from the San Diego National Guard |
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| Remains of the gun shop on Piner Road and Range Avenue on Friday, October 20, 2017. We could hear explosions from the shop burning down on Monday morning when the fires ravaged northwest Santa Rosa |
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| Checkpoint to get into the Coffey Park neighborhood on Friday, October 20, 2017 |
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| The view from Hopper Avenue looking northeast on Friday, October 20, 2017 |
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| Neighbors helping neighbors on Tuesday, October 10, 2017 |
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