Fire ravaged community rebuilds

SANTA ROSA – Travis Laplante took photos as a towering green boom loomed over his Coffey Park property Friday and pumped a truckload of concrete into the forms marking the footprint of his new home.

Building the foundation for his Randon Way house involved nearly a dozen construction workers, many stepping into the still-mushy concrete while wearing rubber boots sealed at the top with a wrapping of red duct tape.

For Laplante, the day marked an important milestone after losing his home last fall in a deadly wildfire.

“I think a lot of people have been waiting for this moment,” said Laplante, whose family includes wife Stephanie and young son Leo.

The concrete work was noteworthy for being part of a string of rebuilds recently started in the Santa Rosa neighborhood by a local builder. Laplante’s foundation was one of 20 being poured by Synergy Group by Christopherson over a month’s time.

“This is far and away our priority for the next two years,” said Brian Flahavan, a partner in the Santa Rosa company.

Flahavan and partners Andy Christopherson and Greg Windisch said they are focusing on Coffey Park partly because it allows them to more quickly replace burned homes. Christopherson estimated that in the time it takes to rebuild one home in the hillside Fountaingrove neighborhood, Synergy can build six to eight homes in Coffey Park.

Seven months after the wildfires, Coffey Park is starting to look like a construction zone. The increase in building activity can be measured in projects underway, even as the number of permit applications keeps increasing at City Hall.

The October wildfires claimed four lives and destroyed 1,200 homes around Coffey Park, a compact collection of tract subdivisions that sprang up over the past three decades in the northwest part of the city. For the region, the fires killed 40 people and burned 6,000 homes.