Frantic searches for missing loved ones
Three days after the fast-moving wildfires turned entire neighborhoods in California’s Wine County to ash heaps, many are reuniting with lost family members while others are learning their missing loved ones didn’t make it.
But for those looking for the hundreds of people still missing, it’s an anguished waiting game. With few answers coming in, hopes begin to dwindle.
For the friends of 40-year-old Mike Grabow, the hours since they last heard from him have been all-consuming.
“It’s been rough and I’m in shock,” said Eric Reimann, who grew up with Grabow in Idaho and considers him his brother. “I’ve dug through 2 feet of hot coals (at Grabow’s burned-down home) for two days. I don’t know if I’m doing damage or doing good. I’m ... I’m trying to get some answers for his mom.”
Grabow last spoke to his closeknit group of friends on Sunday night as the Tubbs Fire became visible from his home on Mark West Springs Road in Santa Rosa.
In the hours that followed, the fire consumed whole neighborhoods, leveling hundreds of homes, including Grabow’s. When his friends checked in with each other the next morning, they came to a troubling realization: Grabow couldn’t be found.
“The first day we were searching around, spreading the word through our friend group and reaching out to his extended family,” said Rachel Ingram, 28. “We went to every shelter in the area and went to almost every hospital.”
The next day, Ingram and the others took to social media, posting pictures of their friend, asking anyone who knows anything to get in touch. Ingram even drove south to San Rafael on Wednesday after getting a tip had seen Grabow at a grocery store there.
She headed back to Santa Rosa after leaving notes every place she could think of, hoping someone would read them and call her with good news.
“We’ve gone through every facet and every outlet that we can,” Ingram said. “We basically divided and conquered as much as we could.”
They aren’t alone in their agonizing search. Law enforcement officials have been going through hundreds of reports of missing people in recent days. In some cases, it has been as simple as damaged cell phone towers and spotty Internet that’s kept families from reuniting.
But for others, the outcomes have been heartbreaking.
“I’m optimistic we will get a lot of people connected,” Sonoma County Sheriff Rob Giordano said Wednesday. “At the same time, we have to be realistic. At a certain point, if (searchers) can’t locate someone, they start heading to the house and looking for them there.”
Search teams have been fanning out into neighborhoods, looking for human remains at missing persons’ homes. As of Wednesday afternoon, 11 people had been confirmed dead in Sonoma County, including two on Mark West Springs Road, where Grabow’s house stood. Officials have not identified those victims.
A few miles south, in Journey’s End Mobile Home Park on Mensomeone
docino Avenue, family members searched Wednesday for 69-yearold Linda Tunis. Her son was digging though the pile of rubble that was once her trailer when he discovered his mother’s remains, Tunis’s daughter told The Chronicle.
The news that her mother was dead came as the latest act in a spiraling story of despair for the family. The daughter, Jessica Tunis, believes she listened to her mother’s final moments in a terrifying phone call at 3:43 a.m. Monday.
“She called me saying she was trapped and everything was on fire,” Tunis recalled. “I said, ‘Let someone see you!’ She’s coughing, coughing, coughing. I’m hearing the smoke alarm go off. I’m trying to help her navigate her house. I’m saying ‘Mom get out! Get out! Run!’ ” That’s when the phone cut off. “It was horrendous,” Tunis, 49, said. “I was telling her I love her when the phone died.”
Grabow’s friends hope he didn’t suffer a similar fate. Reimann, who’s taken several trips to search through the rubble and ash of Grabow’s home, said he hopes his friend turns up soon.
Ingram said she isn’t thinking about anything other than finding her friend.
“To be honest, I’m distracting myself,” she said. “I can’t think about losing him. He’s so important to all of us here.”