SEEKING SOLACE IN THE ROUTINE OF EVERYDAY LIFE
They arrived all day, parking in front of the modest building in Santa Rosa and taking a place in line. Some wore clothes they’d been wearing all week, or clothes they’d picked up at a shelter. Their faces betrayed a deep weariness, but they were upbeat, even those whose homes had been wiped out by one of California’s most damaging fires.
They came on Saturday to take part in a routine of life that had been lost.
They came to pick up their mail.
“We’re all trying to continue to go about our business,” said one of the hundreds of visitors, 63-year-old Lynette Kronick, whose house east of Santa Rosa burned down, as did her brother’s place in the Journey’s End Mobile Home Park nearby. “As horrible as this all is, we’re all pulling together.”
One by one, starting at 7 a.m., they stepped to the window of the Roseland neighborhood post office on Sebastopol Road and handed over their driver licenses to a worker, who passed them along to another worker, who in turn walked the cards into the back lot, which contained a nearly unfathomable sight: tens of thousands of parcels that would have been delivered to their postmarked addresses, had tragedy not struck.
“Who’s got East Shiloh?” shouted Anita Rackerby, 55, reading off the address on the license in her hand as she waded into the mass of mail, which was being sorted and stacked on metal cages and orange hampers and, when those ran out, the beds of pickup trucks.
“Over here,” came the response.
“These are all people who lost their homes or have been evacuated from their homes,” said Rackerby, a 31-year veteran of the U.S. Postal Service who is postmaster in Occidental and was running Saturday’s operation. “We can’t get to them.”
In the lot were postcards and magazines, envelopes holding offers of new credit cards and low-rate loans, Crate and Barrel kitchenware and Graco car seats, do-notbend pouches and coupon books.
There were also disability checks, medication and clothes ordered online. Beyond the back fence, a few miles east, fires were still burning, forcing more evacuations of homes that carriers would no longer be able to reach.
“Who’s got Brighton Drive?” Rackerby shouted. “Old Redwood Highway?”
Beside her, Kerry Adams, the 61-year-old postmaster for the community of Graton, was sorting and responding to requests.
“Out of this chaos,” he said, “there’s some kind of order.”
Some of those sorting the fire victims’ mail at the Roseland office had been evacuated from their homes as well. That included Rackerby, who fled early Sunday from the deadly Tubbs Fire after it exploded west into Santa Rosa from Calistoga.
She turned her sprinklers on, grabbed her late mother’s paintings and drove off at 2 a.m. She learned later that her home near the hard-hit Coffey Park neighborhood had somehow been spared, even as neighbors’ houses were ruined.
Letter carrier Bill Davis, who was handling one corner of the Roseland back lot, wasn’t as fortunate. His Coffey Park home was reduced to ash, along with thousands of others in the area. He’s been staying with family members and at a hotel as he lines up an apartment.
“A couple of people who live on my route lost their lives,” Davis said. “So you can’t get too upset about your home.”
Delivering the mail fosters an intimacy with customers, and the fires have been jarring. Entire routes in Santa Rosa are gone. Connections are lost.
So the task on Saturday carried some joy along with the pain. The workers put out cookies and drinks for the visitors. When Priest Morgan, a man credited with saving part of the Journey’s End Mobile Home Park with a fire hose, walked in, he was given an ovation.
“It’s a bit of a comfort,” said Donald Herring, 52, a contractor who has been out of his home in the community of Larkfield, north of Santa Rosa, since early Monday, staying with an ex-wife and at a motel.
“Hey, not too many bills,” he said, looking down at his letters. “Unfortunately, it’s mostly junk mail.”
Kathy Braly, 52, and her husband, Doug, 53, pulled in to pick up mail for family members. Not only did they lose their home in Coffey Park, but so did Kathy’s two brothers and a cousin. Two cats are missing. And on Saturday, Kathy’s sister was evacuated from the Skyhawk neighborhood on the east edge of Santa Rosa.
“It’s like we can’t wake up from a nightmare,” said Kathy Braly, who has been staying with her husband and son in a trailer on her parents’ 5-acre property in Santa Rosa.
As for her mail, she said, “There’s some insurance stuff in here, and unfortunately some bills.”
A big cardboard package was in the arms of Ken Sparks, 74, as he left the post office. The retired engineer had fled Monday morning with his wife from their home in Larkfield after hearing the roar of the fire — “like bombers flying over,” he said — and they’ve been staying with friends until they can get back in.
“This is just some junk I bought from Amazon,” he said, beginning to laugh.
He continued, “It’s a log-splitting hammer. It’s to split kindling to start fires.” And with that, he laughed even harder as he leaned into his cane.
“You know, life has to go on, and you just do your best, and my heart breaks for so many people,” he said. “You have to maintain the love and the humor.”