One family has a home. The other doesn’t. Why?
‘Intense’ guilt awaits some who escaped unscathed
The Gibson and Vella families have been best friends for decades, raising their children together in the Coffey Park neighborhood, carpooling to soccer games, vacationing together and attending their children’s weddings.
Today, one family has a home. The other doesn’t.
As the smoke is clearing from Santa Rosa, Napa and the other communities in Wine Country, the reality of what was lost is coming into focus. And the ones who lost nothing are grappling with why they were spared.
“First, you’re so grateful that your house is there,” Pat Gibson, 64, said. “And then it sets in, ‘Why me, when all our friends are suffering and lost everything?’”
About 900 homes were destroyed in Santa Rosa’s Coffey Park early that
Monday morning, and only about 50 or so survived. The firestorm that tore through the city destroyed more than 3,000 structures.
The emotional trauma can sometimes be stronger for the ones whose homes were spared, research suggests. Berkeley psychologist Alan Siegel studied the dreams of the victims of the 1991 Oakland hills fire.
“Those who didn’t lose their homes, they had worse dreams, their recovery was slower,” Siegel said. Some experienced nightmares of wild animals chasing them, or images of empty shopping carts suggesting their sense of depletion. “Many of the dreams showed guilt. They felt intensely guilty.”
When the Gibsons, whose home survived, and Vellas, whose home was destroyed, ran into each other Sunday at St. Rose Catholic Church in Santa Rosa, a full week after the fires broke out, the two couples embraced and cried. They were both there, dropping off donations for fire victims.
“We’re going to be OK. I know we’re going to be OK,” Maria Vella, 59, said choking back tears.
“Rise again, right?” Gibson said, trying to sound optimistic.
Taking a stand
Gibson surmises that her home was spared because the Berkeley Fire Department took a stand to save the elementary school across the street. Gibson later saw a video of the firefighters on her street.
The Gibsons and Vellas were some of the first families to move into Coffey Park when it was being built in the 1980s. As their families grew, they each moved once within the neighborhood, with the Gibsons ending up on Sweetgum Street and the Vellas a few blocks away on San Salvador Drive.
They each had sons who played on the same soccer teams that practiced on the fields in the middle of the neighborhood. Pat Gibson often baby-sat the Vella boys after school and took them swimming in the summers. They took cruises to Mexico and the Caribbean together.
Both couples were home when the fire hit and quickly escaped with nothing. Gibson’s husband, Bernard, is a former San Francisco firefighter and stayed behind to help evacuate neighbors. Pat Gibson was sure she lost her home, especially when she saw a TV reporter broadcasting from the corner of Sweetgum and Dogwood and everything around her was gone.
“I sobbed and sobbed,” she said. She didn’t find out it was saved until her daughter’s friend went back in and took a picture of the twostory, tan clapboard house with the pitched roof and the attached garage — “a typical middle-class family home,” she called it. “I love every thing about this house.”
“Seeing it standing, that was the most emotional moment of my life,” said Pat Gibson, who was certain it was gone. She and her husband returned last Tuesday to take a look, and she snapped her own picture to be certain of what she was seeing. When they looked inside, “the pajamas were on the floor right where we left them.”
Kevin Gibson, Pat’s son who is now 30 and lives in San Francisco, walked through the moonscape of his neighborhood a few days ago and teared up. His wife asked him if he knew someone on that particular block.
“I know someone in every one of these houses,” he said. “I’ve been trickor-treating at every single house in the neighborhood.”
Seek help
Siegel, the psychiatrist, said it’s important for people to seek help, from friends, family, pastors or therapists. The ones who talked openly about the impact of the Oakland hills fire, he said, fared better.
In the 1991 fire, he said, those who lost their homes received the most attention from friends, family and even the news media.
“At least emotionally, they began the process of recovery by being able to tell the story,” Siegel said. “The people who experienced the guilt felt they didn’t get the recognition and didn’t feel they had a right to receive any help. That’s when it goes into a cycle of self-blame.”
The Gibsons have already invited the Vellas to move in with them while they rebuild.
“They’re wonderful people,” Vella said.
Still, she understands her friend’s feelings of guilt, but hopes she can move past them.
“I know other people who feel that way,” Vella said. “I told her, ‘I want you to be happy. I’m glad you didn’t lose your home. When you move back in, you’ll be able to help people.’ ”
“Seeing (our home) standing, that was the most emotional moment of my life.” — Pat Gibson, Santa Rosa