VICTIMS’ STORIES
Sally Lewis and Teresa Santos
Sally Lewis, 90, moved to Napa after the 1991 Oakland hills fire destroyed her Berkeley house. An avid traveler who loved hunting and fishing with her two daughters, Dixie and Windermere, her home was engulfed by flames from the Atlas Peak fire last Sunday evening. She and her caretaker, Teresa Santos, 50, weren’t able to make it out. “Everybody called her ‘Mom,’” Windermere told the San Francisco Chronicle. “She took everybody under her wing.” Windermere and her husband and sons tried to reach Lewis and Santos after they heard about the fire Sunday evening, crashing their car through the front gate to try to reach the house in time, but it was too late.
“There was a 20-foot fire tornado column,” she told the paper, “spinning around the patio.”
Michael John Dornbach
Michael Dornbach, 57, lived in Southern California but was visiting friends and family near Calistoga when fires ripped through the area early last Monday morning. While his nephew begged him to flee along with the others, Dornbach wanted to save his new pickup truck but was having trouble finding the keys, his sister, Laura Dornbach, told the New York Times. “I’m just so confused that he wouldn’t leave,” Dornbach, who’d been visiting with her brother just an hour before flames consumed the neighborhood, told the Times. “And I don’t understand why everyone else didn’t just drag him out.”
Her son, she said, tried to return for his uncle, but it was too late. Authorities wouldn’t let him through.
George Chaney and Edward Stone
George Chaney, 89, and Edward Stone, 79, never made it out of their home on Atlas Peak Road northeast of downtown Napa. Napa County authorities located their remains last Thursday, more than four days after fire tore through their neighborhood north of the Silverado Resort and Spa. Chaney was a retired doctor.
Margaret Stephenson
Margaret Stephenson, 86, lived alone in Redwood Valley, in rural Mendocino County. Sheriff Tom Allman knew the widow, who died last week in the Redwood Valley fire.
“My crew of eight deputies and detectives found Margaret in the ashes of her home,” he told the Sacramento Bee. “She’d sent me a pre-Halloween card 10 days ago.”
On the card, Stephenson is pictured dressed as a member of the royal family. The sheriff now keeps the card in his wallet.
“She was a wonderful, delightful person,” Allman told the paper.
Lee Chadwick Roger
The Sonoma County Sheriff’s office confirmed Lee Chadwick Roger is among the victims of the fires that have ravaged the area in recent days. Roger, 72, lived east of Highway 12 near Mountain Terraces Winery and Vineyard in Glen Ellen.