After Camp Fire, funeral homes help others through their losses
CHICO — In the face of the historic loss of life from the Camp Fire, staffs at funeral homes and mortuaries in the region have been working tirelessly to accommodate the influx of victims and give their families the solace and closure that is the hallmark of their profession.
But what happens when the comforters are among the mourning, among the uprooted, among those trying to find steadiness amid all the tragedy?
“We all have our own personal stories. My own house burned down in the fire. My secretary’s house burned, and I have employees displaced,” said Marc Brusie, a Butte Creek Canyon resident and third-generation Chico funeral home owner whose business also runs two area cemeteries.
But helping others through their losses, Brusie said, can provide a source of comfort in itself.
“We feel pretty good about what we do in helping families navigate through this process,” he said. “It’s what we do every day.”
Most of the funeral homes that serve the area affected by the fire have deep roots in the region, and their staffs have drawn from that connection to carry on.
“This is difficult for all of us. We all love the community, we love Butte County, and we’re committed to helping people through the most difficult part of their lives,” said Bob Bracewell, who runs a funeral home in Chico and a second mortuary in Paradise, which was damaged by the fire and rendered inaccessible because of the town’s standing evacuation order.
Bracewell and some of his staff were among those who had to flee the fire as it descended on Magalia, Concow and Paradise, including an employee who rescued several people on her way out of town.
“It’s always been about keeping focus on the family that has lost somebody. Our situation is never as bad as theirs,” he said. “We’re dealing with a double set of grief here. I think a regular loss is overwhelming, but this loss is compounded because we’re seeing the destruction.”
Mortuaries in the region have received most of the victims who have been identified and released to their families, accounting for about half of the 85 people known to have died in the fire. Butte County, owing to its modest population, does not have a central morgue; funeral homes rotate an on-call duty for deaths where there are no pre-existing arrangements.
What’s more, Paradise’s three mortuaries — Newton-Bracewell, Paradise Chapel of the Pines and Rose Chapel — are out of commission because of fire damage and the town still being under evacuation.
But Bracewell said he and his counterparts are up to the task of serving the community members who perished in the fire.
“The funeral homes in Butte County are able to handle the situation,” he said. “We’re all working together.”
Adding to the complexity is that many of the victims had retired to Paradise. That leaves family members from out of the area, sometimes the state, having to coordinate arrangements from afar.
Angela Loo counts herself among them. Her father, Paradise resident Ernest Foss Jr., was one of the first people officially identified as a victim of the Camp Fire, news she got at home in Oregon. From afar, she was thrust in the position of having a couple of days to remotely arrange for a mortuary to receive her father after he was released from the Sacramento County coroner’s office, which helped with victim identification because of the sheer volume of fire victims.
“I kind of scrambled to find a mortuary. And there’s a lot more paperwork in California than in Oregon,” Loo said, alluding to her experience with making funeral arrangements after her brother died three years ago.
Loo decided on hiring the Neptune Society to cremate her father, because they performed similar services for her grandmother. And even in doing that, she saw the broad impact of the fire. She ended up getting helped by the company’s Stockton office, she said, because the person who ran the Chico location was busy tending to the loss of her home in the fire.
Foss’ family opted against a formal funeral service, and instead held a quiet remembrance in Red Bluff two weeks ago. Loo said she hopes to have another memorial in San Francisco, where her father was a longtime studio musician, on his birthday in the spring.
“He wanted a big party in Golden Gate Park, which is where he used to jam all the time,” she said.
There’s still a lot of work to be done, she said. Because her father’s formal cause of death is still pending — which will likely be the case for many fire victims — the death certificate isn’t final, and typically can’t be used to file insurance claims and other paperwork.