101-year-old killed in California blazes told wife to flee

SANTA ROSA — A 101-year-old man who told his wife to flee deadly wildfires in Northern California without him last month is the latest victim to be identified by authorities.

The Press Democrat newspaper of Santa Rosa reported that coroner’s officials on Thursday identified the man as longtime Santa Rosa resident Tak-fu Hung. He was one of at least 43 people killed by the fires that raged across a huge swath of wine country.

Hung’s granddaughter told the newspaper that her grandfather, who had fought the Communists in China’s 1949 revolution, got as far as the front door of his burning home when he told his 76-year-old wife, Helen, he could not make it through the flames.

“He told her, ‘Just go,”’ Rosanne O’hara said by phone from San Francisco. “He would not make it. He couldn’t make it.”

Helen Hung sought shelter behind a wall in the family’s front yard and later by lying on a neighbor’s driveway for hours as the flames passed over her, O’hara said. She suffered multiple burns but is recovering.

“The flames went over her repeatedly, but she was far away from brush, so that the fire wasn’t constantly on her,” O’hara said.

Hung was the second centenarian identified as a victim of the fastmoving fires. Charles Rippey, a 100-year-old World War II veteran, also perished in his home. He was believed to be trying to help his 98-year-old wife, Sara, when the couple were overcome by smoke and flames. His wife also died.

The couple, who had met in elementary school, had been married 75 years.