New grief, new questions
Survivors, relatives say driver was slow in reacting to crisis
The circle of mourning for five nurses killed in a limousine fire on the San Mateo Bridge reached Alameda on Tuesday, as the final victim’s name spread through a neighborhood that knew her as “a working mom who did everything.”
Meanwhile, criticism of the limo driver’s actions during the blaze mounted among the survivors and relatives of those who perished. Several said the driver, 46-year-old Orville Brown of San Jose, was slow to react to the crisis and did little to help the women as they tried to escape the flames.
Brown has said he did what he could and feels terrible about the fire.
While some pointed fingers, others shed tears Tuesday as the San Mateo County coroner’s office finally released the names of all five who died in the blaze.
The woman whose name had not been made public was Felomina Geronga. She lived with her husband and two children on Walnut Street in Alameda — and with her ever-ready laugh silenced, the neighborhood is a lesser place, said longtime friend Elaine Rodriguez.
“This is a tough thing,” said Rodriguez, who lives next door to the Gerongas. “The whole family is just wonderful.”
Besides Geronga, 43, the dead were Jennifer Balon, 39, of Dublin; Anna Alcantara, 46, of San Lorenzo; Michelle Estrera, 35, of Fresno; and Neriza Fojas, 31, who worked as a nurse in Fresno. The coroner listed her city of residence as Monterey.
Four other women were injured but survived.
Close-knit group
The women were taking their limo ride to Foster City on Saturday night to a bridal party for Fojas, who had recently married. They were a close-knit set of friends who were of Filipina heritage and had met one another through nursing jobs.
The loss of so many, all at once, has agonized their extended network of friends and relatives.
Geronga went by the nickname of Fyla and was a senior clinical lab scientist at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Oakland, friends and hospital officials said.
She had lived in Alameda for about eight years. Acquaintances said she was a cheery person, that she and her husband and children — a daughter in the seventh grade and a son in fourth grade — were the most upbeat folks on the block.
“You just constantly hear them laughing over there,” Rodriguez said. “They always cheer me up — you hear the kids giggling and the parents talking and laughing all the time.
“My reaction when I heard about this: tears,” she said.
Husband a nurse
Friends said Geronga’s husband had worked as a doctor in the Philippines and now works locally as a nurse. His wife was “a working mom who did everything,” said one neighbor who asked not to be named, rising at 5:30 every morning to make breakfast and lunch for the family.
Hers is not the only family left without a wife and mother.
Jennifer Balon’s husband, John Balon, 38, worked as a physical therapist with his wife, a nurse, at the Fruitvale Health Center in Oakland. Now he has to carry on as a single father of a 10-year-old daughter and a 1-year-old son.
He said he intends to show his son, Jayden, pictures of his mother frequently as he grows up so the boy can remember what she was like. As for himself, he said he will never need any prompts.
“I will always remember my wife, every day,” Balon said. “She’s the best thing to ever happen to me. She is one unique person. No one can replace her at all.”
Survivors improve
Two of the survivors are still hospitalized at Valley Medical Center in San Jose — 34-yearold Jasmin “Jazz” De Guia of San Lorenzo and Amalia Loyola, 48, of San Leandro. Their condition was upgraded Tuesday to fair.
The other two survivors, Nelia Arrellano, 36, of Oakland and Mary Grace Guardiano, 42, of Alameda, were released from a hospital earlier this week.
The driver, Brown, was unhurt — and on Tuesday, De Guia’s relatives accused him of not doing enough when the flames broke out to save his passengers.
“We’re definitely upset with the driver and trying to figure out why he didn’t do anything about it,” said De Guia’s cousin, 30-year-old Randy Tibayan of Hayward. “He had the controls, but he didn’t bother to break any windows or open anything.”
De Guia told relatives that Brown at first misunderstood her cries that the limo was filling with smoke as a request to light a cigarette — matching Brown’s account in an interview with The Chronicle on Sunday. When it became obvious there was a problem, Brown took too long to react, Tibayan said.
“The smoke seemed to be coming out of the trunk and into the compartment,” he said. “The driver said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it.’ But by the time he pulled over, people in the back were already getting burned.”
‘On his phone’
He said that as panic escalated inside the limo, the driver “was outside and on his phone, calling for help, maybe.”
One witness, who said he passed the limousine on the bridge just before the flames broke out, told The Chronicle he was surprised to see the driver standing outside the stopped limo.
“It was a little surreal — this stalled limo, and the driver just standing outside alongside it,” said the witness, Russell Jeong, a senior director at Diamond Foods Inc. in San Francisco. “We were surprised the limo had no emergency lights on.”
Tibayan said Loyola, the other survivor hospitalized at Valley Medical Center, had pulled De Guia out of the limo through the driver’s 3-footby-1½-foot partition window — at one point having to yank hard when De Guia’s hip got stuck.
“My cousin was one of the last ones to get out,” he said. “The women were pulling each other out.”
Arrellano also told KGO-TV that Brown “didn’t do anything” to help the women flee the flames. “He just get out from the car,” she said.
Happened fast
Brown told The Chronicle on Sunday that the fire happened too quickly to react in time to save the victims. He said he helped the survivors escape through the partition, and was devastated by the tragedy.
“I just wish that I could have done more,” Brown said. “It’s something you never imagine will happen.”
He has not returned calls seeking comment since the survivors and their relatives went public with their criticism.
Investigators with the California Highway Patrol have not said whether Brown’s conduct is a factor in their probe of the tragedy. They said it will probably be two to three weeks before they reach any conclusions about what caused the fire.