Grim task combing through the ruins
Even though there’s nothing left to rescue, the search and rescue teams have come to Coffey Park.
The flames are out, the fire trucks are gone, the grieving residents keep their distance. The search and rescue teams go to work.
With crowbars on their shoulders and long poles in their hands, the sixmember teams of volunteers from the Alameda County Sheriff ’s Office sort through the powdery gray remains of Coffey Park in Santa Rosa, where entire blocks of homes disappeared in the early hours of Oct. 9 in the worst wildfire disaster in state history.
It’s a lonely, quiet, painstaking job. Suddenly, amid the ash and cinders, appears something recognizable. A pair of children’s underpants lined with pink lace. A fancy backyard grill. A heat lamp. The talismans of suburban life, the untouched items spared by happenstance as the flames jumped from home to home.
Some is unbearably grim. The bones of people who died in their beds, the remains of pets that tried to hide under cars.
“Hey, Mitch,” said search and rescue team member Ed Lim, poking through the foundation of one home Tuesday. “I think we have something here.’’
Lim and Mitch Rogers look inside a half-melted remains of a freezer. There are bones inside, but they came from a butcher shop. Maybe lamb, maybe pork, they decide. No need to summon the coroner.
The search started Sunday and will continue for weeks. More than 4,000 homes were destroyed in Sonoma County. Sixty-five people remain missing. It’s the biggest scene the crews have ever searched.
These teams come from the Alameda County Sheriff's Office search and rescue unit, a group of 100 volunteers established more than half a century ago that often assists other counties. The team includes a large pack of rescue dogs with specially trained noses that find what the humans miss.
The teams already canvassed Coffey Park for human remains last week. But before the police barriers can be lifted and the residents return, the searchers must scour the detritus again. Anything of significance — safes, firearms, animal corpses — is marked with orange tape.
Santa Rosa police officers pack the valuables and store them in the evidence room. It’s already overflowing with charred belongings. Animal control officers pick up the remains of the pets.
The search teams, in their gas masks, safety suits and thick boots, look like astronauts on moonwalks. One team clomped past a tiny stone Nativity scene perched on a retaining wall. Jesus and Mary’s heads were charred and blackened.
Zinka, a black German shepherd, pointed his handlers to a clump of dead chickens and a dead cat caught underneath a burnt-out pickup truck. The workers marked both spots.
“There’s a really nice vase over there,” said searcher Denise Blackman.
Rogers stopped next to the remains of an old car.
“What is that, a ’56 Chevy?” said Rogers, peering under the hood. “The guy must’ve been working on it. The engine is missing.”
The crews usually start in the garage, where the burnt cars are. Then they seek out the metal box springs — that indicates a bedroom. Stoves and freezers indicate a kitchen. That’s about all there is to go by.
At one house, Lim’s team unlatched the front gate in a white picket fence and walked through. The fence had survived. The house was only a memory.
The team includes a large pack of rescue dogs with specially trained noses that find what the humans miss.