SONOMA STRONG
For survivors of last year’s inferno, new fires test nerves
SANTA ROSA, Calif. – The two conflagrations raging across Northern California, the Carr Fire and Mendocino Complex Fire, are not within striking distance of this storied town best known as the home of Peanuts creator Charles Schulz.
Yet with every fire truck siren, every morning that dawns hot and windy, every sunset rendered vibrant by a smoky veil, the hearts of those living in this town skip a beat.
Nearly a year ago, an inferno raced across Santa Rosa, killing more than 20 people and destroying more than 5,000 homes. The aftermath has tested emotions and fueled resilience, banding citizens and city officials together to recover from the unimaginable. Banners with the county’s post-fire motto, Sonoma Strong, still dot the town.
But as experts predict longer, hotter fire seasons across the Golden State, fear is an inevitable ingredient in this city’s determined resurrection.
“Many here have a sort of PTSD, where you’re constantly
clearing brush around the house, always checking the news,” says Paula Lindsay, 56, who lost her home, cats and car in last October’s blaze.
“Of course, the new fires make you nervous,” she says. “But I’m not living my life as a victim. So while I don’t want to go through this again, I will. “This is home.”
Like most of those displaced by the fires, Lindsay is still in a rental.
Across town, three generations of Guzmans sit around a dining room table in their new house in Coffey Park, a middle-class neighborhood that looked as if it had been hit by an atomic bomb last fall.
The Guzman clan moved a few weeks ago into one of just seven new homes – city officials hope to have 1,000 houses under construction across the city by the end of the year – rising from a landscape of dirt and blackened trees.
The three grandparents, two parents, two adult children and one tabby all are grateful to again have a roof over their heads after living with friends, in hotels and in small apartments where one grandparent had to sleep on the living room couch. But theirs is a fragile peace.
“I wake up here now, and yes, I’m in the same location once again. It’s my street, my neighborhood, and yet it’s totally different,” says a soft-spoken Leticia Guzman, 41, who tears up easily when talking about the fires. “Nobody can really prepare you for what it’s like to lose everything.”
A dream in ashes
For Guzman, a Whole Foods deli worker whose father, Jose, came to Santa Rosa from Mexico in the 1980s, what she lost were talismans of the American dream.
There was the house she and her husband, Miguel, a medical supply company employee, had lived in for 17 years, complete with their daughters’ handprints in the cement driveway and a bunny burial plot in the yard. Also gone were the high school graduation sashes of Diana, 25, and Cecilia, 19.
“People say, ‘ You have a new house, new furniture.’ But while that’s true, it’s the things you can never replace that really make you hurt inside,” Leticia says. “It’s all so weird.”
Variations of Paula Lindsay’s and Leticia Guzman’s stories play out across this city. Feelings range from rage to acceptance, from a frustration that life remains in limbo to gratefulness at simply being alive – emotions that some residents of Redding and Mendocino and Lake Counties may soon share as firefighters struggle to contain deadly wildfires fueled by heat and wind.
There are lessons to be learned from the way Santa Rosa tackled the truly unimaginable, the Tubbs Fire, whose pale precedent dates to 1964 when the Hanley Fire leveled about 100 structures and made 2,500 people homeless.
City officials allocated $9 million from the city’s general fund – recoupable through the new-house planning fees – to pay for a two-year contract to hire outside staff just to handle permitting issues related to rebuilds after the fire.
The city created a website, Resilient City Fire Recovery, that gives residents information on how to rebuild. It tracks the city’s house-by-house comeback: There are 421 homes under construction, 321 have the permit review in process, and 140 have permits and await construction.
Santa Rosa officials plan to rededicate their efforts to build up the downtown area, where homes not only are less susceptible to fire than those in the hills but also add vibrancy to the urban core.
“The fires brought changes, from up- dating our (building) codes, which aren’t popular with everyone due to increased cost, to reducing fees for second units so we can boost our (housing) stock,” says David Guhin, Santa Rosa’s director of planning and economic development.
“But if there’s been one key, it’s been making sure we communicate well to multiple audiences,” Guhin says. “This is all still fresh and raw for many of us, even more so when you see the dark, gray smoke in the air from the new (Northern California) fires.”
Strength in numbers
Guhin says citizens banding together have been crucial to the town’s rebirth. Neighbors help one another with everything from insurance claim questions to going in on land surveys together to reduce fees.
Weeks after Jeff Okrepkie lost his house in Coffey Park, he started to see Facebook pages dedicated to victims that brimmed with misinformation about insurance claim procedures. So the commercial insurance agent founded the nonprofit group Coffey Strong, a clearinghouse for residents trying to get their lives back.
“For some people, the fires accelerated decisions to leave the area, but for those who wanted to stay, there were a lot of questions,” says Okrepkie, who hopes to leave his rental early next year. “A lot of people weren’t prepared to undertake a building project. It just wasn’t on their minds. It can be daunting with all the decisions you have to make. Some still aren’t sure.”
‘It wasn’t a nightmare. It was real.’
City records show that about 300 lots in Coffey Park and Fountaingrove have sold, evidence of residents preferring to move on, either to different neighborhoods or different cities and states.
The clock is ticking for those still in limbo. Typical insurance claims include rental assistance for two years, a deadline that is 14 months away.
A house project takes many months at the least, so some risk running out of assistance before they can move into a new house.
“Given all the building, there are inevitable delays with labor, architecture,” Okrepkie says. “When we hit the oneyear anniversary in October, most people really need to have something in the works.”
Sometimes even when a survivor is ready to move forward, paralysis sets in.
“I cannot tell you how many times a client has made me cry,” says Misti DeJohn, whose family business, DeJohn Construction, built the Guzmans’ new home and has 15 more houses going up around the city.
Although Okrepkie is a font of insurance details, he grows quieter when asked to explain what hurts most about losing his house.
“An earthquake can damage a structure, but a 2,000-degree fire will take out everything,” he says. “Like my son’s favorite blankie or my late father-in-law’s military uniform and his dog tags. Stuff like that. Just gone. It eats you up.”
Over in Coffey Park, Leticia Guzman says she doesn’t need to hear about new fires to get overwhelmed by a sense of foreboding and a fear that the past could revisit her family.
“It was like a nightmare, but it wasn’t a nightmare. It was real,” she says. Some nights she has dreams where she is choking from the smoke, “and I wake up, and there is nothing.”
“An earthquake can damage a structure, but a 2,000-degree fire will take out everything. Like my son’s favorite blankie or my late father-in-law’s military uniform and his dog tags. Stuff like that. Just gone. It eats you up.” Jeff Okrepkie