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Inferno kills 7, leaves ‘complete devastation’

By Mary Callahan, Paul Payne, Randi Rossmann, Julie Johnson and J.D. Morris

A raging firestorm born in the dark of night by dry, violent winds roared down from the rural hills bordering Napa and Sonoma counties early Monday and cut a devastating swath into Santa Rosa from its eastern outskirts, killing at least seven city residents and destroying more than 1,500 structures.

Tens of thousands of people were forced to flee their homes hours before sunrise, when the ruin wrought by flames in several terrifying hours became apparent over a rural and urban landscape spanning more than 50 square miles. In Sonoma County alone, officials said 100 people were reported missing.

For thousands of firefighters and residents trying to protect homes, the fire driven by gusts up to 68 mph was an amorphous, unstoppable force, rampaging through Mark West Springs, Larkfield and Wikiup, and Fountaingrove, where it claimed hundreds of upscale Santa Rosa houses tucked into forested hillsides.

From there it raced on, scorching landmark businesses and school campuses and threatening two hospitals, where hundreds of patients were evacuated. Throwing sparks ahead of its main front, the fire then jumped Highway 101 into a heavily populated corner of northwest Santa Rosa.

In Coffey Park, the destruction was warlike. Block after block, hundreds of homes burst into flames.

“The volume of structures and neighborhoods that have been completely destroyed is incredible,” said Assistant Santa Rosa Fire Marshal Paul Lowenthal, who lost his own Larkfield home Monday. “There are areas where, as far as the eye can see, is complete devastation with entire neighborhoods burned to the ground.”

By nightfall Monday, the Tubbs fire, which began about 10 p.m. near Calistoga in eastern Napa County, was still uncontrolled on many fronts. Its single-day toll made it the worst natural disaster on record in Sonoma County, and among the most destructive wildfires in California history. Authorities said they expected the death toll to grow, and financial losses from the fire — from homes and luxury hotels, to school campuses and wineries — are likely to mount into the billions of dollars.

The blaze, which burned 27,000 acres by Monday night, was the most catastrophic of more than 14 wildfires across eight counties in Northern California. The heaviest activity centered in Sonoma, Napa, Mendocino and Lake counties, where up to 75,000 acres had burned. A total of 11 people were confirmed dead in the local fires, including two in Mendocino County and an elderly couple in Napa County.

In Sonoma Valley, several fires burned 5,000 acres around Glen Ellen and Kenwood, where homes on both sides of Highway 12 were destroyed.

“It has been a horrific and terrifying night for a great many people,” acting Santa Rosa Police Chief Craig Schwartz said Monday during a news conference. Low humidity and strong, inland winds that developed over the weekend helped fuel the firestorm. Cal Fire and the National Weather Service issued a red flag warning that extended through today, though gusts had largely died down by Monday evening.

By that time, the nightmare that many wildfire experts had long feared in Santa Rosa had played out. It was a haunting sequel to the disastrous Hanly fire of 1964, which originated in the same rugged terrain along the Napa-Sonoma border and ripped through what was then mostly rural land. It was halted before it reached the city’s core.

Not so this time.

Flames outpaced overmatched fire crews, burning through wooded, rural estates and onto paved city blocks. Desperate residents asked all day for updates on active fire fronts that seemed to have them surrounded. Fire officials pleaded for reinforcements.

“We’ve been wondering, ‘Where in the heck are they?’” Windsor Fire Chief Jack Piccinini said about 6 a.m. “I’ve asked, ‘Are units coming?’ and was told no, they’re going to the Atlas fire (in Napa County). That’s painful news to us. We’re still spread so thin.”

Highway 101 in Santa Rosa was completely shut down in both directions, from Steele Lane to Mark West Springs Road. Thick smoke kept badly needed Cal Fire tankers and helicopters grounded for much of the day. Commercial flights at Charles. M. Schulz-Sonoma County Airport were canceled.

With hours to go before sunrise, the fire had topped a ridge west of Santa Rosa, lighting the hillside with flames before swooping down into town.

Ted Regan, who lives near Calistoga Road, said he saw the glow from the foothills behind his house about 2 a.m.

“It got brighter and brighter and then we saw flames. That’s when we said, ‘It’s time to go,’” Regan said.

Rachel McKenzie, who fled her home south of Hopper Avenue in northwest Santa Rosa with her son, her husband and a crate filled with pet reptiles, described the frenzied evacuation hours later as she awaited news of her home at an emergency evacuation center.

“It was totally chaotic,” McKenzie said. “I saw a fire start in my neighbor’s house, and it was fully engulfed when we drove away.”

Work to evacuate patients from Kaiser Permanente and Sutter Santa Rosa hospitals in north Santa Rosa began in darkness as windblown smoke blanketed the Highway 101 corridor. In the hills, and later in the flatlands, residents were alerted to the fire’s approach by evacuation orders, made by reverse emergency calls and loudspeaker transmissions, and officers knocking on doors.

“These blazes have taken place at an individual’s most vulnerable time, when they are home and in bed,” State Sen. Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg, said.

By midday, the evacuation orders included Oakmont — the Sonoma Valley retirement community — Windsor’s southern outskirts and the eastern border of Rohnert Park.

By that time, a large Mendocino Avenue mobile home park was left in smoldering ruins. About half of Cardinal Newman High School was destroyed along with landmarks including the Fountaingrove Inn, the Hilton Sonoma Wine Country and the historic Fountaingrove Round Barn. The Luther Burbank Center for the Arts was partially damaged and Paradise Ridge winery suffered extensive damage.

Sonoma County Supervisor Shirlee Zane, who surveyed the damage Monday afternoon from a helicopter described the burned landscape as “a hellish war zone.”

“It looked like somebody bombed these neighborhoods,” she said.

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. reported 50,000 Sonoma County customers were without power Monday. Cellphone coverage was intermittent throughout Monday as flames knocked out communication equipment in the region.

“Due to wildfires, some wireless customers in Sonoma, Napa, Mendocino and Humboldt counties and their surrounding areas may be experiencing issues with their wireless services,” said Leland Kim, media relations director for AT&T. “We are working to restore service as quickly as possible.”

Gov. Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency in Napa, Sonoma, Mendocino and Yuba counties as well as others throughout the state. Sonoma County’s two congressmen, Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, and Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, traveled to the area Monday, and Thompson joined Zane in the aerial survey.

He said he already had forwarded photos to the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the White House.

The cause of the Tubbs fire remains undetermined, though any small spark could have been fanned into a conflagration by the gusts Sunday night, Cal Fire officials said.

It started near Highway 128 and Bennett Lane north of Calistoga and spread southwest into Sonoma County through heavily wooded areas along Mark West Creek and Mark West Springs Road.

Explosions from bursting propane tanks punctuated the night as flames set the sky aglow. Sunup Monday was otherworldly, with a blood-red sun obscured by smoke, ash blanketing the ground and residents rushing to fill up gas tanks and seek emergency shelter.

“It was like an apocalypse,” said Laura Mills, who lives on Wedgewood Way in Fountaingrove, and was forced to evacuate in bumper-to-bumper traffic to the Finley Community Center. “It was very spooky.”

Evacuation centers countywide filled through the day with anxious, exhausted people uncertain of what awaited them at home. Those awakened for hasty departures the previous night included assisted living and senior home residents.

Roads, schools and businesses around the area were closed as mandatory evacuation orders expanded.

Cal Fire Chief Ken Pimlott said the preliminary loss assessment of more than 1,500 residential and commercial structures was drawn from “very conservative estimates.”

Several incidents of looting had been reported by Monday afternoon, in both residential and commercial areas. Acting Santa Rosa Police Chief Schwartz ordered a curfew prohibiting anyone from being inside a mandatory evacuation zone between the hours of 6:45 p.m. and 7:15 a.m.

Sonoma County Sheriff Rob Giordano said scores of law enforcement personnel, including at least 120 on loan from neighboring counties, would patrol the fire areas in the days ahead, stopping and potentially arresting anyone unauthorized found inside.

Santa Rosa Mayor Chris Coursey was clearly emotional during brief remarks at Monday’s news briefing.

“I’m lucky,” he said. “My house is fine. My family is fine. My city is not. And it’s gonna take a long time for us to recover what’s happened today.”

But the city, he said, is strong.

“We are a resilient city. We’re an indivisible city, and we’re gonna need to hang together as we go through this.”

By Robert Digitale

The wind screamed past the front of Gordon Easter’s northwest Santa Rosa home early Monday as emergency officials drove by and announced over loudspeakers that it was time for residents to go.

Across the street, in the predawn dark, Ben Hernandez and his family prepared to leave as the sky showered down woody debris aglow in flame.

“You could see embers falling the size of quarters,” said Hernandez’s son, Ben Hernandez Jr.

Their neighborhood, a compact subdivision of modest single-family homes built decades ago, was witness to a kind of unfathomable destruction Monday. Whole city blocks were claimed by fire, displacing perhaps several thousand people from an area with more than 1,000 homes.

The ashen fallout was so complete that it left many residents at a loss for words when they returned to survey the damage Monday afternoon.

Fire has long been a threat for residents in the wooded hills across Highway 101 to the east. This time, flames leapt from those hills, across the six highway lanes and frontage streets and rained down on their homes.

The fire incinerated houses stretching from a few blocks north of Piner Road almost to Dennis Lane on the northern edge of the city. In the middle of the subdivision, not a home appears to be left standing for three-quarters of a mile.

“It hasn’t really hit me that I don’t have anything I used to have,” said Easter, who has lived on Hopper Avenue for 20 years.

He paused to note the wreckage of a neighbor’s car in a nearby driveway. It worried him that the neighbor, a woman who lived alone, might have failed to escape the flames.

Seven deaths have been reported in northern Santa Rosa neighborhoods from the blaze, dubbed the Tubbs fire, and both Easter’s and the Hernandez’s homes lie in ruins, part of a terrible wasteland in the Coffey Park neighborhood.

Around the city park that gave the neighborhood its name, not a home remains. Coffey Park’s baby swings and blue slide looked untouched, but across the street burned-out cars littered driveways.

The residents expressed disbelief that a wildfire could reach their neighborhood from the hills where it earlier raged.

“It’s not supposed to happen this way,” said resident Gary Padgett. “But it did.”

Padgett’s rented home near Crimson and Kerry lanes was saved by Gold Ridge firefighters along the northwest edge of the neighborhood. Few homes remained to his east or west, though many were spared to the north.

“I’m thankful,” he said. “That’s all I can say.”

Public safety officials urged people to stay out of the evacuation areas, and late Monday city police announced a mandatory curfew in those zones from 6:45 p.m. to sunrise. But the magnitude of the fire’s damage brought out both residents and sightseers Monday to Coffey Park.

Most, like Hernandez, could do little but gawk over what was gone.

“We basically lost everything,” he said, standing near Hopper and Sumatra Drive. He choked up as he recalled that in the hurried evacuation he had left behind his wedding ring.

The fire jumped Highway 101 during the night, apparently near the Kohl’s department store on Hopper Avenue. Three nearby restaurants went up in flames.

In the first single-family neighborhood to the west, which includes Skyview and Crestview drives, only a dozen of the more than 200 single-family houses remained intact. Among them was the home of Grace Muga, who lives on Skyview with her parents and two siblings.

Muga returned with her friend Farai Jumbe about 8 a.m. Monday to find the home largely untouched. When told how few of the surrounding homes survived, the two women dropped to their knees in disbelief.

Next door, a neighbor’s fence still burned, threatening Muga’s house. A Santa Rosa firetruck pulled up and a fire crew quickly doused the flames. A firefighter advised Muga that a working garden hose was nearby should she need it. As the crew got back in their truck, Muga prayed aloud, “God, watch over them, please.”

Across the street, chimney after chimney stood alone amid the rubble.

“These are my neighbors,” Muga said.

At the southwest edge of the morning’s destruction, the fire jumped the SMART train tracks near San Miguel Avenue, but it was stopped a few blocks to the west.

At Frida Street off San Miguel, all the homes on the east side remained standing, while nearly all the homes on the west side had been destroyed. Natural gas lines spewed flames.

John Murdick stood atop his home on the east side of Frida and doused the roof with a garden hose.

Asked how long he’d lived there, he yelled, “Twenty-seven years. And I’m not giving up.”

He evacuated in the early morning but returned with his wife, Joyce, before 9 a.m.

A neighbor, Peggy Sharp, soon drove up with partner Steve Balch to confirm that Sharps’ home had been destroyed across the street. Sharp remained stoic until she saw Joyce Murdick approach. The two neighbors hugged and wept.

“It’s unbelievable,” Sharp said of the destruction. “Just like that.”

The burned area’s southeast edge lay a few blocks north of Schaefer Elementary School near Sweetgum Street and Sweetgum Court. Roommates Travis Fuesz and Juan Valencia returned there Monday afternoon, passing by scores of destroyed houses.

“Our stomachs just sank,” Fuesz said of the neighbors’ losses. He recalled thinking, “There’s no way our home is still there.”

In fact, the home and those next to it survived on the south side of Sweetgum Court. However, across the street the fire appeared to have consumed several blocks of homes all the way north to Hopper Avenue.

On the burned area’s southern edge, San Francisco and Santa Rosa firefighters were able to stop the flames near Sansone Drive and Sansone Court, said resident Dan Buschena. Their efforts saved his house two blocks north of Piner.

Buschena returned to his residence about 8 a.m. to see the San Francisco firefighters battling flames consuming his neighbor’s home to the west.

When the firefighters learned Buschena owned the home next door, they sought to ease his mind. He recalled they told him, “We got it.”

By Guy Kovner, Julie Johnson, Randi Rossmann and Mary Callahan

Uncontrolled wildfires burned in Santa Rosa and across Sonoma County for a second day Tuesday, adding to a deadly natural disaster that continued to outflank firefighters and menace rural and urban residents, with conditions expected to deteriorate again today.

The fires extended existing evacuation orders covering 20,000 people and prompted new directives into Tuesday night, when flames threatened Oakmont on three sides and nipped at the eastern edges of Santa Rosa in Bennett Valley and along Highway 12.

With the heavy smoke lifting and breezes increasing Tuesday evening, the new flare-ups were a distressing sign of flames potentially extending into another heavily populated area of the city. Winds are forecast to pick up further and shift through Wednesday and Thursday, according to the National Weather Service.

The largest of the blazes, the Tubbs fire, was threatening at least 16,000 homes, authorities said.

“We’re not taking any chances. We don’t know what the wind is going to do,” said Santa Rosa Fire Chief Tony Gossner, who is helping manage the Tubbs fire, which had burned 28,000 acres. “We’re concerned for sure.”

The causes of the fires were undetermined Tuesday.

Evacuations launched late Tuesday by the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office included residents near Bennett Valley Golf Course, greater Montgomery Village and north of Geyserville along Ida Clayton Road.

Orders were also issued for the wooded Annadel Heights area, bordered to the north by Parktrail Drive and to the west by Summerfield Road. To the east, fire continues to burn in 5,000-acre Trione-Annadel State Park, which divides Annadel Heights from Oakmont.

The local death toll rose to 16 on Tuesday, including 11 fatalities in the Tubbs fire. Three deaths were confirmed in the inferno that burned through Redwood Valley in Mendocino County and two occurred in Napa County.

Together, wildland blazes in Sonoma, Napa, Lake and Mendocino counties have burned 90,000 acres since late Sunday

Officials stressed that Sonoma County fires were uncontained and presented a serious risk to public safety in the coming days, with pockets of flame burning within the existing perimeters and new fronts pushing outward from the foothills of Windsor in the north to rugged terrain overlooking Sonoma Valley further south.

“That’s really discouraging to hear,” Sonoma County Supervisor Shirlee Zane said during Tuesday’s board meeting. More than 24 hours after the Tubbs fire broke out in Calistoga and stormed across the Napa-Sonoma border into Santa Rosa, firefighters were scrambling to catch up.

It’s “really kind of horrifying,” Zane said. “There really aren’t enough words to explain the type of grief in our community right now.”

Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, noted the unprecedented scope of the fires burning across the region.

“We have never been taxed by a natural disaster to the extent we are being taxed now,” he told an audience of about 600 people Tuesday night at Santa Rosa High School.

Fires across the region have destroyed up to 3,000 structures, according to Cal Fire.

Most of those losses occurred in the firestorm early Monday in the neighborhoods of northwest Santa Rosa, in Coffey Park, and to the east across Highway 101 in the Mark West-Larkfield area and the hilly, upscale subdivisions of Fountaingrove.

Added to that official list Tuesday were 75 homes lost along Bennett Ridge in east Santa Rosa, where residents walked their hillside neighborhood and compiled their own grim survey of the damage — more than 20 homes on Rollo Road, 20 on Bardy Road, 25 on Bennett Ridge and nine on Old Bennett Ridge

Surviving homes totaled about 35, according to the residents’ tally.

“Lost. Lost. Lost. Lost. All these houses are just burned to the ground,” said Rollo Road resident Matt Jennings.

Trouble flared again late Monday — and reared in the same area late Tuesday — in eastern Santa Rosa, when the Nuns fire, centered in Sonoma Valley, ignited a rugged wooded canyon along White Oak Drive in the exclusive Wild Oak subdivision above Oakmont, threatening more than a dozen luxury homes.

The first Santa Rosa firefighters arrived at 10:43 p.m. Monday and quickly called for backup after seeing not only scrub brush burning but also manzanita and fir trees exploding, said Capt. Mike Harrison.

The winds were nowhere near like those that whipped the deadly Tubbs fire across the northern end of Santa Rosa, but they were stiff enough to make firefighters concerned about being so far up a narrow, dead-end road covered by trees, he said.

Three hours of work by the crews, including Sebastopol firefighters, kept the fire away from the homes.

“It’s good that we got here in time to make a difference,” Harrison said.

Thankful residents in the area included Valerie Stamps, mother of world-class runner and Santa Rosa native Julia Stamps Mallon. She walked up the driveway and thanked the firefighters for saving her daughter’s home.

“I am so impossibly grateful to them,” Valerie Stamps said.

But fire officials also faced continued questions over their deployment of resources, especially the limited use of air tankers to fight the Sonoma County blazes.

“Where are the f---ing fire aircraft?” Ryan Wilber, a Santa Rosa criminal defense attorney wrote on Facebook Tuesday. “No one has heard or seen them. We see them when there are other fires.”

Cal Fire Chief Ken Pimlott said at a media briefing Tuesday that “we have access to almost every aviation and firefighting aviation asset in the country right now.”

On Monday, aircraft dropped a record 266,000 gallons of fire retardant on 45 missions on fires in Napa and Sonoma counties, Pimlott said.

Cal Fire spokeswoman Amy Head noted that helicopter water drops occurred Tuesday in low-visibility conditions that prevented missons by fixed-wing aircraft.

Air tankers “are just one tool in our toolbox,” she said.

“When we had the opportunity to fly the aircraft, we flew them,” said Richard Cordova, a Cal Fire spokesman.

Authorities late Tuesday released new information on the 11 Sonoma County deaths, all in the Tubbs fire.

One person died on rural Mountain Home Ranch Drive in the hills off Petrified Forest Road leading into Calistoga, close to where the fire started just north of town.

Three people died in a rural hillside community along Mark West Springs Road — on Crystal Court and on Sundown Trail off Riebli Road.

In Larkfield, authorities confirmed two deaths on Angela Drive, two on Mark West Springs Road and one on Wikiup Bridge Way.

Two people were found dead in Santa Rosa’s Coffey Park neighborhood, one on Coffey Lane and another person on Hemlock Street.

The identities of the victims were not released.

Fifty-seven of the 240 people reported missing as of Tuesday have been located, and some of the missing are expected not to have survived the fire, Sonoma County Sheriff Rob Giordano said. Deputies and Cal Fire personnel are slowly inspecting damaged and destroyed homes.

There have been no arrests for looting and only a few unconfirmed reports, Giordano said.

Sonoma County fire officials estimate 28,000 people — representing 7,300 families — live in the fire-affected areas, according to Andrew Parsons, the county’s assistant fire marshal.

Among the 36 county shelters open Tuesday evening, about 3,900 people were seeking refuge. The shelters had capacity for more than 6,800.

About 51,000 customers remained without power Tuesday morning.

Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital’s emergency department has treated approximately 100 people since the wildfires began, including 14 who were burned.

Most patients came in with respiratory issues, including difficulty breathing, asthma and throat irritation, and about 15 percent were admitted to the hospital, spokeswoman Vanessa deGier said.

Petaluma Valley Hospital treated about 35 patients in its emergency department, most of them with mild to moderate injuries such as shortness of breath, dizziness, asthma and smoke inhalation.

Kaiser Permanente and Sutter Santa Rosa hospitals both remained closed, with no immediate plans to reopen.

“The fire has to be contained, and then local county resources have to tell us that we can come back online,” said Dr. Joshua Weil, assistant physician-in-chief for hospital operations at Kaiser Permanente Santa Rosa Medical Center. “We have to bring PG&E back online for electricity, we have to bring water back online and then we begin the process of testing and confirming systems, and once that happens, probably somewhere in the area of 48 hours.”

Giordano on Tuesday morning described a massive response from law enforcement throughout the Bay Area, saying some 500 officers had come to help. The San Francisco Police Department had 100 people in the Sheriff’s Office building at 8 a.m. Monday, Giordano said.

“Alameda (County) brought 150 yesterday. We had to turn them away, because we had too many at the time, believe it or not,” he said.

The massive property losses have impacted Sonoma County’s workforce, including up to 20 sheriff’s deputies who have lost their homes. All are still working, the sheriff said.

The losses may extend to Supervisor Susan Gorin, who represents Sonoma Valley and eastern Santa Rosa. She said she suspected her home was destroyed.

“Every part of my district has been affected,” Gorin said.

Flames cropped up in a variety of places Tuesday, sending firefighting teams in numerous directions, including back to the neighborhoods of Coffey Park and Fountaingrove that were devastated during Monday’s morning firestorm.

Fire still was still burning at the Hilton Sonoma Wine Country, one of numerous businesses and landmarks destroyed in Santa Rosa.

Flare-ups were expected to continue in burned-over areas and pockets of unburned homes, Cal Fire spokesman Jonathan Cox said.

In the hills above Windsor, a fire that had burned in the Shiloh Park area also kicked up, and evacuations were ordered in the area of Montebello Road and the south side of Shiloh Ranch Regional Park.

The evacuated area in Santa Rosa stretched from Fulton Road east to Montecito Boulevard and from Mark West Springs Road south to Steele Lane and Chanate Road, plus the Oakmont area along Highway 12.

Everyday life throughout the county has been staggered, stalled and permanently transformed.

Campuses in the vast majority of Sonoma County school districts, including Santa Rosa, Cotati-Rohnert Park, Petaluma, Windsor, Healdsburg, West Sonoma County schools have been shuttered since Monday.

All athletic contests in the North Bay and Sonoma County leagues have been canceled this week.

Two cultural events on Saturday, and theater performances were also canceled through the weekend.

“First, and most importantly, is the safety of our student-athletes and coaches, as well as the entire communities in which they reside,” NBL Commissioner Jan Smith-Billing said in a statement Tuesday. “The air quality is terrible and it would be unsafe to have anyone doing anything outside.”

Staff Writers Kevin McCallum and J.D. Morris contributed reporting.

By Mary Callahan

Clearer skies above besieged North Bay communities Wednesday opened a window of opportunity for a stepped-up air attack on multiple fires after two days of low smoke ceilings that limited firefighting flights and hampered efforts to stall blazes across Sonoma and neighboring counties.

The deployment included 37 helicopters and 36 planes -- both tankers and spotter planes -- assigned to a complex of fires located largely in Sonoma and Napa counties, as well as Lake and Mendocino counties, Cal Fire officials said.

In Lake and Napa counties, especially, residents have questioned the conspicuous dearth of tankers typically visible during wildfires of such magnitude, their telltale red retardant splashing down across flame fronts.

"That's one of the prevailing questions I've gotten," Santa Rosa Vice Mayor Jack Tibbetts said Wednesday about the first two days of the fires. "Today, I haven't gotten it once, and that's because we're starting to see more."

The planes aloft Wednesday included four standard 1,200-gallon air tankers launching from Charles M. Schulz-Sonoma County Airport, as well as high-volume supertankers loading fire retardant at McClellan Air Force Base in Sacramento.

They flew missions over uncontrolled fires threatening nearly 30,000 structures in Sonoma County alone, Cal Fire personnel said. The larger tankers can carry 3,000 gallons of heavy, red flame retardant.

Clearer conditions made for a reassuring buzz of activity at the Cal Fire Air Attack Base north of Santa Rosa, where Sonoma County airport manager Jon Stout reported "a steady stream of tankers" coming and going in rotation.

"We're happy to be working, helping out," said Cal Fire Engineer Jim Whitlock, air attack base manager. "It was frustrating when visibility made it difficult for us to fly. But now that we're able to kind of get in and make a difference, I would say the mood is good."

Assistant Cal Fire Chief Bret Gouvea, an incident commander for the Tubbs and Pocket fires in Sonoma County, said the cleared skies allowed targeted air drops to reinforce the southern boundaries of the area's fires before shifting winds put renewed pressure on them overnight Wednesday and today.

An unprecedented firestorm swept through the region overnight Sunday and into Monday morning, destroying upwards of 3,000 structures and wiping out entire neighborhoods. The death toll in Sonoma County on Wednesday rose to 13.

The firefight early in the week was vexed by a sky filled with smoke following the firestorm that ripped through more than 50 square miles of rural and urban landscape in a matter of hours. So much smoke, ash and particulate matter billowed up that the Bay Area has marked consecutive days of its worst air quality on record. People in face masks have become a routine sight on city streets.

The thick haze is a problem for airborne tankers. Unlike helicopters, whose engineering allows them to adjust speed in poor visibility -- stopping to hover or even reverse if obstacles loom ahead -- fixed-wing aircraft can't safely maneuver over rough terrain within their effective drop range without moderate visibility.

In Sonoma County, those poor flight conditions prevailed Monday and Tuesday, complicating efforts to launch tankers over burning areas.

Helicopters were deployed throughout Tuesday, making targeted water drops in the Tubbs fire area, the largest Sonoma County blaze, as well as other areas, Cal Fire representatives said.

Helicopters are the preferred tool in many scenarios in any case, Gouvea said.

When the wind shifted and visibility improved Tuesday afternoon, "we were able to get fixed-wing out until our cut off (time) last night, and then we've flown all day today," Whitlock said Wednesday.

Tibbetts said some constituents alarmed by the absence of tankers wondered if priority was being given to Napa County and the 42,000-acre Atlas fire. The opposite suspicion was voiced by people in Napa about firefighting efforts in Sonoma, Tibbetts and others said.

"I guess they're saying we're getting all the supplies," Tibbetts said. "I think it's just a high level of anxiety. People are having frustrations, fear, anger, and there might be a little bit of finger-pointing going on."

Gouvea sought to banish such notions. Sonoma County has been top firefighting priority, he said. "We have had aircraft at our fingertips the whole time," he said.

On Wednesday, Sonoma County Sheriff's Sgt. Pete Quartarolo, who supervises the department's helicopter unit hangared at the Sonoma County airport, described "a tremendous amount of activity out of this airport, compared to the past two days."

"The wind and the weather is giving us a break," Whitlock said, "and that allows us the visibility to operate at a higher capacity than earlier on in the incident."

‘This fire was going to kill people’

By Julie Johnson

Cal Fire Battalion Chief Gino DeGraffenreid was about to jump back into his truck after loading a fleeing family into a police car when he thought he heard someone yelling amid the roaring wind and fire in the hills northeast of Santa Rosa.

He ran toward the voice and saw them: a couple wearing next to nothing, freezing amid an unprecedented fire belching smoke and raining firebrands.

“They were soaking wet,” DeGraffenreid said. “They had awoken to a smoke detector, jumped in the pool and for about an hour had been in the pool trying to stay away from heat.”

He wrapped them in T-shirts, put them into his truck and caravaned with police down Michele Way to Mark West Springs Road, a white-knuckle trip with fire and intense heat — a burning neighborhood already wiped clean of all that had once been so familiar.

“All of the landmarks — the houses, the fences, the goofy Volkswagen bug — all of the visual landmarks were gone,” DeGraffenreid said.

Gale-force winds fueled an unprecedented number of wildfires that started almost simultaneously after night fell Oct. 8 in places across the North Coast region, killing at least 40 people in four counties and forcing entire communities to evacuate, including about 50,000 Sonoma County residents.

The battle to contain fires covering more than 178,000 acres across the region continues still.

Tracing the start of what’s now called the Tubbs fire — named for its origin near Tubbs Lane just north of the Calistoga city limits — shows how one fire overwhelmed emergency personnel, erupting amid Diablo winds on a Sunday night when many were asleep.

In just over four hours, the Tubbs fire made a horrific 12-mile run from Calistoga, in the northern edge of the Napa Valley, into a dense city neighborhood in west Santa Rosa. It raced through ranches and rural communities, sweeping through million-dollar homes in Santa Rosa’s hillside Fountaingrove development and tract neighborhoods in Larkfield-Wikiup. At 2 a.m., the ferocity of the firestorm propelled it across Highway 101, an unprecedented leap that spread flames into a commercial district on Cleveland Avenue and hundreds of tightly packed homes in Coffey Park.

The fire traveled at a pace of about 3 mph, burning up about an acre a minute while spewing burning embers a half-mile or more ahead, forcing entire neighborhoods to flee in the middle of the night.

“For a fire to move that fast is incredible,” said Eric Hoffman, a retired assistant chief with Cal Fire who rejoined the state fire agency to help manage the firefight and later calculated the fire’s speed.

Authorities have said nothing about what caused the fire.

Erratic winds

One week ago, as dry, strong winds began to buffet the region after night fell, fires began erupting in a chaotic pattern across Sonoma County, like bombs going off in every direction.

Flames engulfed a home on Mark West Station Road near the Sonoma County Airport. An electrical box was smoking on Maverick Court in the hills above Larkfield. Officers went door to door in Santa Rosa’s West End neighborhood as a Pierson Street home burned.

The 50 mph winds flung branches every which way and knocked drought-stricken trees off weakened roots, combining with downed power lines to block major roads from Highway 101 in Sonoma County to Highway 128 north of Calistoga.

That was all before Napa County dispatchers reported “another wildfire” about 9:45 p.m. Oct. 8, north of Calistoga on Highway 128 near Bennett Lane.

The wind hit like a wall about 9:30 p.m. when Anne Pelton stepped outside her Mountain Ranch Road home, about 2 miles as the crow flies from the fire’s origin. She went back inside, and called Calistoga police just before 10 p.m. — a dispatcher said a fire started just north of Calistoga city limits.

Then at 10:18 p.m. a neighbor sent an urgent text message: the whole hillside was ablaze.

DeGraffenreid had already alerted every station in six counties to be on alert and fully staffed because of the wind. Within about 10 minutes of the Tubbs fire’s start, DeGraffenreid, still en route from west Santa Rosa, could tell by reports on the ground that the fire was spreading fast. He called for two chief officers and 10 engines, ordering Cal Fire fighters inside of the burning home on Mark West Station Road to leave immediately and head east.

“This fire was going to kill people. We knew it that night,” DeGraffenreid said.

Bringing in dispatchers

KT McNulty, who was supervising Sonoma County’s 911 dispatch center that night, called in more staff. Dispatchers arrived with children in tow, putting on a movie and tucking them in blankets.

By 10 p.m., dispatchers were taking more than 300 calls an hour — as much as they usually handle in one day.

“It went from one spot fire to hundreds and hundreds of spot fires, from one house on fire to hundreds and hundreds of houses on fire,” McNulty said.

Erratic, gusty winds had on- and off-duty firefighters throughout the region listening to their emergency radios, and DeGraffenreid’s call had many jumping into their trucks and engines to head to the fire.

A wall of fire cut Santa Rosa Battalion Chief Mark Basque off at Franz Valley School Road, so he went around another rural road. He and other firefighters found the mountainous community already aflame and a catastrophic scene. At one point, a car raced up out of the smoke, its panicked driver and passengers with burns. They begged him to go back into the fray for a man who had fallen behind after hurting an ankle.

Using his PA system, Basque called out and “by some small miracle” the man responded. Basque got him out, as well as a group of neighbors who had huddled in a pool.

Clogged roads

Starting at 10:51 p.m., Sonoma County sheriff’s Sgt. Spencer Crum fired off a succession of public warnings about fires in various parts of the county: Mark West Springs and Riebli Roads, Shiloh Road and Conde Lane in Windsor, Highway 116 and Fredericks Road in Sebastopol.

At 11:03 p.m., he ordered evacuations along Porter Creek Road, Petrified Forest Road and warned people that 911 dispatchers were “inundated.”

By 11:08 p.m., he issued an evacuation notice for Calistoga, and warned the public about a fire in Kenwood.

As residents clogged the roads heading out, firefighters and law enforcement officers streamed into the mountainous region between Santa Rosa and Calistoga, praying trees wouldn’t block their escape as they drove up narrow driveways and pounded on doors to get people out.

Monte Rio Fire Chief Steve Baxman’s truck caught fire somewhere near Riebli Road and a tree came crashing down, smashing a window. When he stopped to remove the tree, a burned woman ran up calling for help.

“If we didn’t hit that tree, she would have died,” Baxman said.

Baxman continued down the hill, and when he got down toward Cardinal Newman High School — where he graduated in 1970 — the gym was burning.

Dispatchers sent him toward nearby Angela Drive where someone was in immediate peril, but Baxman was stopped by powerful flames. Authorities would later find remains.

The terrain — a rolling mountainous region cut by creeks and canyons — meant residents couldn’t necessarily see the fire’s menace. The wind threw branches and debris, waking sleeping residents before the smoke seeped into houses.

About midnight, a wind-thrown patio umbrella woke up Martha Menth, 58, on Sundown Trail near Riebli Road. She had been sleeping on the living room couch near the hospital bed where her husband lay, still recovering from a debilitating stroke.

She opened the front door and was hit by the smoke. She woke up her husband, began packing a bag, and called her sister who lived up the hill. The power went on and off, and she managed to get the garage door open before it went off for good.

Without power, and bombarded by smoke and wind, Menth fumbled with trembling hands to use a hand crank to lower the electric wheelchair lift and get her husband down to the driveway.

“Every 10 rotations the chair only went down a fraction of an inch. I was watching the big red glow on the horizon. The fire was loud, so loud, a guttural roar,” Menth said.

She got the wheelchair down and managed to heave her husband into the passenger seat, joining a long line of traffic from people escaping westward down Mark West Springs Road.

Fire moves in various ways, running up hills, backing down hills, and depending on the terrain, weather and fuel, it creeps in some places while in others making fast runs, torching and spotting ahead.

Its headed south from Fountaingrove into the neighborhood north of Hidden Valley Elementary School, where its spread was at times a slow methodical burn, going house to house.

Off Parker Hill Road, Larry Broderick packed his wife and their three boys into the car shortly after a neighbor pounded on their door at 1:30 a.m. Broderick, 51, stayed behind to attempt to save their Flintwood Drive home in the neighborhood where he has lived since he was 5 years old.

Keeping an eye on the hills around him, and the streets he planned to take for an escape, he fired up every hose he could find on his little street, starting what would be a futile five-hour ordeal trying to save homes.

Dispatchers inundated

With fire on his heels coming down after a harrowing hour or two of door-to-door evacuations on narrow roads throughout the Mark West Springs Creek canyon, Crum reached the Estancia Apartments on Old Redwood Highway as surrounding Larkfield began to burn. Panicked residents were getting in cars and leaving, and he found a man in a wheelchair who had no way out. Crum waved down a passerby.

“I literally shoved him into the car next to a kid in a toddler seat,” Crum said. “By this time, it’s howling. There was nothing but ash coming into your face.”

People were deluging 911 dispatchers with calls for help. They called when trees blocked the road, trapped in harm’s way. Dispatchers scrutinized maps of fire trails and helped people hike to safety. They stayed on the line during harrowing ordeals with people trapped in pools or homes. They sent emergency personnel to homes when it was already too late.

In east Santa Rosa, Cecilia Rosas, 30, had been monitoring the fire’s progress and making calls to her parents, who lived on Santiago Drive in Coffey Park, worried about the smoky stench and orange glow to the east.

She couldn’t imagine a fire could ever cross four lanes of Highway 101.

By 2 a.m., the fire had leapt across the highway, bombarding big-box stores and storming into the Coffey Park neighborhood.

Around that time, Rosas stepped outside her home near Guerneville and Fulton roads and “the wind hit us, lifted me off the ground.”

“I called my mom and said evacuate immediately,” Rosas said.

They got out as embers began raining down, often grabbing keys, shoes and little else.

The wind tore through the neighborhood. Firewhirls — small fire tornadoes — ripped garage doors away and threw them into the street.

Outgunned by the fires sweeping over the neighborhood, crews made stands where they could in the tightly packed, middle-class neighborhood of more than 1,000 homes.

Basque and Cal Fire Battalion Chief Marshall Turbeville joined police officers going door to door, raising the alarm. At one resident care facility, they arranged the evacuation of a group of elderly women in wheelchairs reluctant to leave.

The order was pick a spot, reach a hydrant and save a home. Dennis Lane, Vermillion Street, Crimson Lane, Barnes Road, all streets where they made a stand for some houses but were unable to save others.

“We went where we could do the most good. I had to give up a couple streets with a few houses,” Basque said. “We struggled with water pressure. That was really difficult to overcome.”

On Barnes Road two homes burned, flanking one not yet afire. Basque told firefighters to save it.

“Keep it off the house in the middle,” Basque said. “And they did.”

The destruction of Santa Rosa mirrored what firefighters had fought over and over in large Southern California blazes. This time it was home.

Back on Flintwood Drive, Broderick using every garden hose he could find to wet down roofs, fences, bushes, gardens at his home and several others, calling upon the tactics he’d learned during a yearlong stint in the state fire service several decades ago. He tried to avoid being spotted by emergency responders so he wouldn’t distract them.

Broderick managed to extinguish fires on several neighbors’ homes and fences with the goal “to hold it at bay on my block until the sun came up and winds died, or a strike team came in.”

But the winds persisted. The fire engines with rescuers didn’t arrive. And the flames came roaring from three directions, converging down into his neighborhood.

Fire lit up a stand of tall pines across the street. Broderick took a hard fall when a hose got caught on one of his son’s bikes, and his glasses flew off his face. He looked up and the fire had “quadrupled” in size.

By 7:15 a.m., his fight was over. He got in his SUV and drove out, surrounded by fire burning the homes of his neighbors, his friends. At least five families in his son’s Cub Scout’s troop lost homes.

Before nightfall, Broderick slipped past roadblocks, and saw the rubble that was once his home. The twisted mattress wires marked the beds where he and his family had slept the previous night. There was almost nothing left intact, but he found a small ceramic vase he bought in Ireland for the woman who would eventually become his wife.

But it was too hot to touch. He left it behind.

Staff Writer Randi Rossmann contributed to this report. 

Scenic home to famed vineyards, magnet for tourists transformed and still burning

By Derek Moore

Along Highway 12 through Sonoma Valley, world-famous vineyards beginning to show off their brilliant fall hues are now juxtaposed against a jarring backdrop of mountains blackened by flames.

Majestic parklands ringing the valley have been scarred, including Sugarloaf Ridge State Park and Hood Mountain Regional Park near Kenwood, where flames Sunday continued to send a massive plume of smoke into the sky visible for miles, fueling fresh rivulets of anxiety for both residents and firefighters.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Tom Siragusa, an assistant chief for the San Francisco Fire Department and Petaluma resident who has worked in the fire service for 40 years, said Sunday morning while standing watch with members of his strike team at a home at the end of White Circle Drive in Oakmont.

The hillside home borders the eastern edge of Trione-Annadel State Park, where flames chewed through the undergrowth and came dangerously close to the neighborhood of exclusive estates.

Elsewhere in Sonoma Valley, the rampage continued unabated. Along large swaths of territory and in pockets of small, historic communities, dozens of homes and other structures have been lost and landscapes distorted. This is the new reality, and with evacuation orders still in effect for much of the area, it’s one relatively few people have yet seen.

It will be shocking.

Winemaker Steve Ledson said late Sunday his castle-like Highway 12 winery, which has not been damaged by fire despite flames drawing close, remains closed due to power outages. The same is true of his Sonoma hotel and crush facility, which also are closed.

Ledson said his crews have been unable to harvest 100 tons of cabernet grapes hanging on vines on Cavedale Road due to emergency response to fires there. He is working on plans to help his 150 employees financially through this period of unexpected upheaval. But he acknowledged the unavoidable impacts of going without a paycheck for any length of time.

“When they’re not working, how do they pay for their rent and gas? It’s a chain reaction,” Ledson said.

Outside his Highway 12 home near Kenwood on Sunday afternoon, Will Carpenter still appeared dazed as he looked eastward across vineyards at a massive plume of smoke rising above Sugarloaf.

Speaking through a mask covering his mouth, the registered nurse expressed “heartbreak” over the scarring of the beloved parks he and countless others escape to for recreation and quiet.

The sound has been replaced with sirens, the whir of firefighting aircraft and someday soon, hammers and chainsaws.

“It’s going to go from a sleepy little place to a construction zone,” Carpenter said.

On Adobe Canyon Road leading to Sugarloaf, numerous homes have been destroyed by the inferno. Flames still coursed along the hillsides Sunday, bringing fresh anxiety for Harry Trembley.

The Emeryville resident said he spent more than three years building the 2,600-square-foot home on Adobe Canyon Road where his 83-year-old mother lives — and where she has remained despite evacuation orders.

“I’m going to do what I can to defend it,” Trembley said.

High above the home Sunday, firefighters inside Sugarloaf attacked flames whipped by a strong breeze.

The fire was tearing through vegetation but had not touched the Robert Ferguson Observatory, the park’s visitor center or campgrounds.

A return to normalcy seems distant. Driving along Highway 12 Sunday with his two dogs in tow, John Campbell stopped to flag down a PG&E worker to ask when power at Campbell’s Shady Acres Lane home will be restored.

“I would say prepare for later rather than sooner,” the man told Campbell.

After the worker drove off, Campbell turned the volume up on his SUV’s stereo to catch the waning moments of Sunday’s 49ers game. He laughed at the new normal.

“You have to stay cool and do the best you can,” he said. “You can’t get all worried and frantic because that doesn’t do anyone any good.”

In Kenwood, fires destroyed several homes along the town’s western flank.

A dog walked the deserted streets before being whistled home by its owner, Jerod Nethaway, who has been separated from his wife and the couple’s 2-year-old daughter for a week. A union carpenter, he said he felt a duty as an “able-bodied person” to stay behind and defend his Laurel Avenue home, as well as his neighbors’ homes.

He thought the threat was behind them until fire broke out over the weekend along the ridgeline to the east of town. With the plume of smoke rising menacingly Sunday in the near distance, Nethaway soaked his rooftop with a sprinkler and a hose attached to a fire hydrant. He also had turned on the lawn irrigation systems at his neighbor’s homes and raked up leaves into piles to try and reduce fire hazard.

“It’s a tight community,” Nethaway said of his actions. “We’re all friends and family.”

In Glen Ellen, the raging inferno leveled entire blocks on the village’s north and western sides, including along Dunbar Road, Sylvia Drive and Henno Road. Warm Springs Road between Arnold Drive and Saddle Road also was struck hard, with a number of homes destroyed.

The 15-room Olea Hotel appeared to escape major damage. But the horrific 180-degree view from the hotel’s balconies now encompasses a neighborhood of charred houses, vehicles and other structures, including a spiral staircase rising into the sky to nowhere, its facade having burned away.

The flames came close to overtaking the Glen Ellen Community Church, established in 1894, but stopped short of causing apparent damage. The fire also spared the village’s communal center and Jack London’s home, winery and other historic buildings at the state park up the hill.

Jean-Francois Ducarroz, a longtime Glen Ellen resident who was among the few to stay behind in the aftermath of the fires, on Sunday dropped off masks at an impromptu donation pile growing in front of a row of mailboxes that haven’t seen deliveries in a week.

Across the street, the town’s fire department was buzzing.

Ducarroz, a software engineer, said he has been feeding his neighbor’s cats and watering their gardens while waiting to welcome evacuees home.

“We’re still living,” he said. “I’m sure once it’s over, we’ll start feeling the next phase.”

“What’s next?”

SR neighbors return, just thankful to be living

By Julie Johnson

COFFEY PARK — The homes are gone, but Coffey Park was once again a neighborhood.

Couples walked their dogs down the sidewalks. Neighbors passing in cars rolled down the windows and waved. People took a break from the back-breaking work sifting through ash and burned rubble to pull down face masks and reconnect with anyone familiar.

One man walked down Dogwood Drive handing out cans of Lagunitas pale ale.

“It’s been so hard not knowing how everyone is doing,” said Rick Merian, 59, who has lived on Dogwood Drive since 1986. “You don’t have everyone’s addresses or phone numbers. You’re used to seeing your neighbors out on the street.”

Friday morning, the city of Santa Rosa allowed Coffey Park residents to return to their properties, officially reopening the neighborhood to them for the first time since the early hours of Oct. 9 when they fled their homes by the thousands as embers from a raging firestorm rained down. The city also allowed residents of the Journey’s End mobile home park and the Orchard manufactured home community to return.

The scene will be repeated this morning, when the city allows residents of Fountaingrove to visit their homes in the hillside community.

The fire, which ignited in Calistoga and burned a destructive path across miles of rural wooded neighborhoods and into the city, leapt over Highway 101 and burned an estimated 1,300 homes in the dense city neighborhood, sparing very few.

The r-eentry marked an important step for many people to begin searching the charred rubble for even the tiniest mementos before allowing the long cleanup and reconstruction process to begin. While many people had slipped through checkpoints and seen the destruction, the neighborhood had been heavily guarded while emergency personnel looked for human remains and secured utilities. Friday was the first day their properties felt like theirs again.

“People are seeing their neighbors for the first time. There has been a lot of hugging,” Santa Rosa Police Chief Hank Schreeder said.

Huge sections of Sonoma County remain under evacuation orders from Larkfield to Glen Ellen with thousands of residents still waiting to return to their properties — with homes standing or not.

Sonoma County sheriff’s spokeswoman Misti Harris said it could take weeks for some areas to be reopened while 10 different agencies coordinate to ensure they are safe.

“It’s massive, to make sure the obvious safety hazards in the public areas are fixed and removed,” Harris said.'

A few hundred yards from Coffee Park, divided by a large brick wall and train tracks, residents also returned to the Orchard, a community for adults over the age of 55. Unlike the massive police operation to move hundreds of cars into Coffey Park, just a handful of police and volunteers checked people in and handed out supplies.

Most homes were unscathed by the fire, but dozens were leveled by the blaze. Singed apple trees and lawn ornaments stood at the corner of Cherry Blossom Drive and Plum Tree Lane where a few residents looked through the remains of their homes.

At checkpoints set up around the Coffey Park perimeter Friday morning, people showed proof of residency and police handed out paper passes allowing access. The line of vehicles proceeded to a second stop where National Guard soldiers handed out buckets of safety gear — rubber and leather gloves, masks, water, wet wipes and a trash bag to throw it all in when they leave.

By about 3:30 p.m. Friday, more than 1,300 people had returned, Schreeder said. Police allowed only residents, public safety workers, religious leaders, media and volunteers into the neighborhood. The area will remain off limits to the general public for at least a week; the city announced late Friday that it would extend controls on public access through Oct. 29, at least, based on feedback from residents.

The city brought in food trucks and portable bathrooms to Coffey Park, a green grass expanse in the middle of near total destruction.

Wearing masks, gloves and rubber boots, the neighborhood of teachers, truck drivers, nurses, and retail workers sifted through rubble. A woman found the china saucers she inherited from her grandmother. People collected the fragile remains of wedding announcements, baby books and newspaper clippings.

A man called out with delight when he found his wife’s wedding ring — she was still in the hospital after giving birth to their daughter Wednesday — and everyone in the area stood up from their work and cheered.

A family huddled in grief after finding the remains of their dog.

People rubbed their temples to lessen the persistent smoke and ash headaches.

The street signs were gone but road identifiers were scrawled in white spray paint on the pavement: Santiago, Pine Meadow and San Miguel.

Nicholas and Dana Celovsky, pastors with Thrive Church, stopped by Kerry Lane where a family was picking through the burned rubble of their home of 13 years.

“This was a beautiful neighborhood,” said Tigist Andebrhan, who works as a custodian at the Santa Rosa Junior College. She talked about how difficult it was to know her teenage daughters lost everything.

“I had a beautiful childhood here,” said Nicholas Celovsky, who grew up on Dogwood Drive.

People recounted the terrifying night when the fire blew into the neighborhood, forcing people out of their beds to pound on neighbors’ doors. They helped when garage doors wouldn’t open. They lived through that night together.

They lost three neighbors: Valerie Evans, 75, on Coffey Lane; Carol Collins-Swasey, 76, on Hemlock Street and Karen Aycock, 56, on Dogwood Drive.

By the time Michelle and Vincent Poggi knew they had to abandon their home on Astaire Court, there was bumper-to-bumper traffic heading out of the neighborhood. So they walked the five miles to an evacuation site at the Finley Center.

Returning Friday with their adult daughters, with homes intact in Sacramento and another part of Santa Rosa, Poggi said she takes solace that their children were spared the loss of their homes and belongings.

“I’m not trying to salvage anything except for memories,” said Michelle Poggi, director of student outreach at Santa Rosa Junior College.

On Kerry Lane, Frank Jekabsons, 65, sat on the open back of his hatchback van, on a break from searching for mementos with his niece, her husband and children.

Behind the wheel of her car, Jacquie Irish pulled up to the Jekabsons, rolled down the window and called out: “Didn’t you have those pretty purple flowers?”

“Yep, take a clipping if you’d like,” said Jekabsons, laughing at the crisp remnants of his niece’s garden.

Many residents said they had already lined up a contractor to rebuild. Some said they had signed a lease on a long-term rental or were living out of hotels. They had fielded calls and meetings with insurance companies, FEMA, the DMV, work, school, and handled an endless list of logistics.

A sign hung on a burned tree: “We will be back. Better! Stronger!”

Some things didn’t burn. Park play structures. A white cross marking the place at Dogwood Drive and Coffey Lane where a 21-year-old man died in a motorcycle crash 10 years ago — where neighbors said his family gathers in his memory each year, and hope to see again.

Mike and Denise Peterson picked through melted coins from a pocket change jar in what was once their bedroom, and they laughed at finding a nearly intact dollar bill. There was never any question about whether they would rebuild their home in the neighborhood where they raised two children.

“Every time we see a neighbor, we say, ‘Thank god you are alive,’” Denise Peterson said.

“I catch myself feeling depressed ... but we have to focus on the future,” Mike Peterson said.

For up-to-date information on evacuation and re-entry areas visit https://tinyurl.com/centrallnuevacs

Staff Writer Nick Rahaim contributed to this story.