National

For victims of Santa Rosa inferno, new California fires test nerves and steel resolve

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.

And 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 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 with experts now predicting 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. But across town, three generations of Guzmans sit around a dining room table in their new house in Coffey Park, a middle-class neighborhood that last fall looked like it had been hit by an atomic bomb.

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.”

For Guzman, 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 Whole Foods deli worker and medical supply company employee respectively, had lived in for 17 years, complete with their daughters’ handprints in the cement driveway and a bunny burial plot in the yard. But 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.”

A city snaps in to action

Variations of Paula Lindsay 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 now Mendocino and Lake Counties – may soon be sharing as firefighters struggle to contain deadly wildfires fueled by heat and wind.

But there are lessons to be learned from the way Santa Rosa tackled the truly unimaginable, The Tubbs fire, a conflagration whose pale precedent dates to 1964 when the Hanley Fire leveled about 100 structures and made 2,500 people homeless.

For one, 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 post-fire rebuilds.

The city also created a dedicated website, Resilient City Fire Recovery, which provides residents with information on the rebuilding process. It also tracks the city’s house-by-house comeback: right now, 421 homes are in construction, 321 have the permit review in process and 140 have permits and are awaiting construction.

Santa Rosa officials also plan to take advantage of the fire's havoc by rededicating their efforts to building up the downtown area, where homes not only are less susceptible to fire than those in the hills, but also to add vibrancy to the urban core.

“The fires brought changes, from updating 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,” he says, “it’s been making sure we communicate well to multiple audiences. This is all still fresh and raw for many of us, even more so when you see the dark, grey smoke in the air from the new (Northern California) fires.”

Guhin says citizens banding together has been a critical component to the town’s rebirth, with neighbors helping each other with everything from insurance claim questions to going in on land surveys together to reduce fees.

Confusion causes locals to step up

Just 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 soon founded the nonprofit group Coffey Strong, which remains a key 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," he says. "It can be daunting with all the decisions you have to make. Some still aren’t sure.”

According to city records, some 300 lots in both Coffey Park and Fountaingrove have sold, evidence of residents preferring to move on either to different neighborhoods or perhaps different cities and states.

And now the clock is ticking for those still in limbo. Typical insurance claims include rental assistance for two years, a deadline that is now 14 months away. With a house project taking many months at the least, some can risk running out of assistance before moving back into a new house.

“Given all the building, there are inevitable delays with labor, architecture,” Okrepkie says. “When we hit the one-year anniversary in October, most people really need to have something in the works.”

Sometimes even when a fire victim 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 Guzman’s new home and has 15 more houses going up around the city.

“Sometimes you’re helping people pick out finishes they can afford, other times you’re just comforting them,” she says. “But there’s a joy and satisfaction in it all. People here have been through a lot.”

The hurt lies just below the surface

Dig just below the surface and the stories pour forth. Okrepkie is a font of insurance details but 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.”

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Okrepkie says his wife monitors the news for current fires up north from their rental house a mile away from their old home. “She’s getting very nervous,” he whispers.

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 one more time.

“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.”

Guzman and her family hope that slowly their neighborhood will come alive again. There are a few homes popping up now, but so far they’re the only residents on their street. Once the people return, there can be bonding as a community.

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Lindsay has already found that to be the case.

After all 46 homes in her community northeast of town, The Oaks at Fountaingrove, were obliterated, she wasn’t sure how to start over.

She went back to her house and found only a garage door and the shell of her old sports car. And one more thing: a patch of snow white ash that were the mortal remains of her former companion, who had died of a heart attack not long before the fires.

“I just picked them up and scattered them again,” she says. “What could I do?”

A lot, actually. Never one to consider herself a big joiner, Lindsay, a hair salon owner whose ancestors arrived here in the 1880s, agreed to be on the architecture committee for redeveloping The Oaks. Soon after, she joined the board.

Now her daily routine inevitably involves tasks associated with rebuilding what the fires destroyed.

“A lot of our residents were retired, and many didn’t know what to do. They were lost,” she says, watching as Farrow Construction crews prepare lots for new houses.

“It’s all still very raw for all of us,” Lindsay says. “But helping these people, my neighbors, find a new life, well” – she taps her heart – “it gets me right here. It keeps me strong.”

Follow USA TODAY Nation writer Marco della Cava: @marcodellacava