Coffey Park residents reflect on the losses, rebuilding progress made
One year ago, Mike Hibbard climbed onto his roof and shot video of a neighborhood that had been reduced to a sepia haze of hot ash and rubble.
The 70-year-old ski tour business owner this week plans to once more set up a ladder beside his Coffey Park home, one of a dozen on Skyview Drive that somehow survived the flames and cinders that lit up the darkness last October.
“I’m going to go up and make a video one year later,” he said.
Hibbard and his neighbors tonightTuesday are marking the destruction of their conventional suburban neighborhood by the most devastating fire in California history. Hundreds are expected to gather in the heart of Coffey Park, where fire survivors will consider both what was lost and the progress made to rebuild almost 1,500 homes, each one incinerated with a heat so intense that it twisted steel bars and melted the alloy wheels off abandoned luxury SUVs.
For many, the year has been the most disorienting of their lives. The first anniversary offers a chance to reflect upon an uphill journey to rebuild their homes and lives.
“Everything that’s familiar is gone,” said Mike Baker, a resident whose family lost their home on Keoke Court.
The strangeness extended beyond their burned neighborhood and the temporary homes the family lived in this past year. It also included clothing they acquired after the fire and which they often inadvertently left behind at homes of friends and family, said Baker, pastor of Santa Rosa’s Crosspoint Community Church, and his wife, Zöe.
“You just don’t recognize it,” she said, explaining how she could exit a room without remembering to take along a new sweater or jacket.
Sudden loss
The North Bay wildfires claimed 40 lives and nearly 6,200 homes, a level of disaster not seen here since the 1906 earthquake. The most destructive of the blazes, the Tubbs fire, began near Calistoga on the night of Oct. 8 but jumped the six-lane Highway 101 and reached the flatlands of Coffey Park early on Oct. 9.
In Coffey Park, the fire did what previously had been unthinkable. It ravaged a leafy suburban neighborhood far removed from the oak-studded hills and wildlands that surround eastern Santa Rosa. Towering flames entered Coffey Park and devoured whole blocks of working- and middle-class homes, most of them modest and single-story, but with a smattering of two-story and expansive custom designs.
The blaze killed four people and destroyed 1,321 single-family homes in Coffey Park. It also burned 78 Hopper Avenue apartments and 74 mobile homes at two parks west of the freeway.
In the days leading up to the anniversary, Coffey Park residents described the past year as a time of making small steps forward. The disaster brought incredible loss but also repeated outpourings of kindness from strangers and friends.
The way forward remains filled with uncertainties, but many said they plan to persevere based on a hope that they and their neighborhood will recover.
“I long for the day I can say to those who ask, ‘I’m fine. I’m great,’?” said Velma Guillory, a retired Sonoma State University professor whose home burned on Hilary Court. For now, she said, her stock response about how she’s doing is: “One day at a time.”
Many never returned
Coffey Park fire survivors described the past year as “grueling,” “topsy-?turvy” and “horrible.” The disaster triggered a mass evacuation, a scramble for temporary housing and a federally managed debris cleanup. The ordeal that followed included working through home insurance claims and making decisions of whether to find a builder and select a home design to replace what had been lost.
For many survivors, rebuilding has proven costly in time, money and energy. At least 70 property owners have sold their lots in Coffey Park, according to recent data compiled by Pacific Union Real Estate. And about 4 in 10 owners have yet to submit an application to City Hall to rebuild their houses.
Even so, the neighborhood remains the center of the rebuild in Sonoma County. Near the end of September, 21 homes had been completed and another 520 were under construction.
Survivors found different ways to deal with the grief and trauma.
Mike and Zöe Baker encouraged their 9-year-old daughter, Caitlyn, and 5-year-old son, Zachary, to speak out whenever they recalled a special toy, stuffed animal or other prized item that burned.
“Tell us about it and let’s grieve that together,” Mike Baker said.
Months later, new realizations occur for what couldn’t be saved. In August, Mike Baker wanted to find a journal to recall details of a once-in-a-lifetime trip he and his wife had taken to Israel almost a decade ago. He soon realized the journal had burned in the fire.
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