‘Urban Inferno,' locally made documentary on Tubbs fire, to premiere in Santa Rosa

Since the devastating Tubbs fire roared through Santa Rosa on Oct. 9, driven by high winds, at least several books’ worth of printed reports and hours of television news footage have documented the event in meticulous detail.

And yet, Santa Rosa filmmaker Dr. Stephen Seager contends that for those who weren’t there, the danger and terror are impossible to comprehend.

That’s why he wrote, directed and produced the new 40-minute documentary film, “Urban Inferno: The Night Santa Rosa Burned,” financing the ?$25,000 project himself. Seager fled his own Montecito Heights home that night, which ultimately did narrowly survive the fire.

“People don’t get it,” said Seager, a local physician and psychiatrist. “I wanted to take you there, and it was jumbled that night. I didn’t want someone coming up from Los Angeles and saying, ‘Hey, I heard you had a fire. Let’s make a movie,’ and doing some clean, sanitized version.”

The Tubbs fire spread and converged across 137 squares miles of Sonoma County. Twenty-four lives were lost in the firestorm, and nearly 5,300 homes were destroyed.

Drawn from cellphone videos shot by evacuees fleeing the flames, and body-cam film from sheriff’s deputies striving to find and save residents from the blaze, “Urban Inferno” captures the panic and spontaneous heroism of the fire’s first 12 hours, leading to the bleak landscape that greeted survivors and evacuees the next morning.

“We got YouTube videos. We got television video from stations in Oregon who just happened to be down here shooting something. Or somebody was driving out of their house with their phone on. I think a couple of people just forgot they had their cellphones on,” Seager said. “Some of the film was so bad that in order to get something usable, you had to condense something down.”

“Urban Inferno” will premiere at 7 p.m. Thursday at Santa Rosa’s Roxy 14 Cinema, then move Friday to the nearby Third Street Cinemas for an open-ended run. All ticket proceeds from both will go to the Community Foundation’s Resilience Fund for ongoing fire relief.

“This is the first film about it,” Seager said. “There are people who’ve done some videos, but this is the first real full-on film.”

Seager takes care to stress that the documentary project, launched shortly after the fire and finished just recently, was a team effort. His wife, Mette, served as a co-producer, as did KSRO Radio’s general manager, Michael O’Shea, and its news director, Pat Kerrigan, who went on the air shortly after 2 a.m. Oct. 10 and broadcast news and emergency information for the next 12 hours.

Kerrigan also is interviewed on-screen in the film, along with Sonoma County Sheriff Rob Giordano and Santa Rosa Fire Chief Tony Gossner and others, including firefighters and survivors. Three-time Emmy Award-winning cinematographer James Fortier began filming additional sequences last January. Post-production, including the addition of original music by the producers of Nine Inch Nails, was completed last month.

“Urban Inferno” has been submitted to more than 30 film festivals nationwide and around the world, including Sundance and Cannes.

As fire-recovery efforts continue, Seager doesn’t necessarily consider this film the end of the project, he said.

“I can see maybe a series of three films in a year or so,” he explained. “People don’t realize this story is still going on.”

You can reach Staff Writer Dan Taylor at 707-521-5243 or dan.taylor@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @danarts.