Listening for a Change: Nonprofit preserves stories from Sonoma County fire survivors

To create an oral history of the devastating October wildfires, volunteers filmed interviews with residents who lost their homes. Watch them tell their stories.|

Every Sonoma County resident who fled a home to escape the firestorms of October, 2017, has a story. No doubt, many stories.

To preserve and share them, volunteers are videotaping interviews with a diverse sampling of fire survivors.

'History and Healing After the Fires' is a project of the nonprofit Listening for a Change, in a partnership with the Museums of Sonoma County.

Listening for a Change works to dissolve barriers that divide people by introducing neighbors through oral histories that transcend stereotypes to reveal an individual's hardships, perspectives and aspirations.

The program shares its oral histories through electronic kiosks located currently at the Roseland Library in Santa Rosa and the Cloverdale Senior Center. The kiosk in Cloverdale will be moved soon to the Cloverdale Library.

The interviews with fire survivors will be uploaded to the kiosks soon. The videos can be viewed below, and at listeningforachange.org/fire-projects.

Listening for a Change and the Museums of Sonoma County expect to include the fire-survivor interviews in a memorial exhibit to open at the history museum in October.

Orozco family

Brian Gearinger

Noah Henderson

UPDATED: Please read and follow our commenting policy:
  • This is a family newspaper, please use a kind and respectful tone.
  • No profanity, hate speech or personal attacks. No off-topic remarks.
  • No disinformation about current events.
  • We will remove any comments — or commenters — that do not follow this commenting policy.