One year after October wildfires, Sonoma County cleaved by loss

Ever since she lost her Coffey Park home in the Tubbs fire, Amy Marlar has sometimes felt like she lives in a world apart.

Many people have been supportive and kind. But unless they've fled their home in terror in the middle of the night and lost everything they own, there is no way, she said, they can really understand the pain that still dogs her, a year later.

It can leave her feeling alone.

“When people say, ‘I didn't lose a home but my parents did, or my in-laws did, or a co-worker did,' it's frustrating,” she said. “It's not the same. It's not even close.”

Across town, Kimberly Hall still ruminates that her cottage in Bennett Valley didn't burn, while her parents lost their home - the house she grew up in. Her brother, who lived by their parents in the Mark West Springs area, was also left without a home.

“I honestly still struggle with that from time to time,” said Hall, who teaches second and third grades at Rincon Valley Christian School. Her family, she said, assures her she should not feel responsible.

“We have a strong faith in God and family and they remind me God is in control and has a reason why you still have your stuff.”

Hall nonetheless, still wrestles with guilt that it was her parents' house, the one she grew up in, filled with family memories and treasures, and not her tiny granny unit that burned to ash that night.

The impact of last year's fires remains deeply uneven. Scores lost loved ones, hundreds lost businesses and thousands lost their homes, filled with everything they owned, including the kind of “stuff” that can't be replaced, like photos, heirlooms, collections and cherished items with priceless sentimental value.

And yet, the bulk of North Bay residents were spared such pain. While exposed to the trauma that rocked the entire community, they returned to their homes with their families and possessions intact.

Divided community

The result is a community cleaved into two worlds: one occupied by those who suffered a significant loss, the other by those who did not.

As the one-year anniversary of the most destructive wildfire in California history approaches, life for many is back to normal. Charred properties have been cleaned up, lessening the visible scars. But for many people who suffered a personal loss, the nightmare continues as they deal with rebuilding homes and the emotional aftershocks of the trauma they endured that warm, windy night. Oct. 8 and 9, like Sept. 11, is burned into their psyche.

The disaster that stirred so much goodwill throughout the entire community also forged a raw kinship among the victims. Some make the effort to seek out those kindred spirits who, like it or not, are in the same grim club. They reach out through social media groups and gatherings of neighbors on empty lots and barren streets.

“I absolutely feel closer to the people who have lost their homes. They can relate to me and they understand the emotional toll it has taken on us,” said Marlar, 47, who had lived in her rental for 10 years. It is where she raised her daughter, Logyn, now 12. She also grew up in Coffey Park, so she lost not only her home but her community.

As she set out to rebuild her life after the fires, she first moved into a place off Petaluma Hill Road, but felt “like an outsider” in a place untouched by the fire.

“It just felt so weird to me. I spent my life in Coffey Park,” she admitted. Now she's back in a condo in northwest Santa Rosa, which feels more comfortable and familiar.

A need to connect

Peter Hess lost two homes in Cobb to the Valley fire in Lake County in 2015 as well as his parent's home in Larkfield last October. The uncanny string of fire losses stirred up deeply embedded post-traumatic stress he had been carrying around since 1962, when his family was forced to flee their Cobb home during the Widow Creek fire. He was 6 years old at the time. The home they eventually rebuilt is one of the two that burned in the Valley fire.

Hess found that his own need to connect with other fire victims was so compelling that he formed a closed Facebook group, “The Wildfire Home Loss Peer Support Group.” It has since expanded to 560 members, all survivors of fires from here to Alberta and Tennessee, who “understood wildfire so intimately and would be there for future people who came along.”

The idea came to him after he called the Red Cross mental health hotline and a woman at the other end advised him to wander the neighborhood looking for photos that might have slipped out of a photo album. She was reading from a script for tornado survivors.

The divide between those who lost homes or loved ones and those who did not, can sometimes be “rather acrimonious,” Hess said.

Not ‘just stuff'

Feelings have flared on open Facebook pages, where people struggling with loss and rebuilding clash with what seems like the trivial concerns of someone wondering how to get smoke out of curtains. And there are the people, some well-meaning, who try to soothe suffering fire victims by telling them they're lucky to be alive or that it's all “just stuff.”

“If you're going to tell us it's just stuff, give us the key to your house and then tell us it's just stuff,” said Hess, a Roman Catholic theologian who lives full time in Berkeley and specializes in bridging another divide, between science and religion.

“A lot of people in our loss group are so thankful that they could vent in a space where other people understood them and they didn't have to deal with unthinking and unfeeling remarks from people who had to get the smoke out of their curtains but whose house was intact.”

Even when they get together and don't even discuss the fire, there is an “unspoken communication among victims that occurs, of really getting each other,” he said.

Brought together

Santa Rosa psychologist Gary Blank lost his home up in the hills above Mark West Springs Road. He said he's observed how the fire has both brought people together and pulled them apart.

“I know some people who sold their property within a week and left the community. There are people who say, ‘Oh my god, this community is burned. Why would I want to live here?'?” But he said he also believes that you don't have to experience the same kind of trauma in order to have empathy. Everyone has experienced loss of one kind or another, he said. “It's part of the human condition.”

Tina Schlaile had already moved away from Santa Rosa when the wildfires occurred. She said at first it was hard to approach fire victims “and come up with something to say other than ‘sorry for your loss.'

“But I quickly realized that what could ease their hurt and loss was for me to find something out of the ashes to give back to them ... something they thought had been lost forever. If that meant having to be on all fours, raking through this ash for hours, so be it.”

The Fairfield woman, who said she knows what it feels like to flee a home during a disaster after going through Hurricane Alicia in Texas in 1983, became a volunteer sifter, finding rings, jewelry, mementos and family heirlooms.

“The time has passed for me to give something physical to them to ease their grief, but I can still give them some of my time and compassion from one human being to another,” she said.

Janet Reisner, who lost her home of 21 years in Coffey Park, said it can be hard to hear people at neighborhood and rebuild meetings complain about things like having to wait to get home repairs done.

“I think some people who had to evacuate for a couple of days equate their experience with my experience and they don't realize that we lost everything - every baby picture, every baby video, every baby tooth and lock of hair. Everything we've saved is gone,” she said.

It doesn't make her mad. She just chalks it up to a lack of understanding.

“There is a kind of disconnect. But on the other hand, the generosity and goodness of people after the fire was something I'll never forget in my entire life. I feel like so many people do understand. Or they may not quite understand but they can empathize with what we're going through.”

She does feel a particular closeness to other fire victims she met through Facebook. Some, she said, will be friends forever. A few she had never met in person, but invited them to her husband's 60th birthday party, held a few weeks ago on their old homesite.

“There will always be a friendship there because of what we experienced together,” said Reisner, who works for the city of Santa Rosa.

Survivor's guilt

Her neighbor, Ginger Orosco, struggles in a different way. The fire somehow missed her Banyan Place home. She has wrestled with waves of something akin to survivor's guilt

“At first I didn't want to tell people I still had a house. It was very, very hard every time I ran into another friend who had lost their house. I almost felt ashamed I had one,” she said, her voice cracking.

She and her husband, Louis, slipped past the barricade to move back in, and they tried to be a safe haven for neighbors dealing with shock and grief. One National Guardsmen came over for cookies.

“I tried to just be a listening ear or to let them use our bathroom,” Orosco said. “Some people said to me, ‘You were so blessed because you still have a house. I said I'm no better than my friends. Why weren't they blessed the same way? I was just lucky. … The wind changed and the firefighters came to the end of our street and somehow stopped the fires from consuming my block. They were only able to stop it because the winds were dying down. But we were surrounded on three sides by fire.”

Kimberly Hall, whose parents and brother lost their homes, said she feels a profound loss, even it if was not her home directly. She lost the home she grew up in, and all her childhood mementos.

“My struggle over this past year has been to figure out where my grief fits in. I don't feel like I fit in with those who lost homes. I get to go to my home every night with my own clothes. ... I don't fit in with those who evacuated. I sat at home hoping and praying my family would be OK.”

Everyone was disrupted

Hall said she dropped out of a support group because she felt out of place.

“I see smoke in the air and I still panic a little. But why? I didn't evacuate. I didn't lose my home, but I did. Nobody thinks to ask me if I'm OK. So a year later I still grieve and yet I don't know what to do about it.”

Rebecca Bailey is a psychologist who specializes in helping people recover from traumatic events. She lost her home in Glen Ellen and has been living in a much smaller rental in Kenwood with her husband, Charles Holmes, a chef. She lost her office. He lost his beautiful kitchen where he taught cooking classes.

She said it's important to “not minimize for anybody the wide range of emotions.”

“We should all just be patient and understanding of each other,” she said, “and remember we've all been disrupted.