Former Sonoma woman mourns loss of family home in Paradise

Family regroups in Sonoma after daring Camp Fire escape|

Lend a hand

Brittney Villeggiante Sibbitt’s sister, Jainee Toscano, convinced her to set up a Go Fund Me, the Sibbitt Campfire Recovery Fund.

After Brittney Villeggiante Sibbitt drove frantically through flames with her young family, fleeing the Camp Fire that left their home in ashes, she called her mother in Sonoma to tell her they were on their way. They had nowhere else to go.

“All right. We are ready for you. Don’t worry.” Words every person with a living parent longs to hear in the face of tragedy.

Now Brittney and her husband Ken, both 31, and their daughters, Gianna, 10, and Kennedy, 4, are living in a vacation camper in the front driveway of her parents’, Pam and Matt Luce, modest home. The camper is small and doesn’t have running water, so they scoot in and out of the house frequently, which can be chilly in the middle of the night.

It’s only been a week and they can’t believe how much they miss their three-bedroom, two-bath rental home with the enormous back yard. And their many friends, almost all of whom also lost their homes. And everything they owned, including a now melted Toyota.

Ken is commuting by truck two-hours each way to his construction job north of Sacramento. Brittney lost her position as a registered dental assistant because the office she worked in no longer exists. She’d have no way to get there even if it did. The dentist she worked for also lost his home, so there is little hope of her job returning.

“I miss our routine, my Mom duties. Getting up and packing lunches and getting everybody up and ready and off to school and work,” Brittney said. “It’s all so surreal. We don’t have normal conversations anymore. Everything is about the fire. I don’t know how to get past it.”

Someone sent them a photo of their home that shows the frighteningly familiar debris-filled foundation with a chimney. Somehow the plastic garbage can at the curb was the only thing the fire didn’t reach. In the picture there’s a deer, the one Brittney used to feed watermelon from her hand, looking at the camera as if to say, “Where did everyone go?”

The morning the fire started Gianna called Brittney at work. “Mom, I’m scared. Come get me.” That was the moment the family’s saga began. The girls were picked up at their schools and, while trees burned off the side of the road, Brittney headed home to get their dogs, Major and Sam. In the flash of a stop she told the girls to each grab a toy. Gianna found Piglet that she’s had since she was a baby. Kennedy poignantly grabbed her new birthday doll, Baby Alive.

In the four-wheel drive Chevy Colorado Brittney escaped down a windy, gravel, back road out of Magalia. Gianna was quiet. Kennedy cried, asking, “Why is it so hot Mommy? Are we going to be OK?” The car was stifling from the heat of the flames. Major vomited in the backseat, so it was not just the smoke that made it hard to breathe on the three-hour journey that would normally take half an hour.

Brittney was strong and upbeat for her daughters until she finally saw her husband’s face in the Raley’s parking lot in Chico. They agreed to meet there just before her cell phone cut off. The last thing he’d heard her say was, “I’m going to get the dogs.”

“He’s our rock,” Brittney said, not knowing how to describe the family’s emotions when they hugged on the asphalt in a smoke-filled sky knowing they were all safe. Ken’s mother’s home in Paradise also burned down. She escaped unharmed.

They returned to Brittney’s native Sonoma, where she attended El Verano and Altimira, graduating from Sonoma Valley High School in 2005. Her family moved several times within the Valley when she was growing up, settling at age 15 into the house where she now resides in the driveway. Her adult brother Dominic and his girlfriend are also living with her parents, and there is a third dog in residence besides the Sibbitts’ two, so the quarters are what one might call cozy if one wanted to avoid the word cramped.

“I’m so grateful. As devastating as it is, it is also very humbling. We are so appreciative of everything we have.” Brittney said. “We are so fortunate to have a place to go. My Mom says this is my home and we should never think that we are imposing.”

The lost car was insured but they didn’t have renters insurance so everything else they worked so hard for is a total loss. “I couldn’t care less about the couch and TVs,” she said, tearing up as she laments the loss of her daughters’ artwork, framed and hanging in the home. And her great grandmother’s ring, which she still hopes to find in the rubble when they are eventually let back into the closed off town. Somehow she mentions the trampoline the girls loved more than once. It’s unpredictable, what one misses.

Sometimes it’s hard to grasp the reality of their home being gone. “I thought the other day, ‘I need to get Ken a belt for his jeans,” and then I thought, ‘No he has three belts at home,’ and then I remembered again that we don’t have a home.”

Brittney says, “We were 18 when we started out the first time, and we will just start out again.” Next week she will enroll Gianna in Sassarini Elementary, although she does not think they will remain long term in Sonoma. “This will always be my home. It is my safe place. No matter how old you are wherever you have your mom and dad is your safe place,” she said. “But it is too expensive. We can’t afford it here.”

They are not sure where they will end up. In fact, they really have no idea.

“We haven’t even had time to talk about it yet,” she said. They don’t yet have the money that it would take to move anyway. They would like to return to the Paradise area. It’s their adult home. Their children’s home. “It was such a beautiful place,” she said tearfully.

Sadly, there’s not likely to be another day in Paradise. At least not any time soon.

Lend a hand

Brittney Villeggiante Sibbitt’s sister, Jainee Toscano, convinced her to set up a Go Fund Me, the Sibbitt Campfire Recovery Fund.

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