Woman who died in Santa Rosa mobile home fire identified

A woman perished in a fire that destroyed an east Santa Rosa mobile home early Tuesday, fire officials said.

Firefighters pulled the woman from the burning structure early Tuesday at the Santa Rosa Village mobile home park off Highway 12 just west of Mission Boulevard, Battalion Chief Mike Jones said. The firefighters attempted to revive the woman, identified by family members as Barbara Schild, 84, but she died at 7:27 a.m., according to Jones and emergency dispatch reports.

“It’s pretty devastating,” said her son, Leo Schild, who also lived in the mobile home but was at work at the time of the fire.

A preliminary investigation put the cause as an electrical malfunction that began in one of the rear bedrooms, Assistant Fire Marshal Paul Lowenthal said.

“The owner stated that he’d had flickering lights in the back” bedrooms, Lowenthal said.

The first report came at 7:11 a.m. from a caller who described “billowing smoke” coming from the double-wide unit on Maywood Place, a Redcom emergency dispatcher said. A flurry of 911 calls quickly followed.

“Oh my Lord, the fire was so big,” said Reba Harville, 83, who lives a few doors down and across the narrow street.

The first crews on scene said that flames were coming from the structure and quickly began spreading to a nearby maple tree. They found the woman inside by a door to the outside, Lowenthal said.

Firefighters kept the fire from spreading to neighboring units.

Half of the tall, lush maple in the home’s yard was singed brown and red, and the other half remained bright green. A patio table and plantings in barrels were unaffected by fire in the tidy yard of landscaping quartz. The structure was a burned shell. A metal awning over the entryway was bent and fallen.

Lowenthal, the lead fire investigator in the case, said that he would interview all the crew members to confirm precisely where the woman was found inside the structure and any other details that might contribute to his determination of what happened. He said nothing seemed suspicious and the fire is likely to have been accidental.

The victim’s son said his mother had been living with him in the unit for about five years and was planning to move to a nursing home soon. The retired caregiver was deaf and legally blind, he said.

“She didn’t want to move, but she knew it was time,” Leo Schild said.

Barbara Schild, originally from Grand Rapids, Mich., was a military wife and relocated to Santa Rosa in 1970. She is survived by her son Leo; another son, Jerry Schild of Concord; and two sisters in the Midwest.

Leo Schild said she was a member of both St. Eugene’s Cathedral and St. Rose Catholic Church. Services are pending.

Leo Schild and friends stood outside the charred double-wide Tuesday evening, sorting through his mother’s keepsakes that were pulled from inside. He said saving her photographs was a priority.

“I’d be happy if we could salvage 10 percent of it,” he said.

You can reach Staff Writer Julie Johnson at 521-5220 or julie.johnson@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @jjpressdem.