Sonoma County evacuees share their worries, fears over the fire
Flames forced thousands of people from their homes across Sonoma and Napa counties Monday, with harrowing stories of escape, loss and uncertainty. Here are some accounts from those who shared their experiences.
Like so many people Monday throughout the region, Skyfarm Drive resident Germain Hauprich wanted to know if her house survived.
She, her husband and 86-year-old mother, and their two Labrador dogs, escaped the fast-approaching fire from their east Santa Rosa neighborhood about 1:30 a.m. after getting an automated call to evacuate immediately.
“I started to go to the car, open doors and throw things in,” Hauprich said. “I could see the red glow coming from the hill across the street.”
The three adults and two dogs headed down the hill, rendezvousing with neighbors at Safeway on Mendocino Avenue until the power there went out. She and her family moved to a Rohnert Park Safeway parking lot, seeking distance, light, supplies and a restroom.
Unable to book a hotel room, they went to family in Tracy.
Hauprich, whose family has lived near the top of the drive off Highway 101 since 2003, had little hope that her home had survived.
“We have the dogs. We have ourselves, our purses and our wallets and of course we have insurance,” she said. “It’s not the end of the world.”
Daughter wakes parents
Lori Barekman, who lives on Park Gardens Drive in the Fountaingrove neighborhood, said her 11-year-old daughter, Mariana, woke her and her husband Wade Eakle about ?1:45 a.m. alerting them to the smell of smoke.
“We could see so much smoke and all the reflections of the fire from our back deck,” Barekman said. After conferring with neighbors, she and her family decided to evacuate before a formal order was issued.
Everyone she knows in her neighborhood evacuated.
“We were on the top and it was coming toward you,” she said.
Things ‘get crazy’
Katy Masingale’s GMC Yukon was one of dozens of cars waiting in line for fuel Monday morning at the Valero gas station on Redwood Highway North in Petaluma. The 25-year-old and her husband Justin, had been watching the news all night from their Penngrove home, and finally decided to evacuate around ?9 a.m.
They grabbed their four dogs and 2-year-old daughter Rylee, packed up clothes, diapers, water and camping gear, and made plans to stay at a family member’s home in Novato.
“I’m really, really nervous,” she said. “I didn’t think it would ever get this crazy.”
‘Big balls of ash’
Joy Reid first woke up to the smell of smoke at 1:30 a.m. in Journey’s End Mobile Park. By 2:30 a.m., the smoke was so bad that she decided to get up and see what was going on.
An hour later, the 57-year-old could see the flames licking the roadway from where she lives. That’s when people started pounding on doors, yelling to get out.
She grabbed her cellphones, purse and backpack, got in the car and headed south.
“There were flames and there were big balls of ash coming over into our park, landing in the driveway, the entranceway,” she said. “I’m just nervous because I have no idea.”
Hiding cats left behind
When Nancy Shumacher evacuated her home at Brookwood Mobile Home Park in Rincon Valley around 2 a.m., she had to leave her five cats behind.
“I’m scared to death that everything is gone,” said the 69-year-old. “I couldn’t get them out, they were all hiding and I felt like I needed to go.”
She grabbed her purse, medications and cellphone, and with her dog Molly headed to the police station on Sonoma Avenue where a young officer told her she needed to get out of town.
“He said you need to get on Highway 101 and drive south and keep going,” she said. “So that’s what I did.”
Home a lonely survivor
Terry Andrew, 63, has lived at Journey’s End Mobile Home Park for five years. When neighbors banged on his door at ?2 a.m., chunks of embers from the affluent Fountaingrove neighborhood were blowing onto the trailer park, he said.
He packed his girlfriend and her 93-year-old mother into his car and left.
Hours later, he returned to find his trailer undamaged. But across Sahara Street, blocks of other homes had been leveled, some still smoldering hours after the blaze roared through.
Return trip for documents
If Avani Gupta hadn’t already been awake when her friend, Shaishav Rajendra, called to tell her to evacuate, she doesn’t know how long it would have taken to find out about the fires raging near her Coddingtown-area apartment complex.
“I was already up, otherwise my phone was on silent,” said the 25-year-old. “And I never got an alert on my phone or anything.”
Rajendra, 25, found out through one of his coworkers at Keysight Technologies.
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