Chris Smith: They lost Valerie to the Tubbs fire and now dedicate their new home to her

Oh, the journey’s been arduous. But nearly 3½ years after the worst night of their lives, Houston and Victoria Evans are home.

The couple moved days ago into a masterfully crafted log cabin erected on the hallowed ground in north Santa Rosa where the Tubbs fire vaulted Highway 101 after ravaging Fountaingrove before doing the same to Coffey Park. The firestorm killed Houston Evans’ mother, Valerie, and destroyed the family’s two homes.

To be at last in the new house “was very strange the first couple of nights, very weird,” Houston Evans shared Wednesday from the kitchen table. He and Victoria were cramped for a year in a travel trailer out on the driveway, so the largely unfurnished, 2,176-square-foot house of cedar and lodgepole seemed cavernous.

Victoria remarked as she headed for the laundry room with a basket, “It’s starting to feel like home.”

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THERE IS YET work to be done to the interior. “We still need to get the knobs and pulleys put in the cabinets and drawers,” Victoria said.

Once she and Houston finish furnishing and personalizing the inside of the house by Homestead Log Homes of Oregon, they’ll set to the task of landscaping the 2-acre property. High on the priority list: a corral of redwood, to match the house, as a new home for the star of the family, Angel, the Texas longhorn.

The death of 75-year-old Valerie Evans, who amid the terror of the night of Oct. 8, 2017, ran back into her doomed house for her elderly dog, Scooter, crushed her son and daughter-in-law, and her friend and former husband, Glyn Evans.

It came as a glint of comfort and relief, there immediately after the inferno, for them to find that the mellow, 1,600-pound Angel was alive and unharmed in her steel corral just inside the highway fence.

The cow became to many of us in Sonoma County a symbol of survival and a rallying point around which to support and encourage the surviving members of the Evans family. Angel was invited to the Sonoma County Fair of 2018, and was a huge hit.

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IF SOMEONE WRITES a book about the degrees of hell descended into by many fire survivors as they labored, or labor still, to rebuild their homes and lives, the Evanses’ story would make for a must-read chapter.

Nearly two years after the fire, in the fall of 2019, myriad legal, financial, regulatory and other delays tormented Houston Evans. He said through tears of frustration at the time, “Everybody in Coffey Park is almost done (with reconstruction). Two years and I'm here in a corn patch.”

But not long later, things to started to happen. Among them: Sonoma County issued a building permit and Ghilotti Construction Co. offered to do nearly $50,000 of site work — for free.

Houston and Victoria hate to list by name all of the other businesses and individuals that helped them, for fear of leaving anyone out.

They say they absolutely would not be in the new house were it not for Brian and Jodi Evans of Evans Construction of Santa Rosa. And don’t get Houston and Victoria started on why they’re deeply indebted to neighbor Jim Long and his family, Western Farm Center, Dizzy Jean Mcalear, Paul Derkos and all who made donations to their quest for a new home.

“It’s been just a miracle,” Houston said.

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TWO THINGS DO weigh heavily on him.

His 91-year-old dad, Glyn, who lived on the property and was there the night of the fire, thought it best to leave the area during the long pursuit of a new home and to take up residence with other relatives. Houston so hopes Glyn will come and live out the rest of his life there on Coffey Lane.

And Houston is furious that he and so many others who lost so much to firestorms have not received their share of payout dollars from PG&E. He’s not sure that without the money, he and Victoria will be able to afford to keep their new home long-term.

“They’ve paid the cities and the government and everybody else,” Houston said.

“They need to take care of us,” he said, noting that he spoke of all of the many who suffered losses and are entitled to a share of the payout.

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AT THE SPOT out in the yards where Valerie Evans ran into her home and did not come out, her son and daughter-in-law plan to create something special. They’re not sure exactly what.

“Mama loved her rose bushes,” Victoria said. She envisions a rose bush growing there where Valerie died at her home of 40 years.

Houston, who stands often at the spot and talks with his mom, considers also a beautiful bench there, something to beckon one to pause and take in the view and the magnitude of the place.

“There’s definitely going to be something there, something permanent,” he said.

You can contact Chris Smith at 707-521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.

Editor’s note: This version of the stories corrects how much time has passed since the Tubbs fire.