Displaced Sebastopol fire survivors ‘blanketed’ with donations, support

Jordan Jones is in the habit of sleeping with his window open, which is why he was the first member of his family to smell smoke shortly after 11 p.m. on Nov. 30.

After looking out his window, the Analy High School freshman shouted, “Mom, Clint’s shed is on fire!”

When Melissa Jones looked, the shed behind the home of her next door neighbor was fully ablaze.

“You could see flames pouring out,” said Jones, a physical education teacher who lives on Redwood Avenue in Sebastopol with her husband, their three children and two terriers, Buster Posey and Kobe Bryant.

The fire spread quickly, destroying one house, severely damaging three others and displacing a dozen people, including the Joneses.

It also burned “multiple vehicles” in a carport area, according to the Sebastopol Fire Department, which arrived minutes after the first alarm.

While fire officials confirmed that the blaze began in the neighbor’s backyard, a preliminary investigation did not identify a source of ignition, said Bill Braga, chief of the Sebastopol Fire Department.

Around 30 firefighters from Sebastopol, Gold Ridge, Graton, Santa Rosa, and Occidental helped prevent the blaze from spreading to three nearby duplex units, and several businesses.

The Joneses, meanwhile, are now living in the home of Melissa’s father in Guerneville, 15 miles away. Jones coaches basketball, her children play various sports.

“On Saturday, I had three different times I had to be in Sebastopol, all an hour apart,” recalled Jones, who ended up spending a lot of time in the Sebastopol Safeway that day.

Help on the way

While it traumatized the survivors, the fire also shined a spotlight on how swiftly and comprehensively the community sprung into action to help them.

Representatives from the Santa Rosa branch of the American Red Cross of the North Bay arrived on the scene within 20 minutes. The Red Cross has provided assistance to half a dozen families involved in the blaze, according to Martin Gagliano, a spokesman for the agency. That assistance has included blankets, personal hygiene kits, cash for short-term lodging, and referrals to other agencies who can help.

Families in need of such aid, he added, can call the Red Cross at 866-272-2237.

Diana Rich, a member of the Sebastopol City Council, was on the scene the next day, taking names, asking survivors what they needed. She alerted Shannon Parkhurst, founder of the Lemon Aide Project, a Santa Rosa-based nonprofit that quickly provided assistance to the woman whose house was destroyed, among others.

Among the woman’s immediate needs: spectacles. She’d fled her home without her glasses.

“She is getting two brand new pairs this very second,” Parkhurst wrote in an email Tuesday, “thanks to a donor who came our way asking how they could help.”

The Lemon Aide Project is searching for housing for some displaced survivors, including John Andersen and his young daughter.

“The sound of ammo”

Andersen, a single parent living next door to the house that was destroyed, quickly cradled his daughter, who’d been asleep for four hours, then carried her to a safe place behind an outdoor “electrical box.” He then sprinted back into his house.

An environmental scientist for the state of California, he has lived in that duplex for three years, which has no exit other than the front door. That limited egress has long worried Andersen, who got in the habit of putting a bag containing essential items by the door each night before he went to bed. That preparation served him well.

After getting his daughter out, he sprinted back and snatched a “big, black nylon bag” containing his work computer, iPad, a GPS unit — “all the basic things I need to do my job” — plus a backup hard drive, and personal computer.

Between the billowing smoke and heat of the blaze and “the sound of ammo (from a nearby duplex) going off,” Andersen recalled, “I was so adrenalized.”

He also had the presence of mind to take a pair of all-weather boots for his daughter, warm jackets for each of them, and a leather folio containing important documents.

Anderson considered, but ruled out, a second sortie to save the Subaru hatchback he and his daughter had nicknamed Baby Blue.

But the flames were too fierce, and too close. As he watched the car burn, Andersen recalled, he kept hearing, in his head, the Bob Dylan lyric, “It’s all over now, Baby Blue.”

“Life was changing really quickly,” he said.

While Andersen and his daughter will spend the next few weeks in hotels and living with friends, he’s worried about finding long-term housing. The Sebastopol rental market is exceedingly tight. He’s concerned about coming up with a deposit for a new apartment, which could end up costing him more, per month, than he had been paying.

Still, he said, he’s been “overwhelmed,” by the “groundswell of support from the Sebastopol community.”

One potential donor is a fire survivor himself.

Sweat equity, strong bonds

Clinton Gandy has offered to give Andersen his 20-year-old Subaru wagon, which also happens to be blue.

Gandy lives next door to the Joneses on Redwood Avenue. He was watching TV shortly after 11 p.m. when he noticed an odd glow on the open door of his second-story bedroom.

The door was reflecting the flames leaping from a fire that had started in or alongside the shed in his backyard, fire officials believe.

Sprinting downstairs, he opened a door to the back of the property. The 10-foot fence was fully involved. Those flames, reaching 16 feet, he estimated, quickly spread to his house.

Forced back in by the heat, he soon heard “the windows popping.”

By then, he recalled, “the police were there and everybody was beating on the door to get us out of the house.”

By “us,” Gandy meant himself and his two cats, Chico and Kavalli.

Kavalli was quickly rescued by a Sebastopol police officer. But there was no sign of Chico.

It wasn’t until 3:30 a.m. that firefighters allowed Gandy into the premises. After trudging upstairs, he peered under his bed, and saw Chico peering back out at him.

Standing in his heavily damaged structure two days after the fire, gazing at the sky through a gaping hole firefighters had cut in the roof, Gandy said the house would have to be gutted — “all the Sheetrock, everything.” He expects the job to take one year to 18 months.

“I’ll rebuild it,” he said. “That’s what we do.”

Gandy feels an especially deep connection to this house, which he built a decade ago with his own hands.

“I started on a mat in a homeless shelter, and built up to this,” he said.

Coming out of rehab for drug addiction, he was living with his then-girlfriend and their two children at the COTS homeless shelter in Petaluma. They signed up to be part of a project, run by the Santa Rosa-based nonprofit Burbank Housing Development Corp., that could help them become homeowners.

Instead of a down payment, they would contribute “sweat equity.”

Each of the 34 homes in this Redwood Avenue development, called Hollyhock, is part of that project. Bonds between residents are especially stout, said Gandy, because so many of them pitched in on the construction of their neighbors’ homes, and vice versa.

He had no idea how the fire started, he said on Dec. 2. “To be looked at as a villain,” he texted the next day, “I don’t know how to even process that on top of everything else.”

Feeling blessed

Gandy is a manager at the Sebastopol Area Senior Center, and has been “blanketed,” he said, with offers of assistance from fellow staffers and members of the board of directors.

One board member, who is leaving soon for a three-month stay in Texas, offered his home to Gandy for that duration.

On Thursday, City Council member Diana Rich stopped by the house, where Gandy and friends were salvaging what items they could.

“She said, ‘Clinton, we heard about this, and we want to take care of you.’

“Everyone has been completely amazing,” said the 44-year-old, overcome briefly with emotion. “I’m truly blessed.”

You can reach Staff Writer Austin Murphy at austin.murphy@pressdemocrat.com or on Twitter @ausmurph88.