Santa Rosa mother arrested on suspicion of lighting her home on fire

Santa Rosa police arrested a woman on suspicion of starting a fire at her west Santa Rosa home Monday, while her teenage daughter and their two dogs were inside.

Marisa Bjork, 37, was arrested at 6:50 p.m. after firefighters put out the blaze at her home in the Vintage Oaks neighborhood, Sgt. Brandon Matthies said Tuesday. She was booked into Sonoma County Jail on felony charges of negligently causing a fire and child endangerment.

Bjork is being held on $50,000 ?bail, according to the county jail website. She is set to appear in court Wednesday.

Authorities were notified of the blaze when Bjork’s ?16-year-old daughter called 911 and reported that a fire broke out in the master suite of their two-?story home around 3:40 p.m., according to the Santa Rosa Fire Department. She took her mother downstairs as flames filled the top-floor bedroom, but her mother didn’t want to leave the home, Santa Rosa Battalion Chief Matt Gloeckner said Tuesday. Ultimately, the daughter was able to get their two dogs out.

“The daughter did a good job getting her (mother) downstairs and getting the two dogs in the house outside to safety,” Gloeckner said. “For a 16-year-old girl, she did a good job.”

A private paramedic team was the first crew to arrive and also had trouble getting Bjork out of the house. She was intoxicated and combative, and “didn’t have an understanding of what was going on,” Gloeckner said. Firefighters helped the paramedics get her outside when they arrived.

A ladder truck crew cut a ventilation hole in the roof to help clear the smoke. ?Firefighters took a hose upstairs to ?extinguish the blaze, which they did within minutes. No one was injured.

While officials are still trying to determine how the fire started, Bjork is suspected of causing it. She was “uncooperative,” but told officers “it was an accident,” Matthies said.

“Some action that she did pretty much started the fire, and based on her level of intoxication, it made it negligent,” he said.

The master bedroom in the home was destroyed by the blaze, Gloeckner said, and the upstairs area has been closed by Santa Rosa building officials until repairs are completed. A portion of the second floor sustained minimal smoke and heat damage, and the downstairs was “totally untouched,” he said. The estimated damage was $50,000.

The 16-year-old daughter was staying with her grandmother, the last Santa Rosa fire inspector Quang Pham heard. An uncle also lives at the home, though he wasn’t there at the time of the fire, and Pham said in an email that he wasn’t sure where the uncle will be staying while the home is not livable.