Santa Rosa to start park, road repairs related to 2017 Tubbs fire, marking recovery milestone

The barren median along Fountaingrove Parkway and toppled timber strewn about the open space at Rincon Ridge Park are a constant reminder of the 2017 firestorm that devastated Ernest Berghof’s neighborhood.

Berghof and his family, who live in the subdivision behind the park, are one of about 50 families in the immediate vicinity who lost their homes and have since rebuilt.

But since returning about two years ago, residents have been waiting for infrastructure repairs to the park and roads that Berghof said would finally help Fountaingrove move forward in its recovery.

The upscale neighborhood in northeast Santa Rosa lost nearly 1,600 homes, more than half those destroyed in the city by the Tubbs fire. It has endured among the slowest of fire recoveries across Sonoma County, where more than 5,300 homes were destroyed in the wildfire and 24 people died.

“We’re driving back into our restored neighborhoods but the entire drive in past the park is sad,” Berghof said. “It makes it more difficult to move on.”

That long awaited work on parks and roads is now set to start in the coming weeks.

The repairs mark another milestone in the region’s long recovery nearly five years after the county’s worst disaster.

“The light is at the end of the tunnel here for fire recovery projects,” said Grant Bailey, supervising engineer with the city’s Transportation and Public Works Department. “Our team is not quite ready to take a sigh of relief, but we’re really looking forward to it once we get on the other side of these projects.”

Starting in early May, construction will begin at six parks in Fountaingrove that were partially destroyed by the Tubbs fire. Road repairs and landscaping also are expected to start soon along nearly 40 miles of roads in fire damaged areas.

The infrastructure projects are some of the last recovery work being carried out by the city related to the Tubbs fire, which alone destroyed 4,600 homes, including more than 3,000 in Santa Rosa, and killed 22 people.

Damage to city infrastructure is estimated to cost $111 million; repairs to roads top $25 million and about $14 million for parks. Work is being paid for by a mix of federal and state disaster recovery dollars and PG&E settlement funds.

Berghof said he’s excited for the work to be completed, though he expressed frustration at how slow the city has been to make repairs.

“We’re really looking forward to having the area restored and having maintained and beautiful parks and roads,” he said.

Fountaingrove parks set for repairs

The Tubbs fire damaged about 75 acres within 10 city parks and ruined Coffey Park, the city open space at the heart of the neighborhood by the same name, which lost more than 1,400 homes.

The city rebuilt the neighborhood park, which reopened in October 2020, but repairs are still needed in six parks that sustained severe structural and landscape damage, Bailey said.

Repairs are planned at:

• Fir Ridge Park, 3672 Fir Ridge Drive
• Nagasawa Community Park, 1313 Fountaingrove Parkway
• Rincon Ridge Open Space and Rincon Ridge Park, 3960 Park Gardens Drive
• Frances Nielsen Ranch Park, 3565 Lake Park Drive
• Parker Hill Open Space, 3881 Park Hill Road

Construction crews will repair the turf, irrigation, electrical systems and fencing at many of the parks. Picnic tables and new signs will be installed.

A new playground will be built at Fir Ridge Park.

Other work includes repairing the concrete walkways, code-related upgrades and improvements to bring the parks up to compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The City Council in February awarded a construction contract to Petaluma-based Oak Grove Construction Co.

Construction is expected to cost about $2.3 million and is being paid for with funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Public Assistance Program, Bailey said.

Work is expected to be completed by the end of the year, he said.

Residents can expect intermittent closures during construction but the parks will remain mostly open, with the exception of Fir Ridge, according to city documents.

Asphalt being replaced in fire-damaged areas

Crews will repair the asphalt on three street segments in Coffey Park and Fountaingrove.

Affected streets are:

• Fountaingrove Parkway from Mendocino Avenue to Hadley Hill Drive South
• Hopper Avenue from Crestview to Airway drives
• Bicentennial Way from Mendocino Avenue to Lake Park Drive

City engineers found that the pavement buckled in some areas and found early deterioration on stretches of the road where heavy trucks removed burned material and other debris after the fire, Bailey said.

At the time, debris removal from the 2017 North Bay fires constituted the largest disaster cleanup in California since the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. The 2018 Camp fire in Butte County eclipsed that record within 11 months.

“The roads weren’t designed for multiple daily truckloads for several months on end,” Bailey said. “That led to some early distresses we weren’t expecting to see based on the age of the road.”

Construction workers will replace the asphalt on the worst-hit areas through a method known as “mill and fill,” where the top layer is grinded off and refilled. Spot damage in areas where the road is mostly intact will be repaired through a method where workers dig out the small portion of damaged asphalt, refill it and then seal the entire road, Bailey said.

The city received $4.75 million in emergency relief funds from the Federal Highway Administration for repairs to the three street segments.

Construction is expected to start spring 2023 and be completed in the summer, Bailey said.

Funding was denied for repairs to other arterial and collector streets in both neighborhoods that weren’t as severely damaged, but the city hopes to fold construction on those areas into this project, he said.

'Hitting the edge’

Berghof, who moved into his Fountaingrove home in 2010, recalled seeing kids playing in the playground at Rincon Ridge Park and families enjoying the open space before the fire tore through the area.

The playground survived but the field and large open space were consumed by flames, leaving behind charred terrain and barren tree tops. Many of the trees have since been removed.

As neighbors rebuilt, Berghof said he has seen that the park and roads haven’t been maintained and that there are overgrown weeds where well manicured landscaping once stood.

“It looks abandoned and depressing,” he said.

Berghof said residents were told work would start a year or more ago and that there was money to make repairs across Fountaingrove. They’ve been waiting since and some feel that other areas have been prioritized, he said.

Recovery efforts in the hillside neighborhood have been spotty compared to elsewhere in the county, including Coffey Park just a few blocks west of Highway 101 where 93% of homes are complete or under construction.

In the Fountaingrove area, about 72% of homes have been rebuilt or under construction. More residents have been issued permits but haven’t started construction or are going through the permitting process.

Debris removal in that area took longer. Parts of the water system were contaminated with a cancer-causing chemical that took months and millions to clean up. The uneven topography, wooded landscape and larger lots hampered attempts at a quicker comeback.

There were more vacant lots in Fountaingrove than rebuilt homes more than two years after the fire. Many of the vacant lots also had changed hands after the blaze.

Berghof and his neighbors organized a rebuild effort and many used the same contractor, which sped up construction and allowed them to return faster, he said.

Councilwoman Victoria Fleming, whose district includes Fountaingrove, said though recovery has happened slower than in Coffey Park, there’s still infrastructure work that needs to be completed in both neighborhoods.

Though recovery in Fountaingrove has been delayed by numerous challenges, the city supports the community and repairs are a testament to that, she said.

“The community of Fountaingrove deserves to have functional and operational roads and parks not just as a matter of infrastructure but as a matter of closure and healing from the Tubbs fire,” Fleming said. “This is a concrete demonstration of the work that city staff has done in order to secure funding to begin to make this neighborhood whole and turn the page toward the future.”

“I’m really hopeful that people who are on the fence in trying to make one of the most important financial decisions in their lives feel supported by the city and know that we want them to come home,” she said.

Berghof said residents are patient but ready for work to be completed.

“When you go through something like this everybody is very patient and understanding but we’re hitting the edge,” he said. “I’m glad they’re doing it now.”

You can reach Staff Writer Paulina Pineda at 707-521-5268 or paulina.pineda@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @paulinapineda22.