Close to Home: Honoring unsung heroes of the Tubbs Fire

On a Sunday afternoon in April 2019, 14 people, most of them strangers to one another, gathered at the Santa Rosa home of Beth Eurotas-Steffy to share haunting memories of the night when fire poured over Sonoma County, cloaking our region in smoke, panic and unfathomable loss.

These people were bonded by one of that night’s most unsettling events — the rescue of more than 100 senior citizens at Villa Capri, an assisted living facility, and Varenna, its larger sister complex for independent living, on Fountaingrove Parkway.

They were brought together by a desire to meet and thank three people in particular — Kathy and Mark Allen of Sebastopol, both retired schoolteachers, and Melissa Langhals, an electrician from Santa Rosa, who rushed to Villa Capri around 2 a.m. on Oct. 9, 2017, to check on their parents, found dozens of residents in harm’s way and put their own lives at risk in a desperate effort to see them to safety.

Along the way, they overcame maddening challenges — including trying to carry residents in wheelchairs down stairs, getting locked out of the building with 24 residents still inside and the inability to find keys to the shuttle bus parked yards away — to get residents outside and into what vehicles they could find or flag down. All of this as flames from the Tubbs Fire surrounded and, within minutes, would consume the facility.

During these terrifying moments, something similar was playing out next door at Varenna, where R.J. Kisling, a Petaluma welder, drove around a police barricade and through smoke, flames and downed trees looking for his grandfather, only to discover dozens of seniors inside, many of whom were still sleeping or sheltering in place as instructed and waiting for instructions that never came.

Through the action of these family members, in addition to some brave contributions from low-paid staff, swift-responding police and firefighters and a handful of residents themselves, many lives were saved.

Ensuing investigations confirmed all of this. The state Department of Social Services initially sought to revoke the licenses of the two homes owned by Oakmont Senior Living and ban the two executive directors for life as a consequence for their actions and inaction. As the department summarized, if family members of Villa Capri residents had not stayed to help, “more than twenty residents would have perished when Villa Capri burned to the ground after all staff left the facility.” Or, as one person closely involved in the investigation told us, residents survived because of “the family members and the grace of God.”

Since the fires, Eurotas-Steffy has been on a quest to thank and recognize, in some official way, these individuals, especially the three who rescued her mother and the other seniors left behind at Villa Capri. Her efforts have been largely unsuccessful, however, in part because so many people engaged in lifesaving efforts that night — firefighters, police officers, paramedics as well as countless civilians. It’s hard to recognize them all. It also took nearly a year for Oakmont Senior Living to officially acknowledge what happened — even then, as part of a settlement with state regulators.

For the authors of this commentary, the April 2019 reunion was a chance to bring clarity to the jumble of facts and experiences we had been pulling together from documents, depositions and personal interviews to tell the stories of the family members, employees and others who played pivotal roles in saving lives that night. We have assembled these stories — including the quest for accountability by state regulators, legislators and the Sonoma County District Attorney’s Office — in a soon-to-be-published book titled “Inflamed: Abandonment, Heroism, and Outrage in Wine Country's Deadliest Firestorm.”

The book is our attempt at helping Eurotas-Steffy and the community honor these courageous individuals, to know the details of what happened that night and understand how they reverberated through the lives of residents, rescuers, employees and our community. We also hope “Inflamed” will serve as a warning of the escalating risks of natural disasters such as wildfires, floods and earthquakes, especially for senior citizens who too often end up in harm’s way because of poor planning, insufficient training and inadequate regulation.

We lack the space here to go into detail about all that the book covers, including the 2019 reunion, which turned out to be a roller-coaster ride of emotion punctuated by moments of laughter, outrage and, for those reliving the fire and the harrowing uncertainty of the whereabouts and well-being of loved ones, catharsis.

“When you look back on that night, what do you think about?” we asked them at one point.

“It never should have happened,” Langhals said. “I’m just happy that you guys were there,” she said, turning to Mark and Kathy Allen seated next to her.

“I get upset when I think about it,” offered Kathy. She then looked at Langhals. “I remember telling you a couple of times, ‘Go ahead and go,’ and you said, ‘No, I’m not going to leave you by yourself.’ And I really appreciate that.”

To this day, the Allens, Langhals and Kisling say the company has never formally recognized them for their heroism. Members of the maintenance and caregiving staff who assisted residents at key moments that night told us they haven’t been thanked either.

The real story “needs to be told,” Beth Eurotas-Steffy told the group that day amid the tears. “And not just because I want some justice for the victims, most of whom are no longer with us, but I want change to happen.”

Among the changes she has been advocating for include passage of a state law, similar to one in Florida, requiring assisted living facilities to have backup generators for future emergencies. Five years after this devastating firestorm, no such law exists in California.

Anne E. Belden runs the Santa Rosa Junior College journalism program and lives in Sebastopol. Paul Gullixson, former editorial director for The Press Democrat, lives in Santa Rosa.

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