For some survivors, time hasn't healed trauma of 2017 North Bay fires

When temperatures rise and the winds pick up, or when she catches a whiff of smoke from miles away, Tracy Kecskemeti said memories from the October 2017 wildfires rush back.

“The terror. The running. It was like a movie set. It was surreal,” said Kecskemeti, who fled the blaze with just the clothes on her back, a pair of flip-flops, her purse and two dogs. “You want to wake up and say it didn’t happen. I do that a lot - I try fooling myself.”

As the second anniversary of the wildfires approaches next week, she said it has become less painful dealing with the aftermath of the Tubbs fire, which tore through her northwest Santa Rosa neighborhood and leveled her home off Hopper Lane.

Kecskemeti said she sought help for post-traumatic stress disorder six months after the fires, which killed 24 people and destroyed more than 5,300 homes in Sonoma County. Though the emotional recovery has been sketchy, she said time has helped heal.

“The wounds are not as sore. They don’t hurt as much,” said Kecskemeti, 59. However, she added, “You stitch yourself up as much as you can, (but) you always wear that scar.”

For some survivors, though, time hasn’t eased the pain, and their grief, anger and anxiety intensifies around the anniversary of the wildfires. It could take anywhere from five to 10 years before survivors begin to feel a sense of normalcy, said Doreen Van Leeuwen, a licensed marriage and family therapist.

While some have accepted the devastation and moved past it, others for a number of reasons have “more difficulty bouncing back,” said Van Leeuwen, who has worked with several fire survivors and serves as the president of the Redwood Empire Chapter of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists.

“It makes sense you want to feel better and you want it to feel like it’s all behind you, but it’s not realistic,” she said.

Kecskemeti, who has been renting a house in Healdsburg with her partner of 14 years, is preparing to move back to her neighborhood. Their rebuilt home should be finished any day now.

As she packs up her rental home, Kecskemeti said she’s preparing for the fact that the property she first moved into in 2007 will never be the same. The garden she tended for years and her late mother’s plants she planted there were destroyed in the fire, and so were her mother’s cookbook and notes. Kecskemeti said she’s resolved she, too, will never be the same.

Things can’t remain the same after such a life-altering event, said Pam Van Halsema, a Coffey Park fire survivor.

“To say things will go back to normal, I don’t know how. Everything changed,” she said.

Van Halsema, 53, lost her Kerry Lane home, where she had raised her three kids, to the Tubbs fire. She and her family have been renting a friend’s home on the east side of town, but they hope to return to Coffey Park within the next month. With so many families about to run out of rental assistance from their insurance companies, Van Halsema said she’s fortunate her home is nearly done.

“I thought I was going to move in July, then August, then September. Now, it’s looking like October,” she said.

A former teacher who received training in mindfulness and trauma-informed care just before the fires, Van Halsema joined the Sonoma Community Resilience Collaborative, helping teach other fire survivors coping and self-healing skills through breathing, imagery, relaxation and other techniques.

“You can get stuck in the panic, get stuck in the worry,” Van Halsema said. “It’s like a hamster wheel.”

The collaborative is run by Santa Rosa Community Health, which teamed up with the Center for Mind-Body Medicine to offer the curriculum. The program, similar to ones offered in Houston after Hurricane Harvey and Parkland, Florida, after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, teaches participants how to reduce stress, increase mindfulness and build resilience and social connections.

“To thrive well, you need to have that social support. That’s what this builds,” said Van Halsema, who as a volunteer has led small sessions for Coffey Park fire survivors. “We’re healing together.”

More than 200 volunteers like Van Halsema have undergone training so they can teach others these skills, said Annemarie Brown, communications and grant development director for Santa Rosa Community Health. “It helps us to access our inner resilience,” Brown said.

Trained facilitators have attended several recent community events, including Sonoma Ready Day, a disaster preparedness fair that drew thousands of residents wanting to learn how to better plan for the next disaster. Brown said residents are anxious.

“October is coming. It’s dry, it’s windy,” Brown said. “We’re hyperalert. Two years has not healed that yet.”

After the Tubbs fire destroyed their Skyfarm Drive home in Fountaingrove, David Berry said his son refused to go to the property. His son still has nightmares about the blaze.

A friend had texted Berry around 1:30 a.m. that night, urging him to get out. Minutes later a police officer banged on the door, ordering the family to leave. Berry, 49, said he grabbed his kids’ teddy bears, clothing, toothbrushes and some important documents and fled.

As he drove down Skyfarm Drive, Berry said they could see embers flying. When he turned onto Thomas Lake Harris Drive, he said they found a wall of flames, so he turned around and went the other direction. He headed to his in-laws home in Coffey Park, where they were evacuated about an hour later.

“Nothing that has happened in my life up to this point has prepared me for this,” he said.

However, he’s hopeful time will help heal.

“I’ve had to find a way inside myself to rise to the challenge. This has been a grueling test, but one I intend to pass,” he said.

Berry has dedicated much of his energy to rebuilding a home where his wife and two kids, ages 10 and 13, feel safe.

Not only has he focused on using materials that are fire safe and making the home wheelchair-accessible for his wife, he also changed the layout so that the house faces northeast, the direction of where the Tubbs fire came, Berry said. He made sure all the bedrooms were located in the same section of the house near the garage, making it easier to escape if another fire erupts.

The home also will run on solar energy and have a battery backup in case power is shut off, he said. He expects his home will be completed by Thanksgiving.

“We need to get through this time. We have kids that are growing, that have needs and went through a trauma,” he said. Once he gets through the rebuild process and completing his insurance claim, Berry said he can then “begin to find some normalcy.”

“I have deferred processing to do about all this,” he said. “But I got to get the family back in the house. I don’t get to call a timeout.”

As more residents begin to move into their new homes and are no longer wrestling with the rebuilding process, Van Leeuwen said they may begin to see trauma symptoms emerge.

“You’re going back to the place where it all happened. You’re having to face that,” she said.

As the fire anniversary nears, she urges fire survivors to notice their feelings rather than avoid them. She also recommends survivors spend time with people who support and understand them and do something fun on the anniversary day.

Citing Laurie Nadel’s book, “The Five Gifts: Discovering Hope, Healing and Strength When Disaster Strikes,” she encouraged people to “embrace whatever gifts have come from this tragedy.” Some survivors have learned more about patience, forgiveness and humility, or have discovered they’re stronger than they thought, she said.

Kecskemeti said she now has more patience and empathy. She also doesn’t feel as isolated as she once did. “That took a lot of work to feel that way,” she said.

She also has formed close bonds with neighbors. She said she had neighbors she didn’t even wave to prior to the fires, but now they all watch out for each other.

“Those were wonderful gifts,” she said.