First Tubbs fire victims to sue PG&E will press ahead in legal fight after Cal Fire report

Press Democrat, The (Santa Rosa, CA)

Jan. 27--Jennifer Harvell wants her house back. And she still holds PG&E responsible for her loss.

Harvell and her husband, Wayne, were the first people among thousands of fire survivors to sue PG&E in 2017 alleging the company was responsible for causing the Tubbs fire.

Now they say that nothing has changed for them following the release Thursday of Cal Fire's long-awaited report on the cause of the fire. State investigators determined a private electrical system next to a Calistoga-area home, and not PG&E equipment, sparked the blaze.

The Harvells' home on Mocha Lane in Santa Rosa's Coffey Park neighborhood went up in flames, along with more than 3,000 others in Santa Rosa. Altogether, 4,651 homes and 22 lives were lost in the inferno, the worst on record in California at the time.

"If you're asking if we're going to dismiss our lawsuit, we don't have any plans to do that. You know, we lost everything we ever owned in our life. It's just devastating to us," Jennifer Harvell said.

The Harvells filed suit against PG&E in San Francisco Superior Court as the fire still raged on Oct. 17, 2017, a little more than a week after they lost their home in the pre-dawn hours of Oct. 9. The suit alleged that PG&E didn't properly maintain electrical equipment and failed to clear out vegetation in the area of the fire's origin in Napa County.

When the fire jumped Highway 101 and burned through Coffey Park -- 12 miles west of where it started -- the Harvells managed to save their pets and one of their three cars. Everything else was reduced to ashes. Jennifer searched the wreckage in vain for her wedding ring. The only salvageable item of note the couple did find: their son Brady Harvell's dog tags from his tour of service in Iraq.

"We woke up at 2:15 in the morning and our house was gone by 3:00," Jennifer Harvell said. "After a trip up to Walmart, we had a few bags in the car and we said 'Wow, everything we own is in the backseat of our car."

The Harvells are renting a home in Sebastopol as they wait for an insurance payment that will allow them to rebuild their home. Their Coffey Park property is still a bare lot, one of the few on their street where rebuilding has not begun.

"I haven't decorated for Christmas, for two Christmases, because I don't feel like I want to decorate a house that's not mine. It's hard to explain," Jennifer said. "I would love to live in my house again someday and look out my window and see my same view."

Along with their children, they were the only ones to live in the Mocha Lane home after it was built to their specifications on land they purchased three decades ago.

"We bought it when it was a dirt lot," Jennifer said. "And now it's a dirt lot again, 30 years later."

The Harvells were counting on some compensation from PG&E to help them recoup their losses and move on. Harvell said she spoke with the Santa Rosa-based member of her legal team, Donald Edgar, on Thursday following the release of Cal Fire's report. She decided afterward to press ahead with the lawsuit.

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