Kincade Fire: Comfort for many as others return to pick through rubble

San Jose Mercury News (CA)

Nov. 1--GEYSERVILLE -- One week after the Kincade Fire erupted, stoking fear in a region already too familiar with wind-swept wildfires, days of anxiety lifted Thursday for thousands whose Sonoma County homes were saved even as others struggled with all they've lost.

Firefighters gained the upper hand on the 77,758-acre blaze, doubling containment overnight to 65 percent. Nearly all of the 185,000 residents forced to evacuate returned to their homes. PG&E restored power to nearly all customers in Northern California. By Thursday evening, the fire had destroyed 349 residential and commercial structures.

With only light winds expected through the weekend, crews are now focused on keeping their successful battle rhythm going, said Cal Fire public information officer Edwin Zuniga. Dangerously dry conditions still exist.

"Firefighters are tired, they're exhausted," Zuniga said. "But they understand they have a mission to complete, and that's to put this fire out so residents ... can go home and go to sleep at night knowing we secured this completely."

Zuniga's tired, too. He's been away from his home in Reno for days. But standing in downtown Healdsburg on Thursday, he watched people stream back toward their houses. A woman he recognized from a police briefing on evacuations last week came up to thank him.

Zuniga laughed in surprise, then got quiet for a moment. "It's an awesome feeling to be able to see someone I saw last week evacuating now walking back home to their neighborhood," he said. "It's just awesome."

Eight miles north, in Geyserville -- the unincorporated community of 1,650 near where sparks of the fire first broke out -- the coffee shop downtown had begun serving customers again. Community members gathered outside the town market to swap stories about what they'd been through. The post office was distributing packages.

Bernadette Laos, the community's mail carrier for the past 17 years, returned to work Thursday. But she came in mostly to stay busy. She knew going home would be painful.

Laos and her husband, Justo, an electrician, left home in the middle of the night Wednesday in their pajamas, with their dog, Canela, and little else. The smoke was already making it hard to see.

It was the second time they had fled a wildfire in just as many years. The last time, flames from the Pocket Fire stopped before coming down the ridge near the home they had been renting for four years.

This time was different. "Within a few hours, we found out we had lost everything," she said.

When they arrived home later Thursday, they saw that the house and her husband's drawers full of tools were gone. A shell of his navy blue BMW was there, but now it was grey and white with ash, its windows blown out and undercarriage melted. Among the few things not totally destroyed were a filing cabinet, the metal headboard of their bed and a few pieces of jewelry, including her grandmother's bracelet and her daughter's baby bracelet, which they were able to find while picking through the rubble.

What hurt most, Laos said, as she looked around, was the loss of the things she can't put a price tag on -- her husband and her late father's wedding bands, her late dog's ashes and hundreds of family photos, including all the annual Christmas pictures of their children growing up.

"I know it's just stuff, but it was my stuff," Laos said, as tears welled in her eyes. "That was 58 years of my life gone in one night."

They don't yet know what they will do since their renter's insurance doesn't cover much, they said. They're hoping to gather enough money to buy a trailer to put on their daughter's property in Sebastopol where they can live for now.

Still, she and her husband said they feel lucky: "I feel like I have an army around me and the love is really what gets you through it."

A couple miles away, Wally St. Clair rode his ATV down to his mailbox at the end a long dirt road on the outskirts of town, as his 15-year-old dog, Molly, limped beside him. Like so many others, his home had been spared.

"Wow, I wonder how this got up here," said the 93-year-old World War II veteran, as he fingered through the first newspaper delivered to his mailbox in more than a week. St. Claire was born just five minutes down the road from where he lives now on 15-acres covered in grapevines. His home was unscathed. Everything was there, right in its place. But just down the road, his cousin's home was completely wiped out.

"That was a shame," St. Clair said. "But the thing is, although some houses burned down, I'm just glad everyone's OK. ... That's the important thing."

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