One year later, North Bay fire victims take stock

Oct. 06--In the year since their business and rented home burned in the Tubbs fire, Mario Monte and his family members have found new jobs and, just last month, a rental home in Novato.

They're starting to feel normal again. But it's been a challenge to put together the pieces of their lives that fell apart in the wake of the most destructive wildfire in California history.

Monte, a second-year nursing student at College of Marin, was honored as a hero last year by school officials who heard his story. The 24-year-old evacuated residents from the elderly care facility his family owned and operated in Santa Rosa's Coffey Park neighborhood during the early morning hours shortly after the blaze broke out.

The college bought a one-bedroom trailer for Monte and his family to live in after the fire and staked out an area for them to park it on the school's Novato campus while they searched for a new home. The family of four is grateful for the help College of Marin has given them, Monte said. They're also happy to now have a larger home. It took them the better part of a year to secure a rental, despite their consistent efforts.

"I have my own room now, and it doesn't move when someone walks around the house, so that's good," Monte said. He had been sharing a pull-out sofa in the trailer with his younger sister while his mother and stepfather shared the bedroom.

Monte missed only one day of class during the fire. His teachers were sympathetic, he said, and even encouraged him to take time off, but he didn't want to lose any progress toward his nursing degree.

"I went to clinicals the next day," he said. "I asked my friends if I could borrow their scrubs, so when I showed up in the parking lot at the hospital, I had to change in my car. My instructor was asking me, 'Why are you here? Do you need anything?' I said, 'Yeah, I need a pen. I don't have a pen to use for today.'"

Monte is set to graduate in May. He feels blessed by the support he's received this past year. His family, which came to the Bay Area five years ago from the Philippines, is doing alright, he said. But they are still living with the effects of the blaze.

"It's still in our minds," Monte said. "You can never really move on from it."

'Everything will be alright'

Everybody at the care home was fast asleep when Monte's mother called him around 2:30 a.m. on Oct. 9, 2017, shortly after the Tubbs fire started, to ask whether the power was out at the building the family rented for its business. She was at home, a few blocks away, where the electricity had shut off. Neither of them had any idea a fire was rapidly spreading through the neighborhood.

Monte, a live-in caregiver at the facility, assured his mom that everything was fine. But he soon noticed the glow of flames coming from the building next door.

"At first, I thought it was just an electrical problem that caused the fire next door," Monte said. "I thought it was kind of unusual, so I called 911."

A dispatcher told him there was a fire in the area and that he should evacuate immediately. Monte asked if anybody could help get his five clients out of the building.

As the neighborhood around him went up in smoke, Monte struggled to get residents at the facility out of bed and out the door. Police officers soon arrived and helped usher the elderly women out of the building. Three of the residents left with officers in squad cars. Monte sped off with two others in his backseat and his small dog riding shotgun.

"They were confused," he said. "I turned back and said, 'Everything will be alright.' They didn't know what was happening."

Monte drove around town, not knowing where to go. Eventually, he met his mom and stepfather at a nearby evacuation center, where they reunited with their three clients who had been evacuated by police officers. Monte's sister had been out for the night. The family spent the next day reuniting those clients with their own families and later drove to Novato, where they stayed for weeks with friends.

Monte found a new job in January, working as an emergency room technician at a Marin County hospital when he's not in class. His family members found work, too. But they're still making up for the months of income they lost.

"The hardest part is normalizing everything," Monte said. "Not really forgetting, but trying to get back to that kind of life that you were so used to for years, that was hard."

Saving lives

Mill Valley fire Chief Tom Welch was off duty when he smelled smoke in his Santa Rosa neighborhood late at night Oct. 8, 2017, but he sprang into action anyway.

"I had my fire gear on and my chief's vehicle," he said. "I was going door to door, rescuing people from their houses and driving them to safety. ... My first instinct was save lives. How do we save as many lives as we can?"

Four of the 23 fire-related deaths in Sonoma County last October occurred in the Coffey Park area -- where Welch lived -- and nearly a quarter of the 5,130 homes lost to the North Bay fires were in that neighborhood, according to the Santa Rosa Press Democrat.

Welch's wife and two kids evacuated the area around 1 a.m. and later learned their house burned in the blaze.

"Obviously it's a super traumatic event to lose your house," Welch said. "But it's even more traumatic to lose it during a conflagration where you know your neighbors are dying."

The Welches stayed with family members near Chico for more than a week following the fire. They later found a rental home in the North Bay and recently bought a new house in Santa Rosa.

The chief said he's moved on, for the most part, from the emotional aspects of the experience.

"We've pretty much closed the book on the whole incident," he said.

But what he learned from losing his home in a fire has stuck with him.

"It's taught me some real lessons on the other side of the coin," he said. "Often times, first responders, when we respond, we do what we were trained to do and then we leave and go on to the next one. But there are a whole bunch of things that occur after the fire, and I've had a front-row seat to that entire operation."

The chief's biggest takeaway and advice to others, he said, is that fire victims, when facing the unthinkable, should always lean on their communities.

"Stuff is just stuff," Welch said. "Family is first, friends are first, people are first. There's a network of people out there we were fortunate enough to know to help us get through this."

The chief is now working to create in Mill Valley what he calls some of the toughest fire safety restrictions in the state.

The proposed regulations would require Mill Valley homeowners remove any combustible vegetation from the immediate perimeter surrounding their houses -- a tough sell for those accustomed to growing hedges or gardens in those spaces, Welch said.

"The fuel that drives us is to make sure nobody has to go through what my family has gone through," he said.

Rebuilding

Angelo Ferro is determined to reopen the Fountaingrove Inn, and he says the next version of the luxury hotel he's owned since 2003 will be even better than the one that burned in last year's wildfires.

The San Rafael resident, who owns several North Bay businesses including Fantastico, a party supply store in San Francisco, was asleep at home when his 124-room Santa Rosa hotel went up in flames. All guests and staff had been evacuated before the building caught fire.

When the rebuild is complete, Ferro said he will offer jobs to the 90 employees who worked at the hotel before the fire.

Crews have cleared hazardous materials and rubble from the 5-acre site, but Ferro is still working with contractors on plans to rebuild. He said he's been fortunate with the insurance policy he had for the hotel.

"Everybody wants to know when you're going to rebuild, but it's not that easy," he said. "Building a hotel is not a simple thing."

How to help

Monte said his family's needs have been taken care of. They're not asking for any help. Those who still want to extend a hand, he said, should focus on the future.

"People who want to help could just exert all their efforts and their energy into advocating for a good emergency alert system that could be implemented not just in our area, but in other communities, too," he said.

Sonoma County officials said they could have sent out an alert to every cellphone in the area when the wildfires broke out, but chose not to for fear that the alarm would create mass-hysteria throughout the region, including in areas not affected by the blazes. The scope of the alert was too large and could have hampered emergency efforts, officials said.

Though he helped in successfully evacuating all the residents from the care home, Monte said it was too close a call. If his mom hadn't called to check on him that night, he said, he might have slept through the fire. He was never notified by any emergency alert system that his neighborhood was burning.

The nursing student said those who want to help should also turn their efforts to the teams that respond in emergencies.

"People could also reach out to first responders and advocate for them," he said. "Because without them, we wouldn't be here."

___

(c)2018 The Marin Independent Journal (Novato, Calif.)

Visit The Marin Independent Journal (Novato, Calif.) at www.marinij.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.