Journey's End: A Personal Account of the 2017 Tubb Fire

    Bang! Bang! Bang! It was about 4 o’clock in the morning on October 9th, 2017. Everyone in the house was alerted when we had the banging at the door. My dad got up and opened it. A gust of smoky air filled my living room within a matter of seconds. It was my neighbor from a couple doors down. “There’s a fire, 80-mile-an-hour winds! 80-mile-an-hour winds! Be ready to evacuate!” he said urgently. They weren't 80 mph, but they were about 30-40 mph in some places. The pure panic on his face made me feel a bit worried about the geohazard that was encroaching on my hometown of Cloverdale, CA. We all went outside and the fire was not in imminent danger. But I got a call from my mom who lived in Santa Rosa where the geohazard was actually becoming a disaster.

Photo from Barber 2022

The Tubbs Fire began on the night of October 8th, 2017. The map above shows the spread of the fire better than I could explain it. But as you can see it spread very quickly. It heavily impacted the city of Santa Rosa, which is where I was born. The places that I grew up around were gone. I personally knew people who lived in the Fountaingrove neighborhood who lost their homes and did not have fire insurance. They were forced to move to different cities or even states and start their lives over. The Tubbs fire physically jumped across Highway 101 (six lanes) to Coffey Park another residential area that was destroyed. The air quality was so bad that school was canceled for a couple of days until the smoke subsided a bit. Luckily, the flames never reached Cloverdale.

There was a trailer park near the freeway called “Journey’s End”. 116 of the 160 units at the Journey's End Mobile Home Park burned to the ground, while the remainder of the park was later red-tagged due to heavy damage. Many of the residents were seniors and low-income. The name “Journey’s End” was a literal name. For many people, it was the last stop of the tour. Other than many people dying and over 3,000 buildings being destroyed, there were other lasting effects such as contaminated water supplies (Proctor et al) and power outages on the outskirts of town. Benzene and other volatile organic compounds were found in drinking water as a result of the fire damage. My home did not have electricity for several days which was hard meant that we also didn’t have water. It was apparent that the lasting impacts of the fire affected marginalized communities. 

Now, we expect to see smoke in the skies in the early fall months because of dry weather and high winds. The California government has created initiatives to lessen the amount of dry brush in rural areas through controlled burns and even goats that graze. 

Journey’s End mobile home park is leveled from the Tubbs Fire as seen in this aerial photograph taken from a Cal Fire helicopter, Thursday, Oct. 19, 2017. (Will Bucquoy / For The Press Democrat file) in Wrubel 2023

  

References

Barber, Phil. 2022. “A walk in the ashes of the Tubbs Fire: 5 years after Sonoma County's worst disaster.” The Press Democrat, October 3, 2022. https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/news/a-walk-in-the-ashes-of-the-tubbs-fire-five-years-later-in-sonoma-county/.

Proctor, C. R., Lee, J., Yu, D. J., Shah, A., & Whelton, A. J. (2020). Wildfire caused widespread drinking water distribution network contamination. AWWA Water Science, 2(4). https://doi.org/10.1002/aws2.1183

Wrubel, H. (2023, April 26). Project replacing Santa Rosa mobile home park lost in Tubbs Fire reaches milestone - Van Meter Williams Pollack LLP. Van Meter Williams Pollack LLP. https://www.vmwp.com/project-replacing-santa-rosa-mobile-home-park-lost-in-tubbs-fire-reaches-milestone/