Dream houses with dramatic views and designer touches — destroyed in minutes by Santa Rosa firestorm
In Santa Rosa almost everybody knows somebody who lost his or her house.
At a synagogue in the southeast part of the city about 30 families out of the congregation’s 460 lost their homes. A former president of the synagogue lost her life, the rabbi said.
At Santa Rosa High School, where the newspaper and yearbook clubs are using social media and word of mouth to keep a tally, students know of at least 40 classmates so far who had their homes burn down.
At a downtown motel where evacuees had taken refuge, David Joslyn, a longtime resident of Mark West Springs Road, asked a young woman wearing sweat pants and carrying a cat, “How’re you doing?”
“I’m OK,” she said. “My house burned down, so it’s kind of sad.”
“Mine, too,” Joslyn said. “Coffey Park?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she sighed, with a pained look on her face.
At least two of the people identified by authorities as having lost their lives in Sonoma County fires lived in Coffey Park, a flat subdivision on the northern edge of developed Santa Rosa where neat rows of wood-framed suburban-style houses were home to a diverse group of mostly middle-class families.
This week hundreds of those houses lay completely leveled to the ground, reduced to a black-and-white mess of ash, tangled rebar and misshapen metal, each barely indecipherable from the next but for a concrete bench in what was once a front yard, or an oval pattern of rocks around the citrus trees a dad had lovingly planted.
Several more of the dead lived on or around Mark West Springs Road, a long, winding thoroughfare abutting wild tree-covered land in the hills above Santa Rosa. Many houses sat on multi-acre lots, private and remote. Side roads led up the hills to million-dollar homes where owners had “hobby vineyards.”
Joslyn and his wife bought their house on Mark West Springs Road 19 years ago. Built in 1953, it was a 1½-story wood construction with an open floor plan, skylights and a huge back deck that looked out over Riebli valley to the backside of Fountaingrove, with views of trees in all directions.
“Every single person that walked in the front door and into the house would say, ‘Wow, what a beautiful view,’” Joslyn said.
He loved the private, remote feel of the house and its open living area, where his two sons did their homework and played while Joslyn cooked or did “dad stuff” in the office. The deck, bigger than the Joslyns’ previous house in Healdsburg, was the site of frequent family barbecues. And every day, sometimes twice a day, the family walked their dogs to nearby “Flat Top,” a clearing at the top of the dirt road next to their house.
Joslyn, a special education teacher, and his wife, Sara, a self-employed psychologist, didn’t live extravagantly. They saved up money and bought their cars in cash, including his 2007 used Toyota Camry. They didn’t use credit cards, to avoid going into debt. They had little savings, relying on their home to provide a nest egg if they needed one.
“Our house was our extravagance,” Joslyn said.
In all likelihood that house burned down Sunday night.
Flames came racing down from the hills and then sideways toward the property. Joslyn’s wife grabbed some clothes and framed pictures of their kids and drove out first with their 17-year-old son, Sam. Joslyn hopped on the roof and begin hosing the house down. But within minutes flames were licking the opposite side of the road.
“It was moving so fast that I really ran,” he said.
He jumped in his car and sped away. Behind him he could hear trees exploding.
That’s the last Joslyn saw of his house. He said he was always aware there was some fire risk, living near the site of the 1964 Hanley fire, but “we thought we had enough defensible space,” Joslyn said.
The Joslyns received no alert Monday night. They were saved because Joslyn’s wife woke up from the smell of smoke.
“There should have been some sort of alert, at least somebody driving with a siren,” he said. “It’s not like it was a brand-new fire.”
Joslyn isn’t sure if they will rebuild on the land, or when.
“It’s up to my wife,” he said. “She was thinking maybe not [because] she can’t deal with the emotion of it.”
Even if they do, it could take years. Joslyn thinks he’ll only get about half the value of the house from his insurer, with the other half going to the bank to cover the unpaid portion of the mortgage. He’s not sure it’s even worth building anew.
For now he’s focused on the immediate future. On Thursday he went shopping for new clothes, including a pair of brown shoes and a pair of black shoes for work and Eddie Bauer “travel pants” that stretch easily when he lifts the students he works with.
He also found an apartment to rent, a three-bedroom unit in a complex with dozens of others like it.
It’s in the middle of town, with no views of trees.
ALSO
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Santa Rosa mayor surveys his devastated city: ‘The fire did not discriminate’
A Santa Rosa synagogue becomes a haven in a firestorm
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Vineyards may have kept wine country fire from getting worse
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