Relatives and friends recall victims of San Bruno tragedy

There used to be two places on curvy Claremont Drive that Renee Tarzia called home — the house she grew up in and the low-slung ranch house across the street, where “second mom” Elizabeth Torres lived for 40 years.

Both homes were reduced to ashes in the gas explosion and fire that ravaged this sleepy San Francisco suburb nearly a week ago. On Tuesday, word finally came from the San Mateo County coroner that Torres, 81, had been identified as the fourth person killed in the disaster.

“It’s definitely better to know,” said a tearful Tarzia.

At least three others are still missing at a scene that coroner Robert J. Foucrault called the biggest and most complicated he has ever worked. Authorities — including a forensic dental expert and a forensic anthropologist — are struggling to identify remains found in the area.

Most of the dead lived houses apart in a single, modest block of Claremont Drive. The seventh victim was visiting her boyfriend, who lived around the corner at the site of the eruption.

Investigators continue work to pinpoint the cause of the explosion. Regulators race to avoid another like it. Survivors are planning funerals and remembering.

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A stand of trees separated Elizabeth Torres’ modest house from the site of the explosion.

Torres was home with members of her extended family Thursday night, watching the New Orleans Saints face off against the Minnesota Vikings.

Daughter Cindy Braun, 41, and her husband, Allen, 45, had moved in with Torres after Torres’ husband died. Daughter Sandra Arnold, 57, of Petaluma was visiting; she and Torres had just returned from a gambling trip to Napa Valley.

The Brauns were able to escape the burning building, along with Arnold, but they suffered burns over 50% of their bodies and remain in the burn center at St. Francis Memorial Hospital in San Francisco.

After the blaze subsided Thursday, a body lay on the sidewalk outside Torres’ house, covered with a silver fireman’s emergency shelter.

“She was an amazing lady,” said Tarzia, who had lived with her mother in the house on Claremont Drive.

“She loved me, helped me, like any mom would do. She helped me since I was 8.”

Torres, she said, was hard of hearing and loath to wear hearing aids. Tarzia would walk across the street, come inside and be there for half an hour before Torres would notice.

“It was our running joke,” Tarzia recounted. “She’d say, ‘Oh, I didn’t know you were here.’”

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The sign outside St. Cecilia Catholic Church in San Francisco on Tuesday read “Jacki and Janessa Greig in God’s care.” Inside, school staff placed a photo of the mother and daughter next to a vase of yellow roses and hydrangeas.

Janessa’s classmates wear bracelets bearing her name. The eighth-grader, who was partnered with a kindergartener for the school year, had recently made the little girl a drawing full of her favorite things — dance, music, waffles, her cat Mini and her family.

“The little kindergartener said ‘Do you think I should give this to Janessa’s father?’” said Sister Marilyn Miller, St. Cecilia’s principal.

Janessa had attended the school of 600 since kindergarten. She played the genie in a production of “Aladdin,” and her videotaped announcements of sporting events and birthdays are still posted on the school’s website.

Jacqueline Greig, 44, who worked for the California Public Utilities Commission, served on the church’s parish council. When the group met on Monday night for the first time this year, Miller said they left her seat empty.

The night of the explosion, Greig’s older daughter, Gabby, and Greig’s husband, James, a sales director with Alcatel-Lucent, were at Gabby’s school for a tennis match and back-to-school night, said Msgr. Michael Harriman of St. Cecilia. Janessa was supposed to go too, but she stayed home to do her homework.

“The match ran long, so James said he would stay at the school. He was texting Janessa,” Harriman said.

“And suddenly, Janessa was not texting back. That’s when he realized something was amiss.”

School will be closed Friday so that Janessa’s classmates can attend her funeral.

“The question the children are asking is “Why did God do this?,” Harriman said. “We’re in profound mourning here.”

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Mike Zapata, 45, ran out of his home on Earl Avenue to find his teenage neighbor running toward him. Joseph Ruigomez, 19, looked like he was wearing a tattered tank top.

“But it wasn’t a tank top,” Zapata said “It was his skin. It melted.”

Smoke rose from the young man’s body. His fingertips were gone, the small bones exposed. He begged for help.

“He kept saying, ‘I watched my girlfriend burn. I couldn’t get to her. She’s dead.’” Zapata said.

Jessica Morales, 20, studied fashion at the Academy of Art University and worked at a Baskin-Robbins. But the night she was killed, Morales had switched her work schedule to be with her boyfriend. She said goodbye to her mother, Rene Morales, at 3 p.m. and said she’d be home by 10.

That night, Zapata’s wife raced Ruigomez to the hospital, swerving and ignoring red lights. Rene Morales, was at her own home, glued to the television and fearing the worst. By Tuesday, still in a fog, she recalled her daughter’s brilliant smile and remembered her infectious laugh.

“Value every moment with your child,” Morales said, “because you just don’t know when they run out that door if that may be the last time you see them.”

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When the tearful congregation gathered Sunday morning at Bethany Presbyterian Church, the Rev. Don Smith prayed with his flock for solace — and information.

“Most of us came particularly with the Bullis family in mind,” he told the stunned group. “Lord, there are times when grief is worse than others, pain more enslaving of our lives. Today, the Bullis family comes with grief and sorrow — not because they know, but because they don’t know.

On Tuesday, resolution still had not come. Surviving members of the Bullis family had given authorities DNA swabs over the weekend in hopes of identifying recovered remains as belonging to Gregory, 50, son William, 17, or Gregory’s mother, Lavonne, 85, all home at the time of the blast and missing ever since.

William “was just a very gentle and loving young man, well-liked,” Smith said. “I should use the verb ‘is’ because we have not had final confirmation that they are gone.”

Kathleen DeLander has known the family for more than 30 years.

“Greg loves to share jokes with everybody,” she said. “He’ll sometimes send them out on e-mail or swap them off at the church. If they were off-color, we’d step outside the sanctuary. If they were really off-color, we’d step outside the church entirely.”

When another family in the congregation fell on hard times, Lavonne took them into her home, DeLander said. They stayed for a year.

DeLander said Greg’s twin brother had posted the harsh reality on his Facebook page.

“He wrote that the authorities had informed him that they felt anyone missing at this point in time is dead.”

maria.laganga@latimes.com

molly.hennessy-fiske@latimes.com

Times staff writer John Hoeffel contributed to this report.