![]() He lived in a basement apartment in his parents' rental house and died in his bed, apparently unaware the world had caught fire, his father said. ![]() Eight of the 22 people who died in the fire lived within a mile of the neighborhood, including Michele Way resident Michael Grabow, 40. He said he was aware constantly for the first 90 minutes of having mere seconds left to live.Īll of the roughly 40 homes in the subdivision formed by Michele and Lorraine ways were destroyed in the Tubbs fire. They watched as their world turned to ash and their odds of survival dwindled.īlaine Westfall used his wife's sweater sleeve as a breathing mask, and counted in his head to stave off the panic of getting too little air. John Smihula hunkered down in a metal and concrete shed. Lorraine Way residents Blaine and Rayna Westfall were pinned face-down on the ground by flames on a hillside below their house for three hours. “We were right in the center of the heat of that thing,” said longtime resident Gary Bayless, 69, who managed to escape. We were right in the center of the heat of that thing. The neighborhood on Santa Rosa's northeastern outskirts was one of the first clusters of suburban homes overrun by the Tubbs fire, which began its deadly march in Sonoma County by mowing down ranch homes and rural estates higher up in the canyon of Mark West Creek, in Knights Valley and Mountain Home. The Wilsons were among a handful of residents on a dead-end street in the Michele Way Estates who were stranded in the early hours of the inferno after flames blocked their only exit. 9, severely injured, but alive - their tale of endurance now part of the tattered fabric of a Mark West Springs-area neighborhood striving to recover from the most destructive wildfire in state history. They would emerge in the early hours of Oct. They said their goodbyes, embracing in the frigid water as the Tubbs fire bore down. Trapped at their home north of Santa Rosa by the wildfire that roared across the Mayacamas Mountains last fall, they took refuge in their swimming pool, surviving on gulps of toxic air that singed their lungs between repeated dunks they hoped would ward off burns. By the time they heard the wail of a siren signaling help's arrival in the dark of their fire-stricken neighborhood, Greg and Christina Wilson already had been through the worst.
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