On Oct. 8, 2017, a spark from electrical lines ignited one of the most destructive wildfires in California history: the Tubbs Fire.
“Before 2017, people thought the worst thing that could possibly happen here was an earthquake. That obviously changed significantly when this community, and really Sonoma County, had their first real experience with a large-scale, devastating wildfire,” said Paul Lowenthal, interim deputy chief and division chief fire marshal for the Santa Rosa Fire Department. “At the time, the 2017 fire was the most destructive wildfire in the state's history, and that's one of those titles that you don't want, but, at the same time, you don't want to lose it because it means that somebody else has gone through something worse — what we've obviously seen since then with the Camp Fire and then the Eaton Fire in Los Angeles.”
Yet the wildfire did more than devastate the landscape — it exposed just how unprepared cities were to handle such a massive threat. In its wake, it sparked a series of changes in Santa Rosa that would later prove vital.
“After the 2017 fires, the community was hungry for information and education,” Lowenthal said. “It allowed us to develop a vegetation management program and to fund it. We put together our first community wildfire protection plan. We became the first city in the country to be able to activate the federal alert warning systems at a local level without having to go through the county.”
As hoped, when the unthinkable happened again with the 2019 Kincade Fire, their community was far better prepared to evacuate. A year later, their reaction to the 2020 Glass Fire showed even more success.
“We went from thousands and thousands of homes and structures destroyed in 2017 to, in Santa Rosa alone — with a fire burning into the city, with everybody out of the area, and nothing but just firefighters able to protect property instead of lives — 1,152 properties in the city limits that were impacted by fire or within the fire footprint, and only a little over 30 homes destroyed because of all the improvements that were made to reduce that risk, to educate, to warn, and to better respond to wildfires,” Lowenthal said.
Lowenthal emphasizes that the community’s role has been, and will continue to be, a critical factor in their successes since the 2017 destruction.
“We're all pieces to a puzzle, and the community can't just rely on fire and law enforcement to handle the incident without community involvement,” Lowenthal said. “It’s not just maintaining defensible space and coming into compliance with ordinances and state law, but it's being prepared as an individual, as a family — whether that's being signed up to receive emergency alerts or having your go bag ready or an evacuation plan.”
