Santa Rosa Burned Once. Don't Let It Happen Again.
The Tubbs Fire destroyed 5,636 structures in a single night. The Glass Fire came three years later. Santa Rosa homeowners know the threat is real — now California law rewards those who act.
Santa Rosa is California's cautionary tale about wildfire reaching into the suburbs. On the night of October 8, 2017, the Tubbs Fire exploded out of the Mayacamas Mountains north of Calistoga, crossed Highway 101, and burned through the Coffey Park and Fountaingrove neighborhoods — dense suburban developments that no one considered "wildland." In three hours, 5,636 structures were gone and 22 people were dead.
The Tubbs Fire shattered the assumption that wildfire was a rural problem. Homes ignited from ember showers landing a mile or more ahead of the flame front, leapfrogging across six-lane highways and into cul-de-sacs. Coffey Park — a flat, suburban neighborhood of tract homes — lost 1,400 houses in a single night. It wasn't proximity to the forest that killed those homes. It was wood fences connecting house to house, unscreened attic vents catching embers, and wood shake roofs igniting under ember bombardment.