Tubbs Fire

Cal Fire says it burned about seven acres before being fully contained, and officials say no structures were threatened, and no one, thankfully, was hurt.

Now, it's been nearly 10 years since the Tubbs Fire destroyed more than 3,000 homes around Santa Rosa.

Now it appears wildfire victims may finally get a full payout for their losses from utilities like PG&E.

A new law signed by the governor requires the California Public Utilities Commission to find ways for victims to get 100% compensation.

But I'd also like to point out that burning embers are the cause of making the wildland urban interface a much, much bigger area.

And I hark back to 2017 in October and the Tubbs Fire, which broke out north of Santa Rosa, which is north of San Francisco.

near the mountains, and in that mountainous area east of Santa Rosa, that fire broke out.

But it created such a windstorm from this fire, there were burning embers, I call them burning pieces of wood, that flew more than a mile westward across a major freeway and into a suburban development of Santa Rosa itself, Coffee Park.

Yeah.

So I think this is super important for people to be thinking about.

And I would say that even if you're in a suburban neighborhood, We saw what happened during the Tubbs fire that you had mentioned earlier on.

And, you know, it's just there's so many people in vehicles trying to get out of an area.

So I

was with him for a lot of the coverage that we did during the Tubbs fire.

And I already knew that he could just step in as a journalist because of, I think it was New Year's 2007 or something like that.

We had horrible flooding.

providing information for hours at a time.

And I also remember there was a backfiring operation, and this was before Sonoma County understood what fire was, right? So we didn't know that sometimes you use fire for good, right? To burn up some of those fuels, right? So it doesn't come in an area.

And KSRO was such an important role and an important resource during the Tubbs fire that the fire department was like, don't you worry, nothing's coming towards the station.

And so I think it was maybe the third day in.

[laughs]

There is a good friend of mine, Bill Hornstein, he, whenever the Tubbs Fire happened-

Yeah

...

Lots of very smart people with really good ideas about how communities can rebuild after megafires.

There were people there who had survived the Tubbs Fire, the Camp Fire, the fire in Maui.

And they all had incredible ideas.

We have been inspired so much by them that we are going to be talking to a lot of those leaders on future episodes of Rebuild LA.

Um, this is a bill that would say, hey, utility companies, you know, you, you paid...

Well, PG&E in this case, they paid about 70% of what victims were owed out of the Camp and Tubbs Fire, the North Bay fires.

We said, hey, you know, now that you've made billions after, after, you know, Gavin did this deal that helped them out of bankruptcy, and now that they're making billions of dollars in profit every year and they've raised our, uh, utility rates six times in one year, maybe now you could actually pay the victims fully what they were owed, right? That's all this bill does.

I know that this bill was shopped around the entire legislature before I took it up, and not one Democrat would take it up.

Mm

... back in 2017, the Tubbs Fire, you know?

Yeah.

There were people, 1,500 families evacuated and all the rest.