Reflecting On One Year Since the Wine Country Wildfires

Published: Oct. 4, 2018, 5:45 p.m.

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It\'s hard to believe that on October 8 it will have been one year since a series of devastating fires fueled by strong winds cut through tens of thousands of acres across Sonoma and Napa counties; Mendocino and Lake counties as well. In all, nearly 9,000 structures were destroyed. Several dozen people died. Santa Rosa endured unprecedented disaster, entire communities were destroyed. It\'s been a long since then, with many more miles to go. With that in mind, KCBS Radio reporter and guest In Depth host Jeffrey Schaub visited Santa Rosa City Hall to speak with Mayor Chris Coursey. "It seems like so much longer ago than a year. That night, I was asleep like almost everyone in Santa Rosa was at the time," Coursey reflected. "I got a call from our Deputy City Manager, I believe it was about 2:30 a.m. and she told me that there was a fire, that the Emergency Operations Center had been activated. It didn\'t take very long though for me to realize that my bedroom smelled like smoke. I sleep with my windows open. It was a warm night, it was windy outside. And I heard the traffic on my street. I live on a street that has traffic during the day but not at 2:30 a.m. And the traffic outside my window was heavier than it was during the rush hour. I got up and looked outside and saw that there were a lot of cars on the roads and that I started hearing explosions." Throughout the course of the In Depth program, Coursey shares more with Schaub about what transpired that night, the subsequent weeks and months--and throughout the past year.

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