Before & After Tubbs Fire in Santa Rosa - Coffey Park & Fountaingrove Round Barn

Drone footage of Before and after the Tubbs Fire in Santa Rosa, California.

For inquiries contact:
Daniel Pfeifer
Drone operator in Santa Rosa, CA.
[email protected]

In April 2017 I captured footage of Coffey Park and Fountaingrove Round Barn in Santa Rosa. After the fires I went back and filmed the same shots I had taken before. I was born and raised here in Sonoma County. I spent many years playing with friends and having sleepovers in Coffey Park. Still hard to wrap my head around the scope of so much destruction. Both Coffey Park and The Round Barn were completely lost to the fires that ravaged Sonoma County in October 2017.

About the fires:
On October 8th, 2017, around 9:45 p.m, a fire broke out near Tubbs Lane in Calistoga California. Pushed by strong winds, the front of the fire moved more than twelve miles in its first three hours. The Mark West Springs area, north of Santa Rosa, was directly in the path of the fire.

By 1 a.m. the fire had reached Santa Rosa city limits. It quickly moved into the Fountaingrove area and burned hundreds of homes as well as many other structures. The historic Fountaingrove Inn, the Fountaingrove Round Barn, and a large Hilton hotel were destroyed. Nearly all of the 160 units at the Journey's End mobile home park were turned to rubble.

At about 1:30 a.m., Sonoma County officials began to evacuate neighborhoods in and around Santa Rosa.

By about 2 a.m., the fire, carried by near hurricane-level winds, had spread further to the west, crossing Highway 101. By 4:30 a.m., the winds had reached their peak speed of more than 60 miles per hour. Quickly the fire spread to the Coffey Park neighborhood, where it leveled most of the area. An estimated 1,300 structures were destroyed. Other damage along several streets bordering Highway 101 included a Kmart store and numerous restaurants that burned to the ground.

By noon the next day, two medical centers in Santa Rosa, Kaiser Permanente and Sutter Health, had been evacuated. Some Kaiser employees reported using their personal vehicles to evacuate some of the 130 patients at that hospital.

Other damage included the complete loss of a senior living complex, Oakmont of Villa Capri; Hidden Valley Satellite, a primary school; and the Santa Rosa portion of Paradise Ridge Winery. The Cardinal Newman High School campus was badly damaged, as was one end of the Luther Burbank Center for the Performing Arts. Redwood Adventist Academy was also lost in the fire. Nearly 500 homes in the Larkfield-Wikiup area, were completely destroyed.

By October 14, fires had burned more than 210,000 acres while forcing 90,000 people to evacuate from their homes. The Northern California fires killed at least 44 people and hospitalized at least 185, making the week of October 8, 2017, the deadliest week of wildfires in California history. Collectively, the event constitutes the largest loss of life due to wildfires in the United States since the Cloquet Fire in 1918. In total, an estimated 8,900 structures were destroyed and at least $9.4 billion dollars in damages lost.