Page 372 - Peterson 85 Years and Going Strong

Top, clockwise: Fire retardant drop; Destruction from Tubbs Fire in Santa Rosa in Oct 2017; Kincade Fire in same area two years later, in Oct 2019.
From there, it blew down through Mark West Springs past Fountaingrove into Santa Rosa. By 2:00 a.m. it had jumped Hwy 101 and tore into a large subdivision called Coffey Park. Within an hour, Coffey Park was a raging inferno, most of which burned to the ground.
SANTA ROSA STORE GETS INVOLVED
The fire blew up so fast that many people didn’t even know about it until it was too late. Social media was alive with personal stories and shout- outs for loved ones. Five Peterson Santa Rosa employees lost their homes but thankfully got out themselves. “This was an epic event,” says Paul Smith, a thirty-year Peterson veteran and salesman out of Santa Rosa. “I grew up on the east coast. I’ve been through hurricanes and tornadoes and
blizzards. But I’ve never been more scared than in this fire. There was no controlling it. There was no way you could predict where it was going next.” Smith watched the fire come within three miles of his neighborhood in Windsor.
On the second full day, October 10, a handful of employees made it into the Peterson store in north- ern Santa Rosa. “We hooked up a generator from the backyard and got the store running so we’d be ready,” says Nate King, then product support manager, who immediately began making calls to check on employees. “The shop was so smoky you couldn’t see from one side to the other. We had all our fans going, all the doors closed. And we bought a lot of respirators. The truck shop already had some fire trucks in for repair, so we finished up those to get them out on the fire. I remember standing up on the roof that second day, watching
370 | PETERSON: 85 YEARS AND GOING STRONG