SANTA ROSA (KRON) — Residents in Coffey Park in Santa Rosa are beginning to return to normalcy after the deadly Tubbs Fire destroyed their neighborhood in October 2017.
According to the city, a majority of the homes in Coffey Park are somewhere in the construction process.
Brian Bushon and his son Oliver are standing outside of their brand new house.
They moved back in last November and say it feels normal and finally feels like home again.
“If it comes again, it comes again. We’ve learned that you can lose it all and still move forward,” Bushon said.
Jeff Okrepkie’s home is still under construction.
“It’s starting to look like a neighborhood again. So we have construction underway, we have homes finished, we have traffic coming through,” Okrepkie said.
He hopes to be in by Christmas.
He says about 100 homes in the neighborhood are already rebuilt.
“According to the city, 87 percent of the homes lost in Coffey Park, which is a total of about 1,350 or so, are somewhere in the construction process, either submitted for permit or construction completed and anywhere in between,” he said.
The neighborhood is working now on getting a playground up and running for families by this winter.
They are spending time preparing for the two year anniversary of the fire, where they hope to celebrate how far they’ve come.
“It’s really exciting. I can’t wait to get back into my house and raise my kids in this neighborhood,” Okrepkie said.