Rush of recollections as residents return, see destroyed properties

When she returned Monday from her property on the windy Maacama Ridge Road in the hills east of Healdsburg, Pamela Page remembered the lunches her father held at their home. Menus with homemade guacamole, a spicy crab dip with jalapeno and gazpacho.

Page’s family and neighbors gathered around a long table and made ham and fig sandwiches from the fruit they had picked from the trees their father had planted. Your neighbor would bring a fig cake.

Today there are only concrete walls and a stone chimney.

Page walked around the estate on Monday to review the damage from the devastating Kincade Fire, and a flurry of memories returned. The long table was gone. The trees were burned. And the vineyards that surrounded their property burned before Page’s family had planned the harvest.

On Monday, the fire was 77,758 acres and 80% contained. It destroyed 374 buildings, including 174 houses, and damaged 60 buildings, including 34 houses.

“They are sometimes shocked and … then we laugh a little and then there is a super sadness,” said Page, 56. “I think there is also a little anger. I had that the other day. How could that happen to such a nice person? It is sad.”

Mandatory evacuation orders for the fire areas were lifted on Saturday and residents have since returned to review their property and search the rubble before leaving. Some people, whose houses survived, plugged in generators and returned. But many others chose to stay elsewhere because of the lack of electricity.

Along Chalk Hill Road, which runs from Windsor to Healdsburg, many of the houses survived the flames. But nestled between burned vineyards, ruined plots were visible through the sparse trees.

The fire broke out in a rural area in northern Sonoma County on October 23 and spread rapidly, propelled by gusty winds. Cal Fire officials expect the Kincade fire to be fully contained by Thursday.

Many residents stayed in their homes until mandatory evacuation orders were issued on October 26. Within 24 hours, the hills around Chalk Hill glowed red in flames. Both sides of the road were on fire and the embers fell into the vineyards. Firemen were parked at each apartment building, ready for a vigorous fight against the fire if it came near houses – a fight that was largely successful. Fences and driveways were burned, but for many the blackened floor ended right outside their front door.

In Windsor, many residents returned to their normal routines on Monday. Shops and restaurants were open. The Panda Express on Hembree Lane was full of people having lunch. At the AT&T store across from the parking lot, three workers were sitting and asking each other if they needed to evacuate.

But in the neighborhoods east of town, where the fire raged less than a week ago, the only visible workers repairing burned phone lines were.

Page’s estate, attached to a winery, was intended as a retirement for her parents when they bought it in the 1980s. But after 35 years it had become a work of love.

Her father, Seaver Page, 86, a retired oncologist, built two houses, tended rows of vineyards, and planted fig and avocado trees. The house was a safe haven for Page, a single mother who lives in Cloverdale. She often brought her son and daughter, now in her twenties, with her to play in the creek, ride a quad, and spend Christmas with her grandparents.

Nearly eight miles from the Page property, another house in the 9400 block on Chalk Hill Road had burned down. Between the white, ashy rubble sat an iron rooster and a stone Buddha. The brick foundation and the chimney were still there, albeit slightly charred.

“Thank you very much! 1st Responder You’re great,” read a white sign with drawings of fire engines, helicopters and airplanes attached to a number of mailboxes.

Dozens of PG&E workers parked along Chalk Hill, replacing the power poles that had burned in the flame. The crews also cut down burned trees. The fire department worked to keep the fire out of residential buildings, even though some barns and outbuildings had been destroyed.

“It’s just so different along Chalk Hill Road,” says Annie Holden, a neighbor. “There used to be so many trees.”

Holden was evacuated on October 26, but returned on Saturday to find her red-painted house on Chalk Hill still standing. They stayed with friends in Santa Rosa and watched the news in horror while video footage showed their neighborhood on fire.

Holden and her husband didn’t know if their home had survived until they called the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office and got a video of their standing property.

“We thought the house was gone,” she said. “It was amazing.”

The only damage was in their yard, although it appeared the firefighters stopped the fire just before it reached their well. Her mailbox had melted slightly, but a charred edition of the Healdsburg Tribune, a weekly newspaper, had largely survived.

Your neighbors weren’t so lucky. A lot near the intersection of Chalk Hill and Highway 128 had burned down. The property was surrounded by a row of trees that had become completely bare.

“You wouldn’t have known there was a house there because of the trees, but now the trees are empty,” said Holden.

Less than a mile away, off Murphy Road, Vicky Robinson was watering the front yard. The hills around her house were blackened from the fire, but the only damage to her house was the stench of smoke that still wafted from room to room.

Robinson, 56, had been evacuated about a week ago, but her husband stayed behind. He wanted to save her house when the fire got closer. But at 3:00 am on October 27th, as gale winds howled through the area, he left after seeing the hills around her house ablaze and the embers “coming across the street.”

“The firefighters were amazing,” said Robinson, pointing to the houses to the left of their house. “I can’t believe what they did. All these houses, they burned in the courtyards, the fire burned all the way to their door, but the houses were saved.

“We’re just so grateful,” she added.

Sarah Ravani is a contributor to the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: sravani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SarRavani