History and healing after the fire & Gearinger household

brian Gehringer, his wife jane yang and their 10 year old son had a home off of Parker Hill road the night of the fire, they escaped that home with no warning from their government or any neighbors or friends not able to get the cars out of

the garage. They fled on foot. Brian is an attorney, jane is a head and neck surgeon for jane. It's still too painful to talk about the experience. So brian is telling the story for his family, his community and the future PG any failed us. And the

irony is, I'm a lawyer 25 years ago when I was a young lawyer at a law firm, I represent a tree trimmer, we sued pg me for causing fires because they didn't trim around their trees. They didn't maintain their equipment properly. And that was 25 years

ago. And I was also involved because my client testified at the criminal trial of PG and E. PG and E. Was criminally prosecuted in Nevada county in 1996 and convicted for causing a fire up there for failing to do what they're supposed to do. So we

need, we society northern California, we need to figure out how PG does what they're mandated by law to do, keep their equipment safer. We've had a soccer game down in marin county where we drove another boy home and I have a distinct memory of stopping in

Petaluma for hamburgers and coming home. And the contrast, you know, the next day, the next week was like that, that happy sunday evening, uh, soccer and just, you know, normal night, it seemed like a long time ago once, once the fire intervened, but we went to

bed and I just remember being windy, really windy. It reminded me of growing up in Ohio and the prelude to a thunderstorm. I remember some point during the night noticing that the power went out, just kind of half awake, half asleep, the ambient noise was off,

so I'm like okay, but the power has gone off before, so we're laying there uh and we were both kind of half awake and my wife just sat up in bed and she said, I smell smoke and James. My wife is jane looked out of patty

window and she's like, oh my God. And I looked and it was off the side of our driveway where are garbage cans and recycling cans are and there was a fire and it looked like a campfire and my mind for the next half an hour there

in this whole time was just trying to make sense out of things. That didn't make sense. And my first thought was there were some teenagers that they must have, this is a bad prank or this is we got to call the fire department Or call 911

and I never called 911 before and I called 911 and there was nothing, there's no dial tone, there was no music while we were on hold, there was no answering saying you're the third caller in line, There's just nothing. And I remember like, God, that's weird.

I've I've never called 911 before, but I know that there's supposed to be something that happens when you call 911 and then we looked and the fire is getting bigger and spreading quickly. Like we don't hear anything, there's no sirens, there's no um nothing. I'm like,

God, this is weird, Strange. Um because you know, I thought certainly other would be, you know, fire department coming and someone would have alerted. So we got to go get help. So go across the street to our neighbors, the neighbors that were closest with and it's

windy and banging on the door and there's nothing. We go to the next house, there's two houses across the street from us, one slightly uphill, one, slightly downhill, we go to the one that's slightly downhill and hanging and and nothing. And I was like, God, that's

weird. It's just weird. And I grew up in a christian baptist type church and for a brief moment I thought, is this the rapture. And it's kind of like running through my mind trying to make sense out of this chaos at that point, the our side

yard faces uphill, a tree went up and it didn't burn from the bottom up slowly, like a fuse. It went up and I've said this so many times. My son repeats it, even though he doesn't under, it went up like a roman candle. Like, I've never

seen anything like it. And you know, going back now, it's about a 60 ft tall tree and my wife said, you've got to go warn them and this is our uphill neighbors. And I'm like, and I just ran up the street from where we were, you

know, I think I told them to stay here and I ran up there and I banged on their door and I've described it to people, I was like Dustin Hoffman in the graduate in the church scene, I'm like, wake up, wake up, you know, there's a

fire and I can see through their, they've got a window on the side of their door, you know where I can see through their house, through the back of their house to my house and now I'm seeing there's like a wall of flames. I'm like, there's

no one here And again, I couldn't for the life of me figure out why there was no one there, but I was like, well there's no sense of me, you know, I've tried to warn them, they're not here. So I ran back to jane and gail

and it's now hot, like standing too close to a campfire because this tree is just a blaze and I've had flip flops, a pair of shorts, a sweatshirt on. I had my reading glasses and my wallet and my keys. I joke a man never leaves the

house without his wallet, his keys and I said to jane, should I get a car and by this time there was a large ornamental shrub against our garage and it was on fire and James like no. And I'm like, okay, well then we've got to go

by this time, embers are flying through the air. Big embers gale said to jane, you know, mommy, I'm getting hit by these embers and she she told him, you know, pull your sleeves down. He had a long sleeve sweat your pull your sleeve down and hold

your sleeves in the palm of your hands to cover your arms. Just thinking we gotta get out of here. We're gonna walk down the hill, we live on the top of the hill uh off of Parker Hill road. And of course my wife is in a

walking boot because she had ruptured her achilles tendon that summer and she was still recovering. So she had a walking boot and her complaint is after the fire. We ran out with the clothes on our backs. She didn't even have a pair of shoes. She had

one tennis shoe, she didn't have a matching pair of shoes. So she's limping, walking with a walking boot. And I never was scared because I was just, most of the time I was confused. And then I was just thinking ahead like to get the car, no,

okay, we gotta get out of here. And so I was never scared. But at that point is we're walking down the hill, I could see down a ravine or gully off to my left and I could see this jagged line of grass fire, you know that

you see in a news report helicopter where they're looking and I could see it and I was like oh this is this is more than just a campfire in our yard that's spread, this is something big. And I thought to myself, I can't pull up the

right word. I was scared or I just I had the thought I'm gonna have to tell my son to run ahead because we can't keep up with him. I thought of this fire if we're gonna be in the middle of this fire, I just gotta tell

him to run and just run. And just then um the car pulls out of this side road uh there's a private road and this car pulls out and we're like stop, please help us. And very rarely in your life do you like frantically like scream help

and mean it and like help us and they stopped and we're like you know and I don't, they just said get in and they had a four door car and I just remember their backseat was full of frame pictures, a couple of boxes so they had

had about five minutes to throw all their stuff in their car and they're like get in and I remember like you know I'm tall and I had trouble getting in, were just like laying on top of their stuff and like, you know, what's going on there,

Like there's a fire and we're, you know, we just found out we're getting out of here and like, can you take me to my office? Because I had my keys and I had my wallet and they drove us uh, to our office and we're like, hey,

um, we introduced ourselves and there kevin and Maureen and I've since, you know, tracked them down and we've exchanged some emails and at some point I want to meet them face to face and thank them because they rescued us. They, they were the good Samaritans who,

who helped us. You know, my son's 10 and I want him to watch this, be able to watch this someday, 20 or 30 years from now through adult eyes and I think he might get a glimpse or an understanding of how much jane and I love

him and how much we, we really focused exclusively after the fire to make things normal, starting with getting this house and, and just, and, and deciding we're not gonna be victims. He's not a victim. And, and you know, knock on wood. I think we succeeded in,

you know, it's, it's a work in progress