Santa Rosa Fire Chief Tony Gossner stood in the middle of dense smoke as a fire barreled into the city.
The wind was intense, he could hear explosions, and flames were everywhere.
“I had fire behind me. I had fire to the left. I had fire in front of me,” he said. “It was like that until the sun came up.”
The Tubbs Fire broke out just before 10 p.m. on Oct. 8, one in a series of blazes that ignited in Sonoma and Napa counties. Within hours, it had reached Santa Rosa.
More than a dozen large fires were burning in eight counties in Northern California that morning, a number that increased to 21 in the following days.
By last week, officials confirmed 42 people had died and 7,700 structures were destroyed.