Book Talk - Inflamed: Abandonment, Heroism and Outrage in Wine Country’s Deadliest Firestorm
Book Talk - Inflamed: Abandonment, Heroism and Outrage in Wine Country’s Deadliest Firestorm
Sebastopol journalist takes on a local scandal with national ramifications
The new book, Inflamed, by Anne Belden and Paul Gullixson, is the story of the abandonment of more than 100 senior citizens at a luxury senior living complex during the Tubbs Fire in 2017.
You probably remember this scandal, and perhaps you’re wondering what more there is to say about it.
Turns out, there’s a lot more to say, and it’s all fascinating. Inflamed is a real page turner—a nonfiction book that reads like a suspense novel.
The most gripping part of the book is the hour-by-hour account of the desperate attempts by family members and others to reach and rescue their loved ones from the Varenna/Villa Capri senior living complex in the path of the fire.
The book then chronicles the battle for accountability against the facility’s powerful owners, who tried to deny what happened and silence their critics.
Belden lives in Sebastopol and directs the journalism program at SRJC. She and former Press Democrat editorial director (now director of communication for the County of Sonoma) Paul Gullixson spent three years researching the different phases of the disaster—from the botched evacuation to the investigations and lawsuits that followed.
Inflamed was originally conceived as a series of articles, Belden said, but as the information poured in—from interviews and a thousand pages of depositions—she began to realize she had a book on her hands. She tapped Gullixson, an old colleague and friend, to co-research and co-write the book with her.
The heroes of the book are a handful of family members who came to evacuate their elderly parents and ended up saving dozens of other residents, whisking the last people out as flames began to devour one of the buildings. (Two of the heroes of the book, Kathy and Mark Allen, live in Sebastopol.) A small group of caregivers and maintenance workers also risked their lives to save residents of the facility.
Where was the management team as the Tubbs Fire bore down on Fountain Grove, where Varenna and Villa Capri were located? One made a brief appearance then drove off. The others were nowhere to be found.
Belden said the story of what happened that night—and after—has broad ramifications.
“Beyond the story about heroes who stepped up that night, beyond the story about what makes some people step up while others do not, this is a cautionary tale of what can go wrong in an era when assisted living homes are rapidly growing in number,” she said. “It's a cash cow of an industry, a $76 billion industry, and we have 10,000 Baby Boomers turning 65 every day.”
“So we have this convergence of three things,” she said. “We have this an largely unregulated assisted living industry - not federally regulated. We have baby boomers turning 65 and moving into places like this. And we have these climate disasters that are increasing. They're bigger and badder. We are seeing floods, heat domes, hurricanes, tornadoes, and freezes across the country in places that have never had them. If this kind of botched evacuation can happen at the highest end assisted living facility in Sonoma County, what’s going to happen down the road or across the state at other places that are equally unprepared for a power outage or a disaster. Many of these places are just not prepared.”
The villains of the book (and that’s not too strong a word) are local businessman William Gallaher, the founder of Aegis Assisted Living, and a few other top executives of the company that owned and operated Varenna and Villa Capri. The actions taken by the facilities’ corporate owners at every step – from disaster to aftermath--can best be summed as “Deny, deny, deny.” But Gallaher went further, actively trying to silence his critics by suing the Press Democrat for their coverage and financing a million-dollar recall campaign against District Attorney Jill Ravitch, who investigated the botched fire evacuation.
Both these legal efforts failed, but the threat of legal action is something Belden worries about.
“We have thought about that, because he's very litigious, whether it's justified or not,” Belden said. “There's a reason we have almost 40 pages of endnotes at the end of the book. There's a reason that we documented a lot from sworn depositions. We also had the entire manuscript vetted by the same First Amendment attorney who defended the Press Democrat from a libel suit against Gallaher. We had to pay a lot of money out of pocket for that process. But in the end, he was confident that we were being meticulous and very careful. But yeah, we do worry about that because it is a concern.”
The book is rich in detail, and paring that back for the sake of the narrative was part of the challenge of writing the book.
“There were so many things, some rich details and rich facts, that we had to delete to be able to tell the story. We were conscious of trying to create a narrative, as well as document the story. That was a constant tension. I was a little bit more on the side of ‘But this happened; they have to know this!’ Paul was a little bit more pushing the storytelling, and we kind of met in the middle.”
Belden credits contributing author/editor Lauren Spates for helping them thread this needle and shape the book.
What’s Belden’s next move? Aside from her work with SRJC, she said she’s eager to get back to writing fiction, her other love. She has an unpublished novel that her agent is trying to sell, and she’s looking forward to getting back to a project that isn’t so research driven.
“I'm looking forward to going back to fiction, where I can make things up,” she said.
Are you a paid subscriber? You can meet Belden and Spates at an afternoon gathering and reading at Dale Dougherty’s home on Sunday, Dec. 10, at 3 pm. Seating is limited so if you’re interested, RSVP to sebastopoltimes@gmail.com. Address and directions will be emailed to you upon receiving your RSVP.