Beginning, Again: After the fire, a life rebuilt

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second in a four-part series, “Beginning, Again” about people who moved to this area during their retirement years. Today’s piece is about Kate Hale, now of Easthampton, who lost her California home to wildfire in October 2017. The third and fourth installments will run on the following two Mondays, July 27 and Aug. 3.

A large planter, crafted to resemble a goat, stands in the living room of Kate Hale’s Easthampton apartment.   

The planter wasn’t expensive, but it has value. Her mother bought it years ago, and Hale, now 83, kept it at her own house in Santa Rosa, California. 

It’s one of the few possessions that survived the October 2017 wildfire that destroyed Hale’s home. She found it amid the rubble when she returned to a charred landscape of chimneys, burned-out cars, and small, flickering flames.

In July 2022, she brought the planter with her when she relocated to Easthampton to live near one of her three sons, David Lopes, of  Belchertown. It’s a link to her family, to the house she lived in for 19 years, and to the fire that upended her life. 

A race to safety 

Details of that night — Oct. 8, 2017 — have stayed with her. The fierce, loud wind. The intense orange sky. The sudden loss of power. The banging that might have been someone pounding on her door. 

She remembers getting out of bed and hurrying outside. She remembers what she was wearing: nightgown, bathrobe, slippers. She remembers someone telling her that fire was coming over the mountain and they had to get out. She remembers grabbing her glasses and her purse, and driving with a neighbor to a mall parking lot where others who had fled their homes awaited news.

“It never occurred to me the house would burn,” she said. But when she and a friend went back a day or so later to see for themselves, Hale barely recognized her street: “My entire neighborhood was gone.” 

The Tubbs Fire, named for the street in Calistoga where it started, burned for several weeks before being fully contained. It killed 22 people, burned 37,000 acres of land, and destroyed 5,500 structures, according to the state’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. At the time it was called the worst wildfire in California’s history. 

The department concluded that the blaze was caused by the failure of a private electrical system next to a residential property. According to author Abrahm Lustgarten’s account in “On the Move: The Overheating Earth and the Uprooting of America,” climate scientists believe the Tubbs fire was intensified by a collision of climate-related changes, including drought, rising temperatures and high winds, that fed its extraordinary power and rapid spread.

Loss and kindness

In the immediate aftermath, Hale got word to her three adult sons to say she was OK. She contacted her brother who lived about an hour away and arranged to stay with him. She joined other traumatized survivors who lined up for crucial emergency assistance from the Red Cross and FEMA. The slog of dealing with government bureaucracies, insurance companies, and banks got underway.

Throughout weeks that became months, she and countless others were sustained by donated meals, clothing, bedding and shelter. “The kindness of so many people was overwhelming,” she said.  

But losses took their toll. Hale lost photos, letters and family records. Uprooted neighbors lost touch. Community activities and daily routines fell apart. Hale, a former elementary school art teacher, had to let go of the volunteer work she’d loved at an area botanical garden.

“I felt like my identity, my history was gone,” she said.   

Then in her 70s, Hale didn’t want to take on the burden of rebuilding, even with the help of an insurance settlement. She moved first to a rental in Marin County for two years, then back to another rental in Santa Rosa. But with many buyers competing for scarce housing, she couldn’t find anything affordable that met her needs. And there was always that nagging thought in the back of her mind: “When is the next fire?”

Several years later, she still at times felt unmoored. Put simply, she said, “my life in Santa Rosa was never the same.”

When her son David broached the subject of moving to western Massachusetts, Hale was ready to listen. She’d grown up in Connecticut and in 1960 spent a year as a boarder at the Northampton School for Girls, which later merged with Easthampton’s Williston Academy.

Her memories of Northampton, though distant, were good ones. She liked the idea of going back east, though she knew there was a significant downside. Moving would take her farther away from her other two sons, a grandson, and from her brother and sister, in California. 

A lengthy online search led her to an Easthampton apartment that  checked important boxes: a rent that fit her budget; a convenient location on an attractive street; a welcoming landlady who allowed cats; a yard where she could garden.  

In July 2022, she and David, who had come to help her pack up,  boarded a cross-country flight. Hale felt ready: “I was upbeat and excited.”

Once in Easthampton she settled in, grateful for her landlady’s assistance and for the helping hand offered by a woman she’d known from boarding school. Both women, she said, helped her find her bearings.

At the suggestion of her landlady, Hale sought help from a counselor at the Northampton Senior Center who guided her through the thicket of transferring her medical records and insurance to Massachusetts. The assistance from the SHINE program, which stands for Serving the Health Insurance Needs of Everyone, was invaluable. “She spent a lot of time with me,” Hale said. “It felt like all that worry and stress was finally being lifted off my back.”

Her first winter was “kind of lonely,” she said, in part because a bad hip impaired her mobility. After surgery in 2023, she joined the Northampton Neighbors Monday Walking Group, which meets for 1- to-4-mile outings in all four seasons.

“That made a big difference,” she said. “I got exercise, which I needed. I met interesting people from very different backgrounds and we’ve gone to beautiful places.” She has savored New England’s seasons, from the lush greenery of summer to the quiet of winter snowfalls.

To this day, the smell of smoke can set her on edge, and she still sleeps with her purse next to her bed in case she ever needs to leave in haste. She misses her family members on the west coast, but enjoys their visits. She misses seeing flowers in winter and the Meyer lemons and rosemary she grew on her deck and in her garden in Santa Rosa.

But the fire finally feels like a long time ago. From her apartment, she can see Mount Tom in the distance, always there. “I love looking at it, and I love Easthampton because of its friendly, kind people. I do feel safer, calmer, and much, much happier.”

She has regained a sense of place, of belonging.

“The fire,” she said, “had really destroyed that.”