Residents of Santa Rosa, California, returning to Coffey Park, almost destroyed by fire forest fires, saw the charred wheelchair, standing on the street near the house-boarding house for the elderly. Next was a Walker, their owners are gone too.
Everyone thought that women from boarding school died. But they survived – thanks to the guy who was younger than even their grandchildren.
Irene Lopez, Colette Seifert, Nancy Armstrong, Joan Byers and Irene Birkhead lived in a house called «Kathleen rose gardens». Of them, 86-year-old Irene Lopez was the youngest. A 23-year-old Mario Monte, a student nurse, worked part time, helping women, who were called «my lady», – writes the San Francisco Chronicle.
The night of the fire storm swept to Santa Rosa, Monte was the only employee of the Board, remaining there for the night. His mother was a few blocks away, and my sister also worked in the house, went to a concert in San Diego.
Mario was awakened by the noise of the wind, and then he saw a bright light outside the door Irene Lopez, which was weird. He opened the door and saw the glow. The whole sky was orange from the raging fire.
«With me in the house five ladies who don’t go or don’t go. The only thing I could think to get him. I would’ve never left them,» recalls Mario. «If they died, it would have followed me to the end of life.»
He called 911 several times before they responded. Mario heard in the tube, as other managers keep saying the same word: «Fire.»
Empty wheelchair hints of fire’s drama in Santa Rosa https://t.co/1msEk18PzN #sanfrancisco pic.twitter.com/XIBn1hSfby
— San Francisco News (@SFnewsnow) October 19, 2017
The Manager said that this district has sent the police but to wait for Monte couldn’t. He grabbed Irene, put her in a chair and taken outside, then returned to pull from the house of four women. They are barely able to rise themselves out of bed (one of the women suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, the other from senile dementia), and in the meantime the flames devoured block after block.
When the house came to the police, the adjacent building was underway. But Mario managed to get everyone and even the dog — a Yorkshire Terrier named Thor.
Together with the police they put women in two cars and jerked at the Hopper Avenue.
«I thought it was a dream. The house burned down, he was just ashes,» says Irene Lopez.
That night in SONOMA County from fire killed 23 people, most of them elderly. Some were found dead in their beds. But the women of «Kathleen rose gardens» was Mario Monte.
