Sara Spaulding-Phillips sent a ‘goodbye’ text to her daughter, Victoria, after she and her husband, Sam Kimbles, found themselves trapped in the wildfires consuming their Santa Rosa, California neighborhood
An elderly California couple thought they were going to die when wildfires consumed their neighborhood.
Sara Spaulding-Phillips and her husband, Sam Kimbles, both of whom are in their ’70s and 80s,’ found that a tree was blocking their driveway as they tried to escape their Santa Rosa home with their cat on October 9, SF Gate reports.
They could not make it over the tree and began to contact their close family members.
A text sent by Spaulding-Phillips at 2.48am reads: ‘This may be goodbye! I love you we are surrounded by fire stuck on Pinecroft with trees across the road. If you get this call 911.’
Victoria Phillips-Larson, one of the couple’s five children, saw the message and immediately alerted the rest of the family.
Family members called rescue services, fire shelters and local news stations in an effort to save them.
Spaulding-Phillips and Kimbles, who are in their ’70s and 80s,’ could not make it around a fallen tree in their driveway in the early morning hours of October 9
Spaulding-Phillips (left, sitting) and Kimbles (center-right, sitting) thought they might die in the fire. ‘We said goodbye to each other,’ Spaulding-Phillips, a former therapist and a writer, said
Meanwhile, other family members – including a son in Switzerland – called the couple to comfort them during what they thought might be their final moments.
‘We said goodbye to each other,’ Spaulding-Phillips, a former therapist and a writer, told SF Gate. ‘We said, “It’s been a good life.”‘
But a California Highway Patrolman figured out that he was near where the couple was, and with the help of a fellow officer rescued Spaulding-Phillips and Kimbles around 4.30am.
The couple took shelter the following night in a Santa Rosa shelter.
The next day, Kimbles, a psychologist, went to work helping people who had lost their property deal with the trauma.
The couple was saved by California Highway Patrol officers at around 4.30am, a bit more than 1.5 hours after Spaulding-Phillips texted their daughter
Before and after aerial shots show the devastation wrought on the couple’s home at left and what their neighborhood looked like pre-wildfire at right
Spaulding-Phillips and Kimbles are pictured with Ken Enger and Jonathan Sloat, the officers who saved them
Victoria, their daughter, noted on a GoFundMe page for the couple: ‘Sara and Sam are in the “Golden Years” of their lives. Their home for the last 20+ years has been the center of our family.
‘When we were in their home we always got the feeling of living in a glorious tree house. The decks overlooked grape vines, rolling hills, and massive trees.’
Victoria added: ‘Their home contained the collective life’s work for them both. Now it lies amongst the ruins of their once idyllic neighborhood.’
Steps lead up to a destroyed home (not that of Spaulding-Phillips and Kimbles) in Santa Rosa, California on Monday, October 9