A year after the Inverness Ridge fire, Inverness Park architect Richard Ley next week will probably be the first fire victim to move into a rebuilt home.
Forty-five homes on the ridge were burned in a 12,354-acre fire that began Oct. 3 last year.
Because Ley, 58, was one of the first Paradise Ranch Estates homeowners to begin rebuilding after the fire, he was the guinea pig as the county figured out how to streamline permit procedures for resurrecting homes.
As an architect seeking county permits, "I have been submitting drawings for 28 years," said Ley, "but this was the worst. It took three months. [Then] they went back to the old method, and the plans were done in three weeks.
"I was kind of the lead sled dog, and consequently got the snow in my face," Ley said. He began rebuilding his house in April.
Ley said he was a "mellow guy" before the fire, but when driven to rebuild his house, any obstacle became "bullsh-t." When the county told him he couldn't have electricity for weeks, he bought a generator.
Ley said he became obsessed with rebuilding his home within a year, and there wasn't a minute he didn't spend completing some detail of reconstruction. "I don't know if [rebuilding] was therapy," he added. "I probably won't know for years."
Ley (pronounced Lay) saved only his dog Maggie, a few clothes, camera equipment and his original home's drawings, when forced to evacuated ahead of the onrushing flames.
"It sound[ed] like a freight train coming through, and then the house explode[d]," Ley said. The heat was so intense that "firefighters got into the hot tub next door until the heat wave had passed. They were out of water."
The next morning, Ley at Millerton Point used a telescope to look across Tomales Bay at the ridge.
"I could see the planting boxes on the other side of where my house should have been," Ley said. "I threw my hands up in the air. I couldn't believe it. I asked, 'Why?'
"You learn a lot about yourself, that you don't need that to survive," he said. "I was sad, angry, and became direct at the same time."
Insurance covered the cost of rebuilding, but Ley had to negotiate a deal so that he instead of the insurance company could choose the co
ntractor. Ley said he was fortunate to include the words "guaranteed replacement cost" in his policy, simplifying the way he could buy new clothing and furniture.
This week, walking through his home with unpacked appliances in the living room, Ley opened a new closet door. It was empty except for two rolled-up Persian-style rugs he had just bought.
He had already unrolled them once, anxious to spread them on a new, wooden floor.
Pianist Sarah Cahill will launch a new Dance Palace piano-concert series on Sunday, Oct. 6, at 4 p.m. with a program tracing the influence of 20th-century music pioneers such as Henry Cowell and Ruth Crawford on classical composers writing today.