Journey's End: For North Bay fire victims, it's hardly over

SANTA ROSA, Calif. (KGO) -- People like to say there is no place like home. But when home for months has been a single room in Santa Rosa's Sandman Motel, in which the bathtub now serves as a kitchen sink, John Triglia might challenge the concept. "My grandmother used to say there is a place for everything. Well, here there is no place for everything..."

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John used to live in the Journey's End Mobile Home Park, where the Tubbs Fire killed two, burned 120 mobile homes, and left 44 of them still standing.

They are condemned and, without insurance money, would be prohibitively expensive to move for both John and, his neighbor Michelle Trammel, who shared a unit with her mother, Rachel.

There is no going back.

"No water, no electricity, and they just turned the sewer off," said Rachel.

"I just want this to be over with," added Michelle. They want to move to Tacoma, Washington, "...but we can't afford it."

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And moving her mother, who has emphysema and a broken hip, would be difficult. "Where is all the money people donated," asked Michelle. "A hundred million dollars should be enough for everybody."

Both Michelle and John hope that someone might buy them out of their mobile homes, but the former owner of Journey's End gave the place up. A developer has plans for low-income housing, but they will take time. For now, Michelle, her mother, and John get by on fire relief, but after six months....living like this takes a toll.

"People say where do you live and I say that I don't know. It's a motel. But I'm not really living," said John. "I exist."

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