Resilience Roundtable: Pete Parkinson, AICP

Pete Parkinson’s planning career has spanned not only decades but
also various California counties. As a result, he’s familiar with a
wide range of hazards. In the fourth episode of the APA Podcast
series Resilience Roundtable, he and host Rich Roths, AICP, discuss
many of them, including earthquakes, floods, landslides, and
wildfires. Pete unfortunately has a very personal experience
dealing with the latter, as he and his family lost their home in
October 2017 when multiple fires tore through Sonoma County, as
well as Lake, Napa, Mendocino, and Solano counties. His story
focuses on the Tubbs Fire, which began in Calistoga but spread into
Santa Rosa, even jumping Highway 101 in the process. It destroyed
the Coffey Park neighborhood and ultimately the Santa Rosa mobile
home park where Pete's mother-in-law lived. (The Tubbs Fire is now
the second-most destructive fire in California history after the
November 2018 Camp Fire, which caused 85 deaths and destroyed
18,804 structures in Butte County.) Pete is now working as a
consultant on the new multifamily development at the site of the
former mobile home park. The veteran planner ends his heartrending
account by sharing the life-saving lessons he learned during and
after the experience.