SANTA ROSA — In the middle of the torched wasteland that was once their neighborhood — at the bottom of a pool of black, sludgy water — Logan Hertel and his friends spotted a tiny miracle.

Within the toxic-looking water flecked with ash and studded with charred chunks of wood, there was movement. A dozen goldfish had somehow survived the raging inferno that devastated entire communities, killed 44 people and destroyed almost 9,000 homes and buildings.

Now, more than two months after the Wine Country fires, Hertel and his friends and family haven’t given up trying to reunite the fish with their owners. It’s their attempt to bring some comfort to people who lost their Santa Rosa home and likely most of their possessions.

“I could picture myself in their shoes,” said Hertel, a 21-year-old student at Santa Rosa Junior College, “and knowing that if I lost everything, even knowing something this small is alive would be kind of important to me.”

After 21 blazes ravaged the North Bay in October, hope has sprung up from the area’s ruined neighborhoods in surprising places. There was Pilot the cat, who escaped the flames, was rescued by a Good Samaritan and ended up reuniting with his overjoyed family that lost him a decade earlier. And as Christmas approached, Santa Rosa residents decorated the wreckage of their homes with heart-warming strings of lights, trees and festive ornaments. Those stories — and that of a dozen miracle goldfish trying to find their way home — are testaments to the resilient nature of those who lost so much in the fires.

The Tubbs fire raged through Santa Rosa the night of Oct. 8, and two days later Hertel and his friends slipped behind the law enforcement barricades to explore the wreckage left behind. As they surveyed the damage, they saw another friend walking down the street carrying a bowl of water. Some fish were still alive in the ruins of a burned-down house, the friend said, and he was rescuing them. So the group followed him to the intersection of Parker Hill Road and Parker Hill Court in the Hidden Valley neighborhood.

There, in the midst of a field of rubble that presumably had once been a backyard, was a bathtub that had been set up as an outdoor pond to house a few run-of-the-mill goldfish — the kind a child might win in a game at the fair. But the water was murky and full of debris, and a few dead fish floated at the top. The surviving fish, likely starving, were eating pieces of ash that had fallen into the tub. Hertel knew they didn’t have long.

So he and his friends scooped them into the bowl they’d brought, got in the car and rushed to Hertel’s house, where they transferred them to a large kitchen pot.

Now the rescued fish are living in a big plastic tub at Hertel’s father’s house on Mission Boulevard in Santa Rosa — an area untouched by fire — where their makeshift aquarium has been outfitted with a water filter and some rocks. And the fish rescuers want nothing more than to reunite the aquatic pets with their rightful owners.

But their efforts so far have been unsuccessful.

It’s not as simple as knocking on someone’s front door in a neighborhood where most of the front doors have burned down and the residents have scattered, holing up at the homes of friends and family members — or in hotels, shelters and rental properties.

Tony Facciano, a friend of Hertel’s who was part of the rescue mission, recently came close to giving the story a happy ending — he saw the couple who lived at the house and told them their fish had survived.

“They were surprised,” Facciano said. “The wife started crying and stuff. She was pretty stoked.”

But Facciano’s cell phone was dead. And in the chaos of the moment, they didn’t exchange phone numbers. He’s trying to find the couple again.

So is Hertel’s mother, 57-year-old Lisa Hertel, who on Tuesday made signs with her number and a photo of her son rescuing the goldfish and taped them near the rubble of the home where the fish were found.

She and her son and daughter live in the Skyhawk neighborhood of Santa Rosa, 3 or 4 miles from that home. They evacuated after 2 a.m. on Oct. 9, when they could see the glow of the Tubbs fire headed toward them. But their house got through the fire unscathed, and now they feel drawn to help neighbors who weren’t so lucky.

When Lisa Hertel learned that two families she’s known for years lost their homes, she called them up and offered to share the photos she has of all of their children together as kids. The families were elated, Hertel said, because their cherished pictures from that time had burned. Related Articles From ‘for sale,’ to burned lots: Inside Santa Rosa’s ongoing struggle

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Those small kindnesses are extra important in a neighborhood where Hertel says many residents still struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder brought on by the anguish of running from the fires. A strong gust of wind or the sound of a helicopter is enough to put people on edge, she said.

So even though goldfish are small in the grand scheme of things, to someone who lost everything, they might be huge, she said.

“Something actually did survive,” she added, “and somebody cared enough to get the fish and save them.”

Are these your goldfish?

If you own the goldfish rescued at the intersection of Parker Hill Road and Parker Hill Court in Santa Rosa — or know who does — call Logan Hertel at (707) 508-9381.