Wine Country fire: Huddled in pool amid blaze, wife dies in husbands arms
As fire raged all around them and smoke choked their lungs, Carmen and Armando Berriz had no choice but to cling to one another while immersed in a swimming pool behind their rented house on the north edge of Santa Rosa.
They held on through the long hours of the night, until the flames that had destroyed the house on the forested cul-de-sac finally began to recede, until the heat was no longer unbearable. And just before daybreak, just as the worst of the inferno had passed, Carmen Berriz stopped breathing. She died in the arms of her husband of 55 years.
http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Forced-by-Wine-Country-fire-into-a-swimming-pool-12274789.php
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On a personal note, I was so shocked and saddened when I heard about this. I grew up living across the street from this family from the age of 13 until the parents sold the house in the mid-late 90s and moved to a smaller one a mile or two away.
X-posted in California
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That these are people that you knew I'm sure makes it that much more painful for you and I'm truly sorry for that. 
I had to do a double take on the names because I had just read the story of a different couple who survived the fire by jumping in a pool of a neighbor's house.
