Residents return to find homes reduced to rubble after California fire

In the city of Camarillo, California, on Old Coach Drive, the smell of smoke lay heavy in the air. The fire that erupted this week had hopscotched around the neighborhood, leaving some homes relatively unscathed but reducing several to charred piles of wood and rubble.

Kathleen Scott and her sister Tonia Wall surveyed what was left of their two-bedroom home: layers of ash and the metal outlines of what was once the washing machine and dryer.

Bent over the earth where a bedroom would have been, the two used a small garden spade to dig through the remains. They hoped they might find some mementos belonging to Scott’s daughter, Jacquelyn, who died from a rare neurological condition at age 4.

“We’re not expecting to find anything huge,” said Scott, 57. “We’re just sifting through stuff, just to see, just in case, not to have any regrets.”

As crews continued to battle the Mountain fire in Southern California that destroyed numerous homes, some residents were returning to burn areas Friday to take stock of their losses.

The blaze, which broke out Wednesday morning in Ventura County, has torn through more than 20,000 acres, destroyed over 130 structures and is just 7% contained. Those affected have felt the need to salvage what they can, to try to see up close what still feels so incomprehensible.

Scott moved to the area four years ago, and Wall, 54, eventually moved in with her. Their house on Old Coach Drive, where neighbors had come together over the summer for a block party, was on the same property as their landlord’s home. That, too, was now gone.

The fire, fueled by fierce wind gusts, spread so fast when it erupted Wednesday that Scott had time to grab only a few clothes and photographs.

But perhaps they might find some mementos. As they sifted through the wreckage Friday, the sisters were delighted to find three Christmas ornaments, including one that had belonged to Jacquelyn.

As renters, Scott, an aesthetician, said she and her sister felt they were better off than others. “It’s just devastating what our neighbors are going through,” she said.

Among them was Gerardo Arias, 41, who fought back tears Friday as he stood outside the four-bedroom home he had moved into just six months ago with his wife and three daughters.

They had been living in Oxnard, California, but needed more space for their family and Arias’ growing plumbing business. They thought they had landed in a serene, bucolic environment, complete with picturesque canyons and hiking trails.

“We were planning to make this a dream house,” he said. “It was a fixer-upper that we got. We had just remodeled our bathrooms, our rooms, and we were waiting for plans to do our kitchen.”

The dream had become splintered heaps of debris. The water in the swimming pool had turned a murky black. The trampoline had been flung aside in the backyard. Bicycles were scorched, as were their all-terrain vehicles.

“It’s hard,” Arias said. “I mean, I don’t think any of us expected this.” He said he did not want his children to see what was left of their home.

When the fire started, Arias’ employees helped load up plumbing equipment and drove out the company vans parked at his house. They had been unable to grab much else.

On Friday, Arias spent some time searching for a bracelet that had belonged to his oldest daughter, as well as a cross – both of them gifts from his mother. He found neither.

The fire was initially fueled by extreme weather, including wind gusts of up to 80 mph, troubling firefighters as they navigated the rugged terrain. Those winds slowed Thursday and softened even more Friday as crews also received a slight reprieve from ocean breezes that brought some moisture to the air.

Bill Paterson was among those in Camarillo whose home had somehow been spared. His next-door neighbor’s lot, however, had been whittled down to little more than the remnants of a chimney and some patio furniture.

Before the fire, Paterson, 85, had put his five-bedroom home of two decades up for sale. A retired lawyer, he had planned to move into a retirement home.

“He feels enormously lucky,” his daughter Tina Malka, 61, said Friday as she pointed to a charred wooden fence in the yard near a singed avocado tree. The heat from the fire also appeared to have cracked a bedroom window.

“Thank God it didn’t happen in the middle of the night – my dad can’t drive,” Malka said.

She gathered up a coffee maker, some furniture and artwork, belongings that would help make her father feel comfortable once he moved into his retirement home.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.