Residents return to see what the fire left behind and to say goodbye

For two weeks, Leslie Miller desperately tried to recover only one thing: the urn containing the ashes of her daughter, who died in early adulthood.

For days, she wondered if he had survived the fire that destroyed much of Altadena, California. What if, she feared, she couldn’t get home before the rains came and washed her daughter’s ashes into an indistinguishable pile of rubble and dust? ?

On Tuesday, Mrs. Miller returned to her home for the first time since it was gutted by the Eaton fire two weeks ago. She ran out of the car and immediately peered through the gaping hole where the stained-glass front door had once been. She looked at the gaping pile of gray rubble and saw this: the white urn, still sitting on the back patio on a metal table that had also survived.

The bonsai tree that had been on top of the urn disappeared and the ceramic vessel broke when Mrs. Miller picked it up. However, the ashes of her daughter Allison, who died four years ago at the age of 20 from congenital heart failure, are still there. Mrs. Miller placed the urn in a cardboard box and prepared to load it into the car.

“It’s over now,” she said, turning away from the rubble of her home. “Take it away.”

This week, Altadena residents returned to their neighborhood for the first time to sift through the ruins of their lives. Most of them knew the condition of their homes before they arrived based on damage assessments, aerial photos and word of mouth. They came to see for themselves the extent of their losses and determine if they could salvage anything from the sea of ​​rubble that had fallen to them.

Some donned respirators, white Tyvek suits, gloves and goggles to protect themselves from the toxic chemicals and dangerous dust that rose into the air every time they dug a shovel, stick or finger into what was left. The miraculous discovery of wedding rings and family heirlooms was rare. The most common household items that survived included pottery and cast iron skillets.

“You know, everything is special,” said Shelan Joseph, 54, standing in front of the fireplace in a hazmat suit, digging through a tangle of melted glass and ash left over from Christmas decorations she didn’t have time to take down. “I just wanted to come and see what we could save from life. And I think maybe just some closure.

Some saw dark humor in the wreck. Mrs. Joseph’s husband, Vernon Patterson, 63, gestured to a chair near the pool at the back of the house.

“We have been trying to get rid of this chair forever,” he said. “And there are no scratches or anything.”

Some approached the rubble with a sense of distance and practicality. For others, returning home was a shock.

Lou Avery Douglas, 26, returned to Altadena and parked in his usual spot in front of the remains of his apartment complex, Mariposa Townhomes. It looked as if the fire had melted the building and everything in it, turning it the same pale ash color. He identified his unit only by a bright red patio table that survived the flames.

He started sobbing.

Mr. Douglas and his roommate, Grace Colcord, dug through the ashes in a daze. She then exclaimed that she had found one of his mugs, decorated with a rainbow and the words “May your day be filled with happiness.”

“I was just overjoyed at that moment,” Douglas said. “One of my things survived. Even if everything else disappears, I have one thing.

Other discoveries were painful. Mr. Douglas recognized the outlines of his cookbooks, still lying where he had left them. But they all burned in the same shade of very light gray, “and when you touch them, they turn to ash and fly away – almost like a ghost,” he said.

Mat and Kate Stovall were out of town when a fire destroyed their home where they had lived for almost a decade. They mourned from afar, then returned on Tuesday wearing Tyvek suits and respirators because they had to see the loss firsthand.

They were delighted that the fire damaged but did not kill a two-meter cactus next to the house. Mrs. Stovall saved him from insects several times, which required “a lot of scrubbing with a brush and a little washing-up liquid.” That day, she and her husband cut off several wrinkled, still green and plump limbs that they hoped to use to propagate the cactus.

The strange fire behavior could be seen in the dilapidated home of 52-year-old Debra Tuttle, where puddles of molten aluminum and brass lay on the ground and water pipes were bent near charred kitchen appliances.

A district official taped a red piece of paper to the remains of her home’s facade and declared it “DANGEROUS.”

A few days after the fire, Mrs. Tuttle’s mother, a ceramicist who lived with her in the house, wondered whether this or that valuable item might have survived. Mrs. Tuttle found a porcelain bell and a beautifully glazed mug, both from Japan; a purple vase with a melted piece of glass; and some of her mother’s silver wedding plates, now blackened and charred.

Before driving away, she looked around the “unrecognizable mass” of wreckage and pointed out a microwave oven, a small fish grill and a muffin tin.

“All these little things are a bit like finding old friends,” Ms. Tuttle said. “But on the other hand they tell you: My time is up.”

Soumya Karlamangla reporting contributed.