Los Angeles fires: ‘Everything is gone’ – Agony on a tight-knit street reduced to ash

Professional chef Daron Anderson always tells people he was “born in the kitchen” – quite literally.

The 45-year-old was delivered by homebirth at 295 West Las Flores Drive, where he lived with his mother until this week.

On Thursday, he stepped over charred debris where his kitchen once stood in Altadena, a tight-knit neighbourhood of north-eastern Los Angeles.

He was looking for his cast-iron pans in the hope they might have survived the blaze, one of several historic fires burning in the area that have killed at least 16 people and decimated multiple communities and left thousands homeless.

Across the street – at number 296 – his friend Rachel’s house also sits in ashes. The house next door – 281 – where he’d enjoyed family parties, is gone.

About three blocks away, on Devirian Place, where his girlfriend lived, some neighbours tried to fend off the roaring flames that would consume their homes with garden hoses.

Now they, too, are searching for treasured items in the rubble, after fire obliterated this entire community nestled in the shadow of the San Gabriel Mountains.

It all started on Tuesday night.

The Santa Ana winds had been fierce much of the day.

Daron was in his front yard just after 18:00 local time trying to secure items from flying away.

Across the street at 296 West Las Flores Drive, Rachel Gillespie was taking down Christmas decorations, concerned about her plastic icicles and patio furniture.

They exchanged worried glances. “This doesn’t look good, does it?” she remarked.

At the time, it was only wind that concerned them.

They had no idea that one of the two worst wildfires in LA history had just ignited a few miles away, part of a days-long nightmare that at its peak would see six blazes simultaneously threatening America’s second-largest city

The Eaton fire that tore through Altadena has now ravaged more than 14,000 acres, destroying thousands of homes and businesses, and left 11 dead. By the weekend, Eaton remained only 15% contained.

In west LA, the Palisades fire, which had started that morning, would go on to burn through more than 23,000 acres, reducing much of a vibrant community to ash, and killing at least five people.

Daron’s next-door neighbour at house 281, Dillon Akers, was at work at a donut stand in the Topanga mall – about 40 miles away – as smoke started filling their neighbourhood.

The 20-year-old rushed back when he heard the news, only to find his corner of north-west Altadena pitch black and members of his family frantically evacuating their home.

His uncle leapt over their white picket fence to save precious seconds as he stuffed items into the back of his car.

For the next two hours, Dillon did the same, gathering food, medicine, clothes and toiletries. In the rush, he mislaid his keys, and lost 30 minutes searching in the smoky dark with torches until he found them blown against a fence.

During the desperate search, he kept telling himself that local authorities would be able to handle the fire that was roaring down the mountain towards the home he shared with his mother, grandmother, aunt and two younger cousins.

Dillon had faced windstorms before, and had seen smoke in the mountains, but this time felt different. This time the orange glow in the sky was directly overhead.

“I was fully at a 10 on the scale of scared,” he said.

At 00:30 Wednesday, Dillon said that he and his mother were the last people to leave West Las Flores Drive. They may have been the last to get out alive.

The following day authorities would announce that the remains of a neighbour down the road had been discovered.

Rachel and Daron had left the neighbourhood about two hours before Dillon. Rachel was forced out by a friend who drove over to demand: “You’ve got to leave now.”

Rachel – with her wife, toddler, five cats, and two days of clothing – said goodbye to the home they had bought just one year earlier.

Daron also grabbed what he could: a guitar he purchased when he was 14 with money he earned working as an extra in a karate film and a painting of his family crossing Abbey Road in London, made to look like the cover of the iconic Beatles album.

As those on Las Flores Drive evacuated, Daron’s neighbours a few blocks away tried to fight the flames.

At 417 Devirian Place, Hipolito Cisneros and his close friend and neighbour Larry Villescas, who lived across the street at home number 416, grabbed garden hoses.

The scene outside looked hellish.

The garage of one home was in flames. A car in front of another, too.

They stretched hoses out from multiple homes and doused the structures with water – including the house of Daron’s girlfriend, Sachi.

“The water was just repelling off. It wasn’t even penetrating or nothing,” Hipolito said, referring to the bone-dry earth and brush around the homes.

Over time, they made progress, hosing off embers and spot fires. Larry thought they might be winning.

Then their hoses ran dry – all due to water pressure issues they’d later learn had hampered firefighting efforts across Los Angeles County amid intense demand.

An explosion sounded nearby, another home bursting into flames. By 01:00, both of their families were packing to leave.

“We tried. We really tried,” Hipolito said.

By 02:30 Wednesday morning, police cars rolled down their street with a loudspeaker, telling everyone to leave immediately.

As he turned the corner of his street, Larry watched in his truck’s rear-view mirror as his garage caught fire.

By 03:00, the street was empty.

Much of the Los Angeles region is made up of neighbourhoods and small communities just like Altadena.

On any given morning, people would walk through the lines of homes to get a cup of coffee at The Little Red Hen Coffee Shop, stopping to catch up while leaving for work in the morning.

Many have described decades of tight-knit community here, where they watched neighbours start families and the children who once played in the streets grow up.

But driving through the area for the first time since his world was upended, Daron barely recognises his neighbourhood.

The big blue house that marked one familiar turn is gone. All of the landmarks that once guided him have vanished. He points out each neighbour’s property, gasping as he realises that none are standing.

He takes photos of his and Rachel’s home and the street he shares with Dillon. Outside his girlfriend’s home – which Larry and Hipolito tried to save – he takes videos and chats with their families before calling Sachi to describe the state of her home.

“God, everything is gone,” he says, his voice cracking.

But a few items remain amidst the ruins.

At his sister’s home back on West Las Flores Drive, he finds multi-coloured plastic lawn ornaments stuck in her lawn, somehow untouched by fire.

He plucks each stake from the ground, knowing that while these flower decorations might feel insignificant amid the devastation, they also might make her smile.

Across the street at what was once his house, a red-brick chimney is all that is left standing. Around it is a pile of clay pottery.

With his hands dark black from the soot, he collects what he can, but many pieces disintegrate with his touch.

A scorched lemon tree sits in the lawn, some fruit still warm to the touch.

“If I can get a seed, we can replant one,” he says, grabbing a handful.

“It’s like a way you can start over.”