A relief center to behold

What made all of this plenitude possible and what makes this disaster decidedly different from many elsewhere is that it is happening in the suburbs. People who live in the glory of California's sunny abundance, for the most part, have money; they have cars. Having both of those things, they have something even more useful in a disaster -- they have options.

They exercised some of those options in choosing where to live in the first place. Maybe they exercised other options to pay for it.

And when the disaster came, when the sky, over a day or two, grew ever more gray and shiny and glittery, like silver satin unfolding, they had choices.

Qualcomm was one of those choices.

People with pets found it difficult to find a hotel that would accept animals.

"When you have pets, it can also get expensive," said Liya Bogomols, a model who spent the night in the stadium parking lot with her fiance, Jason Moore, a pug named Cuddles and a cat named Samson.

Moore had family in San Marcos, an area also threatened by the fires. So the couple opted for the stadium.

"For a while, we weren't sure who should stay with whom," said Moore, a software engineer.

This is a California story and, like all California stories, it was in part about real estate: homes abandoned and lost. Or not. The hardest part of the Qualcomm experience for many people was the simple fact of not knowing.

Few people knew for sure.

To those who did, it was devastating.

Ann Baratta of Ramona thought she had found a haven when she and her husband bunked with friends in Poway on Monday.

But the friends were later evacuated, and she ended up spending the night in the stadium parking lot in a truck.

Baratta's house, it turned out, was spared. One belonging to Nadar and Leticia Hamdan a few blocks away had burned down.

The Hamdans happened to be parked just 20 feet away from Baratta on Tuesday in a 40-foot-long mobile home.

"This will be our home for a long time," said Nadar Hamdan. His daughter, Natalie, wiped away tears as she described her bedroom.

"It had purple, pink and yellow walls and a blue ceiling," the 13-year-old said. "I picked the colors myself."

Despite their loss, the Hamdans had spent part of their day volunteering at the stadium. Natalie and her brother had passed around toiletries. Leticia, a third-grade teacher, spent several hours at an area set up for children.

Most of the people who have come to this part of California have done so by choice, willingly trading the natural risks of the place for its beauty and usual serenity.

They invariably describe the places they live in as dream houses, constructed or bought as the culmination of things.