His Prized Mementos Escaped Fire’s Wrath

Bill Lukavsky was atypical among victims of the Normal Heights fire on that dry and windy Sunday afternoon June 30.

His beautiful canyonside home overlooking scenic Mission Valley was one of 64 homes destroyed in the city’s worst-ever residential fire. But unlike many of his neighbors, Lukavsky didn’t lose a lifetime’s possessions.

At 38, the orthopedic surgeon isn’t happy about it, but he is able to start over.

“Most of the really meaningful material things I had accumulated are with my kids and my wife. I had just set up living there for six months,” he said.

The majority of Lukavsky’s immediate neighbors were elderly and had lifetimes of memories and possessions in their homes.

“There’s no way they can replace what they lost just by duplicating it,” Lukavsky said. “Their material possessions were mementos of their whole life, things they will never replace. I didn’t have a collection of that sort of stuff. My main suffering was just being displaced and homeless.”

Cromwell Court, at the top of one of the thickly weeded and grassy canyons which fire raced through, was the last area the fire struck. Lukavsky’s house was the last to burn.

“At the time we were evacuated . . . I was pretty certain it wasn’t going to get as far as my house. There were miles of houses in between and I was pretty secure that they’d get the fire out,” he said.

By 4:30 p.m. that day, Lukavsky learned to his horror that he was wrong.

Watching from across Interstate 8 at the bottom of the canyon, Lukavsky saw first a spark on his roof, then it would fade away. Finally, a spark caught hold and the roof began to burn.

“My reaction was just to get in the car and drive away,” he said. “I went out to my folks’ house and just didn’t watch it.”

Lukavsky spent the first days after the fire tending to the essentials of finding a place to live and filing a claim with his insurance company. He didn’t report to the Red Cross disaster center or commiserate with his neighbors.

“I just took care of myself. I think that has a lot to do with being single. I didn’t have a whole family to worry about, and being relatively young compared to a lot of the people and having a reasonably good job, I knew I could right away put things back together,” he said.

Decided to Rebuild

Lukavsky’s sister and brother-in-law, living with him at the time of the fire, lost everything from their wedding pictures to a record collection.

Reassembling his life is an ongoing process. But after months of vacillation, Lukavsky decided to rebuild on the canyonside.