Altadena Polling Place Opens Amid Ashes : Election: Despite damage to her home, Beverly Slocum welcomes voters as she has for 12 years. Some of those coming to cast ballots have lost their homes.

In Altadena, last week’s firestorm couldn’t stop the wheels of democracy from turning.

Though her living room was lost to the fires that raged through Kinneloa Canyon Estates, Beverly Slocum saved her voting booths and opened her house Tuesday as a polling place as she has every November for the past 12 years.

“We always have a good turnout for elections,” said Slocum, 49, soon after her doors opened at 7 a.m., a tray of bagels awaiting the election workers. “It’s usually 75% or more. And I still expect a good turnout.”

The nursery school director was waiting not only for voters. A contractor was due as well, to examine her damaged room.

Houses on both sides of hers burned to the ground, and Slocum’s own back yard was charred, though it was left with rings of perfectly green ivy, protected from the flames by sprinklers.

A stream of voters trickled into Slocum’s rumpus room all morning, stamping the ash off their feet on the rug by the sliding door, punching their ballots and swapping fire stories.

“We had to evacuate, the police were at our door, and we couldn’t find the cat,” said Mae Batterson, a Kinneloa Mesa woman who helped Slocum hand out ballots. “But then we got a call from my son who had reached the house to find Elizabeth (the cat) asleep on the bed.

“I bawled and bawled,” said Batterson, who lost only shrubs and a shed containing some antiques to the blaze that claimed 121 homes and 5,700 acres in the Altadena area.

About 110 of those homes line the streets of the Kinneloa Canyon area, a once-picturesque community of one- and two-story houses on half-acre and larger lots. The inferno left ash-covered slabs and blackened hulks of Cadillacs and Mercedes-Benzes in its wake.

By 10:30 a.m., five voters who had lost their homes had stopped by to cast their ballots as they drove up the hill to survey the ruins. Some of the neighbors had not seen each other since the fires. Several hugged near the four voting booths.

Corrine Ray, 70, a poison-control expert who lost her bedroom, carport and 15-foot boat, reported that she has been staying with her daughter.

“It’s a sad situation, but I have a lot to be thankful for,” she said, noting that she saved her two dogs and her cat from the blaze and will try to rebuild her damaged home.

Attorney Carl Baggett, 63, also said he will rebuild. The flames claimed all of his 5,600-square-foot home on Cripplewood Path.

“I got back to my house and found the firemen standing there looking at it burning,” he said with a weak smile. “They’d elected to save the house next door.”

Baggett believes he could have saved his home if he had been allowed to stay instead of being evacuated.

“It was just embers from the other fires that caught my roof on fire, and I could have put those out with a bucket and water from my spa,” said Baggett, playing with the frayed tie he bought this week at a thrift store in Pomona.

“I don’t even have a belt yet,” he said, flipping open his suit jacket.

Before long, Slocum’s contractor arrived. He took a tape measure to the damaged room and snapped photos with a camera that hung from his neck. Slocum left the other election workers, who had set up shop on two card tables, to show him around.

Through it all, more voters filtered in, each yielding a new story.

One father’s voice cracked as he talked about how his son had gathered up some of his toys and given them to a neighborhood boy who had lost his home. Another woman told how the fire had taken her home but spared her pasture--and now every horse in the canyon was tied to her fence and munching her green grass.

“There’s not been a moment when someone hasn’t come in to vote. I think that’s just wonderful,” said Mary Pat Paddock, a 57-year-old ceramics teacher at the Duarte Senior Center.

By evening, about half of the 311 registered voters had cast their ballots.

“With all the confusion, it’s just nice to not have to find a new voting place,” said contractor Hal Stegmeier, 60, one of the first to cast his ballot at Slocum’s home.

“I’m glad that at least this place is functioning.”