Searching for Keepsakes : Residents Return to Devastated Homes in Hopes of Finding a Few Belongings

James Boylan stared in disbelief at the still-smoldering ashes.

“I’m looking for pieces of my family; for little treasures,” he said quietly, oblivious to a group of onlookers standing in what used to be his driveway. “I’m raking through the embers.”

But Boylan and his wife, Kathleen, who was raking through the dusty ash pile a few feet away, found only more disappointment Tuesday. There was nothing left to recover, much less save.

“You’re looking at what’s left of our lives. I mean, thank goodness that we’re fine. But there’s nothing left to connect us to our past. Not even a photo album,” he said.

The couple had lived in their 4,000-square-foot, two-story house with a magnificent view of the coastal hills since 1977. The gentle hills, full of verdant and aromatic coastal sage in the spring, are now charred and blackened mounds, revealing the denuded canyons that suddenly slash across the landscape.

Boylan, who owns a consulting company, was alone and working at home Monday evening when flames came roaring up the hill and across Cadencia Street, without warning.

“I had seen the fire, but it was on a ridgeline still some distance away,” he said. “I thought we would get an advisory to evacuate, but none came. It happened so quickly. We didn’t even have any fire engines on the street at the time.”

Grabbing only the files he was working with, Boylan dashed to his car and raced out of the driveway.

“I drove out through a wall of fire. It was unbelievable, surreal. I looked over my shoulder and saw my garage start to burn. It happened that quickly.”

Several times, he used a cellular phone in frantic attempts to reach his wife, who was running errands. But each attempt was fruitless. He did not know that just as he was escaping, she was nearing the house from the opposite direction.

Kathleen Boylan was forced to turn around and leave the tract, following a long line of residents who were fleeing for their lives. Her husband was not able to contact her for 2 1/2 hours. The two later met at a friend’s house, where they spent the night.

On Tuesday, Boylan remembered the absurdity of his race to safety: Police and other emergency vehicles were racing up the street with sirens blaring and lights flashing, but nobody would pull over to let them pass.

“There was no order. It was total chaos,” he said.

Parked along Cadencia Street, which skirts the crest of the hill where the housing tract is located, were gawkers. “The peanut gallery,” Boylan called them. They oohed and ahhhed as giant flames licked across the street, igniting shake and shingle roofs that exploded like matches.

The couple’s son and daughter, who are away at college on the East Coast, saw the fire on television Monday night.

“My son tried calling last night. Our kids didn’t find out that we’d lost everything until today,” Boylan said. “It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do: tell my children that we’d lost the house and everything in it.”

On the sidewalk, people who had fared better in the fire stood and stared at the Boylans and two friends who were helping the couple sift through the ashes, still burning hot in places.

Two women ignored the yellow tape strung around the property by fire authorities and walked up to Kathleen Boylan and gave her a hug. She began crying softly.

Boylan saw his wife’s rush of emotion, and he began crying too.

“I haven’t a clue what we’re going to do,” he said. “This is the first time we’ve ever had a total loss. What does one do when this happens? I guess I’ll have a better idea after we meet with our insurance agent today.

“The only time I’ve ever seen destruction on this scale is in war pictures. You’d think that this is all a scene from a war movie. But it’s real. These really are chimneys standing alone, like skeletons. And all these burned-out homes are the graveyards.”

A young woman wearing sporty wraparound sunglasses jogged by, ignoring the smoldering ruins that lined the right side of Cadencia Street. The contrast was not lost on a man who was surveying the destruction.

“Life goes on,” he said, looking at the jogger. “But some people are luckier than others.”