Fleeing, Fretting and Returning -- to What?

The videotape shows a shadowy nightmare of flames surrounding million-dollar homes, and the Grasso family was sure their 8,000-square-foot manse would be among the fire’s victims.

The Grassos were sitting in their black Hummer H2, shooting a videotape for posterity. It was 10 p.m. Saturday, and Holly Hills Estates, their gated community, was within the grasp of the flames that were devilishly snatching away home after home in the foothills of the San Bernardino Mountains northwest of Rancho Cucamonga.

“Maybe it’s past us, maybe it’s past us,” Mina Grasso, 41, can be heard saying on the videotape, as she stifled sobs.

Then she blurted out: “You know what, honey? I didn’t bring the wedding videos.” She burst into tears before a firefighter interrupted.

“You guys really need to get out of here,” he warned, and the family drove off.

It wasn’t that the Grassos didn’t know the dangers of living near the top of a dry hillside. But you couldn’t beat the view, the large plots and the wildlife -- coyotes and bobcats -- that wandered through the dry chaparral.

John Grasso, 49, an anesthesiologist who runs a private Botox clinic with his nurse practitioner wife, ticked off the aesthetics that trumped caution.

“First, the view was spectacular,” he said. “Second, I’ve never seen architecture like that. Third, we’re socially inclined. My wife said, ‘This is the ultimate party house. I need it.’ ”

Every fall for the last seven years, fires burned near enough that pumpers had to be stationed in the driveways of the homes that sit on 1-acre hilltop lots. Each year, they survived unscathed.

As Santa Ana winds kicked up Saturday, stoking the season’s first major fires, John and Mina Grasso and their 6-year-old son, Alex, vacationed in Oceanside. Jonathan, their 19-year-old son, stayed home.

John’s cellphone rang shortly after noon Saturday. It was Jonathan. There were voluntary evacuations in San Antonio Heights, their community, the teen said.

At 5 p.m., Jonathan called back. He’d gone to a party down the hill, and now he couldn’t get back to the house. Police were blocking the road. A mandatory evacuation was underway.

The Grassos headed home. When they got to their house, at 7 p.m. Saturday, fire crews were going door-to-door, asking people to leave. The family rushed inside, grabbing Stitch, their Chihuahua. They snatched up jewelry, money, handguns and some of the things no insurance policy can replace: photo albums, videotapes, passports. They stuffed the rear of their vehicle before heading down the hillside.

As they left, they thought of everything they’d done in their dream house: They once served a 100-person sit-down dinner. A five-piece band had played from the balcony over the cavernous center room of the house, appointed with black leather furniture and illuminated by stage lighting reminiscent of a rock club venue. They remembered spotting coyotes and bobcats in the nearby scrub, and the occasional scorpion that got into the home. All of it, they were sure, would be gone overnight.

They drove to John’s brother’s home in Dade Creek, about 20 minutes away. There, they watched TV footage of the fire’s advance. Soon, the broadcast told them flames were surrounding their neighborhood of 10 houses. The family hopped in the Hummer and drove back, but not to their home. They could only watch from a distance, as a teary Mina shot videotape.

They headed back to the house of John’s brother. They tried to sleep, but worry and howling winds kept them awake. Frustrated, they arose at 3 a.m. and drove again toward their house. Police at roadblocks turned them away. The police said they were guarding the neighborhood from looters and had no information on the Grasso house.

No one had information at a local American Red Cross station, either, so they drove some more, looking to get through on back roads. All of them were blocked. “We had to know,” Mina recalled.

They returned to Dade Creek dejected. At 6 a.m. Sunday, John got a message on his cellphone. It was a fire official. Their house had survived.

What they saw when they finally drove up at 11 a.m. hammered home the brutal lesson of wildfires. They destroy some homes with an unchecked ferocity, yet inexplicably spare others.

One neighbor’s house appeared to survive only because, in a remodeling project, a trench was dug around the foundation to shore it up. The trench had served as a firebreak, with grass at its edges singed black.

Ashes still fell from the smoky skies, and the air smelled like an old fireplace as they pulled up. The once-green hillside below their home was a spooky wasteland of charred, leafless branches and rust-colored rocks.

“I hope the insurance covers landscaping,” John said. “We just lost a sprinkler system for 1.7 acres.”

They walked around the house, finding the only damage on a porch at the rear of the house. Fire had crept up a hillside and charred a pillar, lifted ceramic tiles, burned a hole in the floor of the porch and melted insulation around a sliding glass door.

Having found their home safe, the Grassos embarked on a tour of the neighborhood. Four nearby houses were destroyed. Two had been local landmarks. The so-called mushroom house, a 1970s structure with two mushroom-shaped domes, was gone. So was the star house, a mansion where a lighted five-pointed star had illuminated the hillside from afar.

At one lot, a brick foundation was the only recognizable part of a home their neighbor had built himself, 30 years ago. “I thought it was pretty well fireproof,” said the owner, 74-year-old Peter Cherbak. “Just goes to show you.”

A vintage white Porsche somehow survived, and sat undamaged next to the house.

They drove on.

“Is the star gone?” Alex asked his father inside the Hummer.

“Yes,” he said.

“Is it ever going to be there again?”

“I don’t know,” he said, stopping the car to check out another destroyed house.

“Man, that one is toast,” Mina said, peering across a driveway toward the shell of a house where a charred motorcycle still stood in what had been the garage. They scanned scorched and melted debris inside the house, trying to identify pieces of the home.

“Maybe that’s a shower stall,” John said, looking at a tangle of melted plastic and metal. On the far side was a swimming pool, a thick layer of ash and soot on the surface. The leg of a chaise lounge poked through.

Back at home, John was reflective. “It’s really commonplace to see people put out of their homes by floods and fire,” he said. “I try not to put too much value in material things, but when you think it’s going to happen to you, it’s like a sock in the stomach.”

Then he got into his Infiniti sedan and drove to his next-door neighbor’s house, which had been under construction. Mike Jones, 42, had been sure his 5,500-square-foot-dream home, only a foundation and frame thus far, would have been destroyed. It wasn’t. The close call did not dissuade him from his plan to finish it.

“On those clear days, when you can see the view, it’s worth it,” he said. “You can have a house fire anywhere, right?”