Steven Cuevas
October 31, 2007
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For the first time since wildfires broke out last week, one San Bernardino Mountain area community is getting a first glimpse of the destruction. KPCC's Steven Cuevas reports.
Steven Cuevas: In the first hours of last Monday's wildfire, flames swept over a tightly packed neighborhood just west of downtown Lake Arrowhead. Compared to some of the other wildfires that burned last week, this one was small – only about 1500 acres. But its path of destruction was fierce.
Colleen Meland: It's just – as far as you can see that way, they're wiped out. And then as you go up the hill, very few standing homes.
Cuevas: Colleen Meland's face is smudged with soot, her white dust mask blackened with ash. She spent the morning picking through the rubble of the wooden A-frame house she and her husband renovated ten years ago. All that's left now is the concrete foundation. She pulls a photo album from her car and shows me pictures of what the house looked like in its better days.
Meland: Anyhow, this was what our kitchen looked like. He did the ceiling, did all the tongue and groove natural pine, the floors ... he did it all. But anyhow. This was kind of our dream house.
Cuevas: On the morning of the Grass Valley Fire, wind-driven flames blasted the face of this hillside. Dozens of homes were lost. The fire left behind a blistered moonscape, littered with twisted tree limbs and chimneys with no houses. Those stone chimneys poke out of the ruins like gravestones.
[Sound of sifting through rubble]
Karen Baldwin: I'm finding things like teacups that are intact and their fine china. And I mean, that would be something I know I'd want back, you know? And this looks like something her son made, doesn't it?
Cuevas: Down the street, Karen Baldwin sifts through the rubble of another home – not hers. It belongs to a friend who's too upset to do this job herself.
Baldwin: So I said, "All right, I'll sift through some stuff."
[Sound of sifting through rubble; tin box opening and closing]
Baldwin: It's really hard to be down there in it. It's one thing when you're kinda just driving around and seeing it, but when you start seeing people's personal belongings it's ... it's ... brings new meaning to it.
[Sound of sifting through rubble]
Cuevas: Karen Baldwin hesitates over everything. What to save? Is this just a broken piece of pottery, or maybe a cherished post-fire memento?
Baldwin: I'm looking at things and saying, "Well, could you glue it back together and tell what it was?"
Cuevas: All morning, Baldwin climbs in and out of this crater. She stacks whatever she finds in neat piles at the top of a scorched driveway. It's like a macabre yard sale: Charred and twisted golf clubs, blackened sewing shears, melted wine goblets, and shattered tea cups.
Baldwin: I started picking up a few things, but I think I got kind of got the bulk of the good stuff in here. But I feel I need to keep sifting through a little more, you know, to find those treasures that kids made.
[Sound of Baldwin walking through rubble, talking with insurance claims adjuster]
Doug Shackleford: This stuff here – I'm going to take a lot of pictures and show what they had, what they're going through. And we document what we can, but in a total loss like this, there's not a whole lot to look at.
Cuevas: Insurance claims adjuster Doug Shackleford stands amid the ruin of what used to be the mountain home of William and Pam Martin. Shackleford says some burned-out residents might not be able to rebuild.
Shackleford: On average, about $200 a square foot is what it's gonna cost to rebuild. Ten years ago, it was only a hundred dollars a square foot. And that's why, if your policy was originally written ten years ago, you're insured on a hundred dollars a square foot, so you only have insurance for about half of your house to be rebuilt. Our hands are tied; when we have a policy for a certain amount, we can only pay so much.
Cuevas: Those who do have the means to rebuild – like the Martins – need more than money. They need patience. The job ahead could take two years or more.
Pam Martin: My husband found a mug, a "greatest dad in the world mug." It's intact. Things like that I'm sure we'll wash up and keep till – and put in the evac bin the next time, you know?
Cuevas: Looking out over the scorched treetops to the lake and forest below, Pam Martin says she won't leave this mountain. Even if it takes ten years, she and her husband will rebuild.
Martin: Absolutely. You know what? It's okay. You can replace a spatula and can replace a mattress and box springs. I mean, I think if you're dug into the mountain, you want to rebuild, you want to stay. Some people last six months and say this isn't for them. But, um ... there's no place else I'd rather be right now.
