“There will be moments where you’re strong and you can see a pathway forward,” he said, “and then there will be moments where you feel the loss, the helplessness and uncertainty and feeling overwhelmed at times.”
Even when the evacuation orders are lifted, many families have no home to go back to.
Nearly every day for the last nine days, Raymond Sarkis, 32, has tried to get back into the Altadena neighborhood to see what’s left of the home he and his wife purchased in 2021, after nearly a decade of saving up. They spent months making repairs, pouring “sweat and tears” into it and got married in the backyard that same year.
An insurance agent and a neighbor have told Mr. Sarkis that the house burned to the ground, and even showed him a couple of photos. But he wants to see for himself.
“I need to just stand there and take it in,” he said. “To look myself, to find something.”
He added: “I would take half of a kid’s toy. I would take a necklace. I would take anything you can think of that would just remind us, just to have like a keepsake of, ‘Wow, this happened.’”
So far, he has not been able to get that.
“I have gone to every goddamn street corner, every street opening — there are no less than two police officers and a military vehicle, sometimes two,” he said.
Eric Escott, 62, has been able to sneak back into the charred wreckage of Altadena twice since being evacuated. His house is still standing, and he was able to leave with some essential items. But those two times he returned, he has been leaving food for his cat, Rosie.
Mr. Escott has not seen Rosie since he evacuated, but the wet food he left out on Thursday was gone when he returned on his last visit on Sunday.
Rosie, a feral cat his wife adopted and slowly coaxed into trusting her, was skittish and unfriendly, and rarely interacted with Mr. Escott. He said there was no way she would have shown up when he was there or allowed herself to be taken away from the neighborhood.
