Wildfires Devastate Parts of California

Walking across a bridge, George Kassaseya had a vacant stare. He had just lost his home. Everything he and his family owned was gone, stolen from them in a plume of black smoke.

Just ahead of him on the bridge was Charles Goff, looking like any other teenage skateboarder. His family had battled for their home and won — even as the home next door burned.

That's how fate seemed to work here in this upscale tract of tidy homes in a narrow pass east of Los Angeles.

Officially, five homes were lost and five were damaged in Corona by early afternoon Saturday, one of four major fires burning out of control in Southern California, police Sgt. Jerry Pawluczenko said. That was minor compared to Sylmar fire, where reports put the losses in a single mobile home park alone at 600 homes.

Fire officials estimated 10,000 people lived in the area under mandatory evacuation in the Sylmar, Knollwood and Porter Ranch communities. About 80 miles to the northwest, an 1,800-acre blaze in the Santa Barbara community of Montecito had forced the evacuation of more than 5,400 homes and destroyed more than 110 homes.

But the the fire in Corona was a fresh one, having broken out in the morning at a time when fire crews and equipment were starting to reach a breaking point after three days of wildfires. The beginning came Thursday in the tony Santa Barbara County community of Montecito, where more than 100 homes were lost.

Worse, the Corona fire was burning over some hills toward other densely packed housing areas, like the Anaheim Hills and Yorba Linda.

Kassaseya, 59, an aerospace engineer, was away from home when the fire struck. He said his to sons, ages 21 and 15, called to report smoke was drifting up the stairs. They got out. Kasseseya said he tried to drive home with that terrible dread of not knowing whether his house would be still standing or a pile of ashes.

"The house is completely gone," he said. Fifteen years of memories on a street called Golden Ridge had vanished. He picked through the rubble to try to recover family photos.

Goff, 16, a junior at Corona High School, was more fortunate. He said his distraught mother phoned him and his father telling them about the fire and urging them to come home as they were on a morning shopping excursion.

The smoke was so thick that Goff said he couldn't see. "I had to put a T-shirt on my face," he said. His father started sprinkling down the house with garden hose even as the palm tree outside exploded in a pyre of flame. "We sprayed down the house the best we could," he said.

At the same time, he said he helped pack up family valuable so the family could escape if the situation grew even worse.

And it did. The next-door house, about 10 feet away, caught fire. But just as it did, four fire trucks came roaring up the street. They made a stand on the Goff house, with little they could do to save the neighbor's residence.

"It was probably the most scared that I've been in my life," he said, skateboard in hand as he watched smoke billow from the hills. "We're so proud of the firefighters."

It wasn't the Green Valley area's first brush with disaster. A few years ago, the nearly Prado Dam threatened to burst and flood the area. Neighbors had watched, too, through the years as brush fires blacked hillsides without ever touching their neighborhood.

Ross Lawrence, who turned 45 on Saturday, was relieved to find that the two houses he rents out in the neighborhood had escaped. He credits a block wall for saving one of them.

"The tile is black — that's how close it was to us," said Lawrence, a landscape contractor.

Dave DeWolfe, 52, said he knew it was time to get out of the neighborhood early on otherwise blissfully sunny, warm morning. "I sat down to breakfast and I said, 'I smell smoke.'"

No use staying to fight it, he said. "There's nothing you do with wind like this," added DeWolfe, a printer as he, wife Kim and their daughter watched the fire from a gas station, their three Chihuahuas — Gizmo, Lola and Buddy — in tow.

Another family also knew to get the kids out. Nazia Khan, 19, drove her brother Yusaf, 13, out as soon as their parents realized their home was in danger. "It was scary. We didn't know what to grab," said Nazia Khan.

The father stayed behind to protect the house. The big problem: "Our lawn was catching fire."

It survived.