"Everything is gone" - Agony on a Los Angeles street destroyed by the infern

"Everything is  gone" - Agony on a  Los Angeles street  destroyed by  the inferno.
The 45-year-old was  born at 295 West Las Flores Drive, where he lived with his mother until this  week.
On Thursday, he  walked through the charred debris where his kitchen once stood in Altadena, a tight-knit  neighborhood northeast of Los  Angeles.
He searched for his  iron shovels in the hope  that they  had survived the blaze, one of several historic fires  that have swept across the  region that have killed at least 16  people, devastated several communities and left thousands  homeless.
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Across the street - at 296 - his friend Rachel's house also  lies in ashes. The house next door - 281 - where  she enjoyed family  vacations, is  gone. About three blocks away, on Devirian Place, where his girlfriend lived, some  neighbors tried to  put out the roaring flames  consuming their homes with garden  hoses.
Now they too are searching for  valuables in the  rubble after  the fire  wiped out this entire community nestled in the shadow of the San Gabriel  Mountains.
It all started Tuesday  night.
Daron surveys the damage with ash on his black shirt
The Santa Ana winds  were strong for most of the  day.
Daron was in his yard just after  6 p.m. local  time, trying to  keep objects from  flying. Across the street at 296 West Las Flores Drive, Rachel Gillespie was taking down Christmas decorations,  worried about her plastic  ice cream cones and  lawn furniture.
They exchanged worried glances.  "This doesn't look good, does  it?"
A graphic showing  Daron's destroyed home and a map
At  that point, only the wind  bothered them.
Little did they know that one of the two worst  fires in  Los Angeles history had just  broken out a few miles away, part of a days-long nightmare  that, at its  peak, saw six  fires simultaneously threatening  the second-largest  city in the United States. .Not a valid attachment ID.
The Eaton  Fire that  devastated Altadena has now  burned more than 14,000 acres, destroying thousands of homes and  businesses and  killing 11  people. By the  end of the week, Eaton  was only 15%  contained.
West of Los Angeles, the Palisades  Fire, which started that morning, would burn more than 23,000 acres, reducing much of a vibrant community to  ashes and killing at least five  people.
The 20-year-old rushed  home when he heard the news, only to find his  northwest corner of Altadena  plunged into darkness and his family  members frantically evacuating their  home.
His uncle  jumped over  his white picket fence to  buy precious seconds as he  loaded his belongings into the back of his  car.
For the next two hours, Dillon did the same, gathering food, medicine,  clothing, and toiletries. In  his haste, he misplaced the  keys and  wasted 30 minutes searching  for them in the smoky  darkness with  flashlights until he found them  hidden in a  fence.
Graphic showing  Dillon and a map
During  this desperate search, he kept  being told that local authorities would be able to  control the fire that was  raging up the mountain towards the  house he shared with his mother, grandmother, aunt and two  young cousins.
Dillon had faced windstorms and seen smoke  on the  mountain, but this time  it felt different. This  time, the orange glow in the sky was directly  above his head.
"I was a  full 10 on the  fear scale," he  said. At 12:30 a.m. on Wednesday, Dillon said he and his mother were the last to leave West Las Flores Drive. They may have been the last to  escape alive.
The next day, authorities  announced that the remains of a  neighbor on the  street had been  discovered.
A graphic of a map and a photo of  Rachel's destroyed  home
Rachel and Daron had left the  neighborhood about two hours before Dillon.  Rashela was forced  to leave by a friend who drove  up and said, "You have to leave  now."
Rachel — with her wife,  child, five  cats and two  days' worth of  clothes — said goodbye to the  house they had bought  a year  earlier. Daron also grabbed what he could: a guitar he  bought at age 14 with money he earned working as an extra in a karate  movie, and a painting of his family  walking down Abbey Road in London, made to look like the cover of the iconic Beatles  album. .
As residents of Las Flores Drive evacuated, Daron's  neighbors a few blocks away tried to fight the  flames.
BBC graphic showing Hipolito's destroyed home
At 417 Devirian Place, Hipolito Cisneros and his close friend and  neighbor Larry Villescas, who lived across the street at 416, grabbed garden  hoses.
The scene outside looked  hellish.
The garage of one  of the homes was  on fire. Another car in front of  another.
They extended the pipes from  several homes and  flooded structures - including the  home of Daron's girlfriend,  Sachi.
Hipolito Cisneros stands in front of the ashes of his home in Altadena,  California.
"The water just  pushed back. It wasn't even penetrating or  anything," Hipolito said, referring to the  dry soil and brush around the  houses.
In time, they  moved forward, dousing the embers and  locating the fires. Larry thought they  could win. Then their  pipes went dry—all because of water pressure  problems that, they later  learned, had hampered  the efforts  of Los Angeles County  firefighters with excessive demand. An explosion  was heard nearby, another  house caught fire. By  1:00 AM, their families were packing  up to leave. BBC graphic showing Larry's destroyed home "We  tried." "We really tried," Hipolito said.  At 2:30 a.m. on Wednesday, police cars  pulled into his driveway with  loudspeakers, ordering everyone to leave immediately. As he turned the corner of his  driveway, Larry  saw in his truck's  rearview mirror  that his garage  was on fire. By  3:00 a.m. the street was empty. Larry shows  off his destroyed  home. Every morning, people would walk  past the  row of  houses to  grab a cup of coffee at  the Little Red Hen  Cafe, stopping to  take their time before heading to work in the morning. Many  of them describe decades of  close-knit community here, where they  saw neighbors start families and children who once played in the streets grow up. But  as he walks through the  neighborhood for the first time since his world was  turned upside down, Daron barely  recognizes his  neighborhood.
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 A graphic showing the Eaton fire  compared to Altadena The big blue house that marked  a familiar  turning point is gone. All the landmarks that once guided him  are gone. He points  to each  neighbor's property,  wincing when he  realizes no one is standing. He takes  pictures of his  house and  Rachel's and the street he shares with Dillon. Outside his  girlfriend's house—which Larry and Hipolito tried to  save—he takes videos and  talks to her families before calling Sachi to describe the state of  his house. "Oh my God, everything is  gone," he  said, his voice  breaking. Daroni picks lemons to  start again. But  some objects remain  among the ruins. At  her sister's  house on West Las Flores Drive,  she found multicolored plastic  decorations hanging on her lawn, untouched by  the fire. He  pulls each  pillar from the ground, knowing that while these  floral decorations  may seem insignificant  in the  midst of destruction, they  can also make  you smile. Across the  street, in what was once his  home, a  red brick fireplace is all that  remains standing. Around  her is a pile of clay  pots. With his  soot-blackened hands, he  picks up what he can, but many pieces  crumble under his touch. A  charred lemon tree sits  on the lawn, some  of the fruit still warm to the touch.  "If I can  save one seed, we can  plant another," he  said, taking a handful.  "It's like a way  to start  over.


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