"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. .4e5fb5a0-d049-11ef-87df-d575b9a434a4.jpg.webp
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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