Dad and daughter help evacuees learn if homes survived LA wildfires

As the fire roared down a hillside toward their Altadena home, Vanessa Prata and her parents hurried to pack their car. They focused on saving irreplaceable items, like family photographs and a baby doll from Vanessa's childhood.

But they didn't leave.

Instead, the Pratas have remained in their family home of 27 years, which is somehow still standing amid widespread devastation from the Los Angeles wildfires, even as homes just over a block away burned. And as residents who did flee are kept away by police or military barricades, Prata and her dad have taken it upon themselves to check on their neighbours' homes.

“They’re sitting in these shelters. They’re not sure whether their house survived or didn’t survive,” Prata said. “Once you know what the situation is, you have an ability to regroup and see what you’re going to do moving forward.”

The fires raging around Los Angeles have consumed an area larger than San Francisco. Tens of thousands of people are under evacuation orders. Since the fires first began Tuesday, they have burned more than 12,000 structures, a term that includes homes, apartment buildings, businesses, outbuildings and some vehicles, and killed at least 16 people. The White House said Saturday that the Department of Defense is making its nearby bases available for emergency shelter, including more than 1,000 available beds.

Prata, a 25-year-old nursing student, had stopped at a hardware store on her way home from dinner Tuesday night when she saw the flames approaching the home she shares with her parents, two cats and a dog. She called her dad, then rushed home as many other people headed the other direction to evacuate.

At the house, the Pratas frantically packed, in the dark once the power went out. But Vanessa's father, Aluizio Prata, who teaches electrical and computer engineering at the University of Southern California, didn't want to go. He didn't think the fire would reach them, but if it did, he wanted to stay and help fight it.

They spent much of the night at a home up the street, carrying buckets of water, spraying the yard with a hose and stomping out embers before they spread in the powerful wind gusts.

As the toll from the wildfires became clear, Vanessa Prata saw many people doing what they could to help those who lost their homes. They were donating food, clothing, household goods and pet supplies. Taco trucks from Los Angeles were offering free meals.

Prata remained home, with her family occasionally running a borrowed generator to check the news and keep the freezer cold. She wanted to help, too. But there was little she could do from behind the barricade. If she left her neighbourhood, she wouldn't be allowed back.

So, on Saturday, Prata posted to an Altadena community group on Facebook, offering the one thing she could think of that would help.

“We are more than happy to drive around and take a picture for any person who would like to see their home or, God forbid, what is left of their home,” she wrote.

The requests came pouring in — as many as 45 on Sunday. She and her dad set out on Friday, checking addresses written in a small notebook. They slowly make their way past fallen trees, downed wires and the husks of burned-out cars.

Of more than two dozen homes they visited Saturday and Sunday, fewer than half were still standing. At the end of a cul-de-sac, reached only after getting out of the car and walking past fallen trees and utility poles, the ruins of one home were still smouldering. One person whose house burned sent her a photo of what it had looked like before the fire.

“Those are devastating when you get to the person’s house, and it’s gone, and you know that you’re the one who’s going to break the news,” she said.

“You’re looking at the burnt ashes and then they send (a photo of) the house, how beautiful it was prior. And it’s, there’s no, there’s no words. You just say, you know, ‘I’m sorry. I wish there was more that I could do for you.’”

But her training as a nurse made her a good candidate for that work, she said.

“I’m not new to people crying, people passing away in front of me,” she said. “I have an ability to be able to handle it.”

And she is gratified to be part of the community effort. So many volunteers showed up to help at nearby donation centres Sunday that some were being turned away.

“Everyone is pitching in and doing what they can,” Prata said. “It’s overwhelmingly beautiful to see.”