“Your house is almost gone!”
Georgette and John Hardgrove were watching TV coverage of the destructive El Norte fire from afar on Friday night. They had fled their longtime San Juan Capistrano home for safer ground, and watched as helicopters dropped water to douse the wildfire on a nearby ridge. They didn’t realize that flames were also racing up a smaller slope behind their house.
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Then their daughter called and broke the news.
The couple soon spotted their fire-ravaged home on television.
“It was surreal,” Georgette Hardgrove said.
The Hardgroves were among the families who returned to their homes to see the havoc firsthand after the evacuations were lifted on Saturday night. Neighbors gathered on Sunday morning to console one another near the end of a cul-de-sac on Via La Mirada, where several houses had burned to the ground.
The wind-whipped fire broke out Friday morning in an area spanning parts of San Clemente and San Juan Capistrano. It scorched 570 acres, and was at 50% containment at midday Sunday.
Steve Rosen, whose home was completely gutted by the fire, was hailed as a hero by his neighbors for going door to door as the fire approached on Friday, warning of the danger. On Sunday, he described his first reaction to the growing flames as “sheer terror …”
“The flames came over the hill and were quite visible,” Rosen said. “Watching what direction the wind was blowing, it became quite obvious we were all in danger.”
Rosen said he knew his home was not likely to survive.
“It was obvious our house was going to be totally demolished,” Rosen said. “All the video I saw on TV demonstrated that.”
Returning with his wife to see the ruins of his home was still difficult, Rosen added.
“It hit me harder seeing it up close,” he said. “Looking at it, smelling it.”
Rosen, a retired physician, and his wife have lived at the home for 45 years. On Sunday, he was unsure of what he will do next. Mulling the hassle of overseeing a rebuild in his 80s, Rosen jokingly asked if a reporter knew anybody who wanted to buy some land, leading a neighbor walking by to interject, “It is not for sale, you have to rebuild!”
Two doors down, the Hardgroves sat on lawn chairs and commiserated with their neighbors.
The couple, both of whom worked in the aerospace industry, moved to the home after retiring 26 years ago.
The house seemed to be in bad shape on TV. “Then the next time we saw it, it looked like this,” John Hardgrove said, gesturing at the total destruction. “There was one firefighter with a small hose spraying it. I don’t know what he was putting out. It was all gone.”
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The couple was waiting to talk to family and an insurance company to decide what to do next. They chose their home because it’s midway between one daughter who lives in the South Bay in Los Angeles and another in San Diego.
Between the destroyed homes owned by the Rosens and the Hardgroves sits a house that was spared by the flames.
Matt Spaulding, whose family lives at that home, described his wife returning home with their young son on Friday, seeing the flames and quickly leaving. The family did what they could to monitor the flames from elsewhere.
“I have a baby monitor, so I turned that on,” Spaulding said. “I could hear all the alarms going off and I could see the smoke.”
Spaulding said he was surprised that except for the omnipresent smell of smoke and burned backyard landscaping, their home was largely unscathed.
“I thought my house was gone,” Spaulding said.
A homeowner several doors down had recently finished a renovation that included fireproofing, Spaulding noted, but an ember appeared to have gotten into that home through a vent, and it was burned to the ground.
“Everything they did was for nothing,” he said of the renovation.
Spaulding, who moved into the neighborhood eight or so years ago, said the lack of plants right up against his home along with their flat roof and no attic may have helped protect the house from the flames.
The owners of all three homes agreed that as ready as they thought they were for a massive fire, things happened much faster than they would have expected.
They advised those in areas where wildfires could break out to have an evacuation plan ready to go.
“Be ready for the worst and hope for the best,” Rosen said.
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