Altadena couple returns to their home reduced to rubble due to the wildfires
ALTADENA, Calif. (NBC, KYMA/KECY) - Altadena residents forced to evacuate due to the Palisades Fire are getting a look at some of the burned down homes there.
One couple returned to their residence reduced to rubble.
It is the heartbreak that is nearly beyond measure for legions of homeowners no more.
Their refuge, and all that accompanies the physical manifestations of their lives, reduced to rubble, melted into a hellish landscape where all that remains is the memories of what had been.
"It was like our dream come true that we worked so hard to get here and now to see it this way...I never thought I would live through something like this," said Renata Ortega, an Altadena resident.
Ortega, 33, and her Irish-born husband, Andrew Duggan, on the site of what was their Glenrose Street home in Altadena.
Just one parcel of a sea of dreams lost: A home and a livelihood; a floral studio in back employed up to ten people.
"I need to continue because...yeah, my team and my community, like, needs me as well," Ortega remarked.
They left in the middle of the night following the final evacuation order from a sheriff's unit.
The winds so loud one neighbor, a man in his late 70s, could not hear the loudspeaker above the howling gales that had overwhelmed an entire community.
"I grabbed him by the hand. He couldn't even barely get dressed as he was trying to drag himself in the car. He had his phone, a charger around his cable, and his walking cane, and I dragged him in the car. The embers were coming in the car at the same time and that was it. We just drove forward and he was like, he couldn't comprehend what was happening. He woke up to that."
Andrew Duggan, Altadena resident, Ortega's husband
For them and tens of thousands of others, it is now the most daunting of challenges: The complexity of what's next.
All they know is that they want to remain however long that takes.
"It's like we're living an alternate reality. I still don't feel like it's real. Even this morning I was like, no, the house is still there. We'll be able to go back. And I was like, no, it's gone. Everything is gone," Ortega expressed.
