Fire evacuees return home to rubble

SAN DIEGO — Patty Thompson’s mouth was dry, her hands shaking, as she stepped out of her car in front of the hulking, blackened piles of concrete and twisted metal that was once her home.

Days earlier, she had barely escaped in the pre-dawn hours from flames advancing on her Rancho Bernardo home — flames that licked at her feet and burned her robe. On Wednesday, Thompson, like thousands throughout San Diego County, returned home after mandatory evacuation orders were lifted in various communities.

Some found their homes just as they left them, albeit coated with a fine layer of soot and the heavy, hanging smell of smoke. Others, like Thompson, were left with nothing but a memory.

“I’m just sick to my stomach,” said Thompson, 50, as she surveyed the remnants of a home that once offered a view of the valley and the mountains in the distance.

She knew her house had been burned. She had seen pictures taken by her brother-in-law, who is a police officer. She had a few days to digest the news before she saw the house. And still she talked as if it still stood: “It has a pool. It has a deck. It has a screened-in patio.”

But seeing it, perhaps, is really believing it.

Reality settled in as she dug through the rubble, recovering several blue and white porcelain tea saucers, three white teacups and saucers and a delicate butterfly-shaped candy dish from the remains of her kitchen. She carefully stacked them on the concrete.

There was no sign of 14 years of photo collages of the Padres training camp, her children’s baby clothes, a wedding album, her son’s karate awards and belts, and keepsakes from her mother who died six years ago.

Like Thompson, Cheryl Monticello lived in the Rancho Bernardo community and fled in advance of the fire. And like Thompson, she, too, knows her home burned.

Monticello, who is eight months pregnant, fled with her toddler daughter and her husband Monday after a neighbor called to warn of approaching flames.

She watched television footage of fire chewing through her block, gobbling houses one after another. On Wednesday, she was still waiting to see her home for herself after she saw addresses of destroyed homes scrolling on TV.

The fire wreaked havoc on the Monticellos’ block, carving an unpredictable path of destruction. A new Toyota was parked at the curb of a house reduced to ash. The car was dusted with cinders but otherwise unharmed. In another driveway sat a charred hulk of a minivan, but the home was spared.

Garden hoses were melted where they were dropped by fleeing homeowners. Blackened tricycles crumbled with a touch. Plastic patio furniture melted into spaghetti.

The only thing left standing of the Monticello house is a white brick chimney.

“It’s the one thing we never used,” she says.

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