ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Strong winds were in the forecast for Southern California this week, and firefighters put out several small fires yesterday and today. So far, nothing like the giant blazes that forced tens of thousands to evacuate two weeks ago. Many are still displaced from their homes in LA, but a few people have been sticking it out in the disaster zones. Katia Riddle reports.
KATIA RIDDLE, BYLINE: A lot of this neighborhood in Altadena is charred black - blocks of it. But this street looks mostly OK from the outside. Rob Caves and his fiancé have been staying here at their house. Many of the homes around them are still standing but empty. Caves looks out from his doorway. He's holding a clipboard.
ROB CAVES: So this is my neighborhood watch list. I've got the name and the address and the status.
RIDDLE: Status - which houses have pets in them, which need to be checked on, the ones that are gone altogether. Caves leans in his doorway as he reads the list. In some cases, they've had to inform their neighbors that they lost everything.
CAVES: That was a super hard text or phone conversation to have because, you know, I try to be as emotionally present for them as I can be, but there's - like, how do you say that to someone?
RIDDLE: Caves and his fiancé, Ralph Mendoza, did initially evacuate in the middle of the night.
RALPH MENDOZA: Inside the house, smoke. Outside the house, smoke. Explosions everywhere. It's just panic everywhere.
RIDDLE: A few hours later, they decided to chance it and return. Soon after, the National Guard closed off access to the neighborhood. They've been here ever since. Now the city is easing the evacuation orders, but even if people want to return, many houses are still just not livable. They do have some utilities. The internet and power is intermittent, but it's not comfortable and possibly not safe.
MENDOZA: We're not even using the water to even shower 'cause we're afraid that there might be still some chemicals.
RIDDLE: They've got each other as well. More than one person here reports being alone in their house. Earlier on this day, a friend brought Mendoza and Caves a bag of hamburgers. Now they're giving them out to the few neighbors who are around.
MENDOZA: We got you In-N-Out.
RIDDLE: Michael Russell is one of these folks.
MICHAEL RUSSELL: Thank you so much.
MENDOZA: We got you.
RUSSELL: That's awesome.
RIDDLE: Russell lives across the street. His back yard is a tiny utopia - preserved - with a lemon and an orange tree, a stunning mountain view. He gestures to a ladder in the middle of the yard. This is where he watched the fire progress toward his house.
RUSSELL: And then got up on it. You could see the burn side, the mountain side there, and then it was crazy. Winds were going, like...
RIDDLE: Last year, Russell took some steps to mitigate risk - removing flammable material from around the house, putting a fire-resistant mesh inside the vents and the roof. There were some things he didn't anticipate, like ash.
RUSSELL: I really - didn't really realize how many carcinogens are in it and how dangerous it could potentially be. It's really freaking me out. I mean, you come inside my house. Come on.
RIDDLE: Inside, the house is covered in an almost invisible layer of black soot. The day before, Russell says he set an open cup of milk on the counter when he was making coffee. He left for a half hour.
RUSSELL: Where there'd be a milk line here, it was black.
RIDDLE: A black line of ash covered the top of the milk. He's afraid to clean anything for fear he'll stir up dangerous chemicals.
RUSSELL: So that's in the carpet.
RIDDLE: Yeah.
RUSSELL: It's in the bedding. I can't deep clean all this stuff to get this stuff out.
RIDDLE: He plans to stick around, but he says he has no idea how to figure out what is toxic and how to make his house safe. Authorities are starting to give guidance on this. His neighborhood's emptiness is eerie.
RUSSELL: So it's kind of living in a kind of a death zone in some ways. And I went out the other day, and as we're going through some neighborhoods in my truck, you know, the cadaver dogs are out there.
RIDDLE: On the metric of misery, Michael Russell counts himself lucky. He has a house. It is still standing. But the flip side of his good luck is all the uncertainty of what happens next. Katia Riddle, NPR News, Altadena.
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