Residents Return to Find Homes Reduced to Rubble After California Fire

The Mountain fire has torn through more than 20,000 acres and destroyed more than 130 structures in Ventura County. “It’s just devastating,” one resident said.

In the city of Camarillo, Calif., on Old Coach Drive, the smell of smoke lay heavy in the air. The fire that erupted this week had hopscotched around the neighborhood, leaving some homes relatively unscathed but reducing several to charred piles of wood and rubble.

Kathleen Scott and her sister Tonia Wall surveyed what was left of their two-bedroom home: layers of ash and the metal outlines of what was once the washing machine and dryer.

Bent over the earth where a bedroom would have been, the two used a small garden spade to dig through the remains. They hoped they might find some mementos belonging to Ms. Scott’s daughter, Jacquelyn, who died from a rare neurological condition at age 4.

“We’re not expecting to find anything huge,” Ms. Scott, 57, said. “We’re just sifting through stuff, just to see, just in case, not to have any regrets.”