As Woolsey fire burned his home, firefighters rescued his most valued possession: images of his unborn son
His hillside home smoldered but a handful of memories were spared.
As Shane Clark assessed his newly incinerated Bell Canyon property on Saturday, Nov. 10 – one of more than a dozen houses leveled in his community by the aggressive, wind-fueled Woolsey fire – four pieces of paper offered solace.
Thoughtful firefighters snagged many of the 28-year-old accountant’s belongings, including his most important possession: four ultrasound images of Clark’s unborn son. First responders nabbed them off the fridge right before flames engulfed the home and made sure they wound up with Clark.
“These are the only copies we have,” Clark said, as firefighters sprayed water on spot fires on and near his property.
“We can rebuild, but the things they were able to take out were more valuable than the structure itself.
“I’m very thankful.”
With his home smoldering behind him, Shane Clark talks about the ultrasounds that LA City firefighters rescued off his refrigerator door. #WoolseyFire #ocregister #scng #lafire #LAFires pic.twitter.com/rTVXok7eCl
— Kevin Sullivan (@sullikevphoto) November 11, 2018
Over the weekend, the windswept inferno ate 91,500 acres, displaced 265,000 people in Los Angeles and Ventura counties, and destroyed 370 structures.
Some 20 of the homes leveled by the fire, including Clark’s, were in Bell Canyon, an affluent hillside community in eastern Ventura County. Chimneys and stone masonry stood bare next to charred cars. Live gas lines burned freely, shooting flames into the air. A noxious smell of burnt plastic pervaded.
Clark’s cul-de-sac was particularly hard hit. His neighbor to the north, the former keyboardist for David Bowie, lost his home. Across the street, another neighbor’s house disappeared into an avalanche of smoking debris, leaving nothing but 20-foot sheer cliff where a driveway used to be.
Clark and his five-months-pregnant wife and their two dogs had fled quickly under evacuation orders at 2 p.m. Friday, leaving everything behind. By 4 p.m., he was at a friend’s home, watching live helicopter footage of his block burning.
But the fire engulfed his neighbors’ homes first. And the fact that his home was the last on the cul-de-sac to go down allowed firefighters to save some of Clark’s possessions, though the blaze was then too powerful to be slowed.
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Along with the ultrasounds, the firefighters rescued Clark’s tennis racquets, tool chest, surfboard, and bicycles, pulling them to the driveway.
On Saturday afternoon, Clark and his dad loaded the belongings into his father’s cobalt blue 1950 Chevy truck and hauled them to Clark’s childhood home, a half-mile away on an adjacent hillside.
Clark was already thinking about his family’s next moves. He’s staying with friends for now, but soon he’ll file insurance claims, find a rental house, and begin the task of rebuilding on his land. He said he’ll be thankful to have some fixtures from the old place, including the fuzzy images of his unborn son.
As Clark put it: “All the little things that make it a home.”