The story of one street in the the worst affected area of the the Los Angeles wildfires.
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00:00But first, the pain and the misery inflicted by the California wildfires
00:04as seen through the eyes of the residents of a single street.
00:07Haverford Avenue in the Pacific Palisades area of LA
00:11bore the brunt of the largest fire at the end of last week.
00:15ITV News cameras filmed in the road as firefighters
00:18desperately tried to keep the flames at bay.
00:22Well, now we have returned as residents assess the damage
00:25and try to retrieve whatever they can.
00:28Some houses were spared, but others were completely destroyed.
00:33And it is clear that the street and indeed the community,
00:36like many others in the area, will never be the same again.
00:40Our correspondent Robert Moore has this special report.
00:46Five days ago, we watched Haverford Avenue burn.
00:52Today, the flames are extinguished.
00:55Where homes were being consumed in front of our eyes,
00:59now there is an eerie silence.
01:05But what is the future of this ruined street and this ravaged town?
01:11Climbing this hill to get to the top.
01:16Among those sneaking back in is Farhad, an architect,
01:19evading police roadblocks to disperse the flames.
01:24He's about to discover the fate of his home.
01:26Do you know if your house is standing right now?
01:28I'm going to go see.
01:30As he reaches Haverford Avenue, his fears grow.
01:33It's shocking. People here I knew, a whole bunch of them.
01:37This huge building here is gone.
01:40This is the moment of truth.
01:42This is my house.
01:55Almost miraculously, it is untouched by fire.
02:04That's remarkable, given that these are the views all around him.
02:11He struggles to process how random the destruction is.
02:15You're mystified.
02:16Yeah, absolutely. I don't understand how this didn't burn,
02:20that burned, this didn't burn.
02:23This didn't burn.
02:25There is a reason that Farhad's house was saved, and we saw it last Wednesday.
02:32The singular effort of Firetruck 10 and its crew, including Andy Chan.
02:38This one's already gone, so we're trying to keep it from communicating to this
02:42complex on this side.
02:44Who battled to keep the inferno from spreading.
02:48But then a realisation nothing will be the same again, even with his home intact.
02:53Well, you know, it feels good.
02:59But what's a house without a neighbourhood?
03:03There's no neighbours, there's no friends.
03:07Paul and his daughter Ella were among those neighbours.
03:11Living directly opposite Farhad, they also have come back briefly to check
03:16on their home.
03:26It is an apocalyptic scene.
03:29I think this is the bottom of our dining room table.
03:32This is the true loss out of all of this, not the possessions,
03:37but actually connections and community.
03:40Used to be paradise.
03:42It's truly paradise lost.
03:45It's just hard to even understand or even imagine.
03:50It's heartbreaking, not for me, but for the whole community as well.
03:55Paul, will you stay or will you go?
03:59I don't know.
03:59I really don't know.
04:00It's going to be painful to look at it.
04:02The randomness of the fire, why some homes survived and others were reduced to rubble,
04:08mystifies Paul as well.
04:10This is my neighbour Farhad, a really nice architect,
04:13and it's unbelievable that his building survived while mine burned to the ground.
04:18Not even, nothing is left.
04:22Down the street, the police have arrived, wondering if these brothers are looters.
04:27The thing is that you're not supposed to be here.
04:30In fact, Philip and Thomas have come back to retrieve something from their house.
04:34The most precious possession from the family safe.
04:38Yeah, they're still warm, actually.
04:40The real treasure is some sketches.
04:42My dad draws a lot, so we had like the best sketches we're putting in there.
04:47Their father has dementia and the retrieval of these drawings
04:51will be a light in the darkness for all the family.
04:54This will be really important for him and for all of us that,
04:58you know, we got something back from the rubble.
05:01But these brothers say the family will not attempt to rebuild.
05:05For my parents, I think they're too old to want to go through that process,
05:08so for us, it's just a chance to move on.
05:11The three sets of neighbours are all making different choices.
05:15Philip and Thomas are leaving town forever.
05:19Paul and Ella are undecided, and Farhad is committed to staying.
05:25And he has a final request.
05:31Can he meet the firefighters who saved his house?
05:35We find firetruck 10 and Andy Chan a few miles away.
05:39I wanted you to meet this man.
05:41How you doing, sir?
05:47Ramal, Brandon.
05:50Thank you, man.
05:52What was it like?
05:53How did you do it?
05:55We did what we could.
05:58Thank you so much.
06:01Everything is burned.
06:04Everything is burned around me.
06:05I can't believe it.
06:06I'm standing.
06:10It's a miracle.
06:10What you guys have done is a miracle.
06:12I'm an architect.
06:14I'm here to help rebuild.
06:15Maybe they saved my life for that reason.
06:18I don't know.
06:19But I intend to make something out of it, for sure.
06:23Thank you so much.
06:25Oh, my God.
06:29Daunted by the scale of what lies ahead,
06:32Farhad looks down on Haverford Avenue and the sea of devastation.
06:38The architect has a new mission now,
06:41to help rebuild the town that has suffered such a shattering blow.
06:47Robert Moore, ITV News, in Pacific Palisades.