How will Los Angeles rebuild itself? Recovery from the Tubbs fires in wine country offers clues.

Donna and Bob Williamson call the strange mementos pulled from the ashes of their home their museum of misery.

There is the bottle of green wine that has melted, the glass neck falling off, which seems taken from a Salvador Dalí painting. Silver forks that coalesced into a thick, lumpy utensil, its tines extending like porcupine needles.

A tray they received on their wedding day that read: “For better or for worse.” Only a shard survived. The piece that says: “For the better”.

The collection sits in cardboard boxes in the back of the garage of their new home in Santa Rosa, California, a city of about 175,000 in the Sonoma wine country.

The Williamsons know the pain and uncertainty experienced by those who lost their homes in the Los Angeles fires – wondering how they will ever rebuild and reclaim the treasures they lost. Building anything in California is expensive and bureaucratic even in the best of times, and now thousands of Southern California residents will be competing for the same permits, labor, and materials simultaneously.

“There is a light at the end of the tunnel,” Ms Williamson said. “But it’s going to be a long tunnel.”