Residents return to see what the fire left behind and to say goodbye

For two weeks, Leslie Miller was desperate to recover just one thing: the urn that contained the ashes of her daughter who died in early adulthood.

She wondered for days if she had survived the fire that destroyed much of Altadena, California. What if, she feared, she couldn’t return home before the rains came and wash her daughter’s ashes into an indistinguishable pile of debris and dust. ?

On Tuesday, Ms. Miller returned home for the first time since the Eaton Fire consumed her two weeks ago. She rushed out of her car and immediately looked through the gaping hole where her stained glass front door once stood. She looked through a gaping pile of gray debris and saw it: the white urn, still sitting on the back patio, atop a metal table that had also survived.

A bonsai tree that sat atop the urn was missing and the ceramic container cracked when Ms. Miller picked it up. But the ashes of his daughter Allison, who died four years ago at age 20 of congenital heart failure, were still there. Ms. Miller placed the urn in a cardboard box and prepared to load it into her car.

“Now it’s over,” she said, turning away from the rubble of her house. “Take it away.”