Returning to a burned landscape

Stephen Halbert swept ash from his brick patio this morning, trying to clear it before his wife returned to the 1926 house on Aberdeen Avenue they have lived in for seven years. Halbert had been standing outside his home at 8 p.m. Tuesday watching the glow of the fire grow closer and redder when neighbor Kirstie Alley drove up and told him to leave. He grabbed his cats and his computer and jumped in his black Prius.

Halbert's wife spent the night with friends in the San Fernando Valley, where she had been rehearsing a play. He spent the night of his 57th birthday in his car at a nearby Albertson's parking lot with a handful of other evacuees. He was too wired to sleep and wanted to stay up to listen to the radio. Besides, he'd left his wallet in his house.

Returning just after 6 a.m. today, Halbert was grateful to the firefighters but saddened at the loss of so much parkland, where he and his wife hike. But the movie sound man found something to be optimistic about. He'd never heard so many birds singing, he said.

-Mary Engel