As the fire roared down a hillside towards their Altadena home, Vanessa Prata and her parents hurried to pack their car. They focused on saving irreplaceable items, like family photographs and a baby doll from Vanessa’s childhood.

But they didn’t leave.

Instead, the Pratas have remained in their family home of 27 years, which is somehow still standing amid widespread devastation from the Los Angeles wildfires, even as homes just over a block away burned. And as residents who did flee are kept away by police or military barricades, Prata and her dad have taken it upon themselves to check on their neighbours’ homes.

“They’re sitting in these shelters. They’re not sure whether their house survived or didn’t survive,” Prata said. “Once you know what the situation is, you have an ability to regroup and see what you’re going to do moving forward.”

Prata, a 25-year-old nursing student, had stopped at a hardware store on her way home from dinner on Tuesday night when she saw the flames approaching the home she shares with her parents, two cats and a dog. She called her dad, then rushed home as many other people headed the other direction to evacuate.

At the house, the Pratas frantically packed, in the dark once the power went out. But Vanessa’s father, Aluizio Prata, who teaches electrical and computer engineering at the University of Southern California, didn’t want to go. He didn’t think the fire would reach them, but if it did, he wanted to stay and help fight it.

They spent much of the night at a home up the street, carrying buckets of water, spraying the yard with a hose and stomping out embers before they spread in the powerful wind gusts.

As the toll from the wildfires became clear, Vanessa Prata saw many people doing what they could to help those who lost their homes.

Prata remained home, with her family occasionally running a borrowed generator to check the news and keep the freezer cold. She wanted to help, too. But there was little she could do from behind the barricade. If she left her neighborhood, she wouldn’t be allowed back.

So on Friday morning, Prata posted to an Altadena community group on Facebook, offering the one thing she could think of that would help.

“We are more than happy to drive around and take a picture for any person who would like to see their home or, God forbid, what is left of their home,” she wrote. The requests came pouring in — as many as 45 by Saturday morning. She and her dad set out on Friday, checking addresses written in a small notebook.

New York Times News Service