By New York Post (U.S.) | Created at 2025-01-20 23:46:23 | Updated at 2025-01-23 16:54:19
2 days ago
ALTADENA, California — Joe Grueter and his adult children were on their hands and knees searching the charred remains his office for something hoped they wouldn’t find: the remains of Grueter’s beloved bulldog Maya.
“The worst call I ever got in my life was from my son. I asked him if he was able to get Maya and he said ‘I can’t Dad, it’s all gone,” Grueter, who owns a construction business, told The Post Sunday, weeping behind his respirator mask.
Grueter and his family believe that the pup, who guarded the office where he worked and lived, perished in the fire that demolished the building.
As the most expensive wildfires in California history continue to burn in Los Angeles Country, some families have been allowed to return to their homes.
Many are returning to nothing after the fire utterly wiped out their houses and all their possessions.
Residents were allowed past police roadblocks Sunday when the LA County Sheriff lifted evacuation orders for certain neighborhoods caught in the Eaton fire, which had been nearly 90% contained as of Monday morning.
Greuter, 68, kept his most prized possessions in the office in the Altadena neighborhood, north of Pasadena, including heirloom collections of smoking pipes and antique guns and a meteorite he had given to his son.
“I’m putting off my seven stages of depression until I have time for that. Right now I have a company to put back together for my employees and the community, to help them rebuild,” he said.
He said two of his seven employees lost their homes to the Eaton Fire, which has incinerated 14,000 acres in northern LA county. The Palisades Fire, the most expensive ever in California, has scorched neighborhoods to the west.
Costco worker Miriam Cotero, 46, and two of her children returned to find their Altadena home in cinders.
They donned white jumpsuits, goggles, and other safety gear to pick through the ash by hand, but none of their family mementos survived the blaze.
“We lost everything, all our memories…There’s only ash,” Cotero said.
Cotero had lived there with her partner, their three children aged 25, 22 and 17, and her granddaughter.
The family is staying in a hotel until Wednesday. After that, she doesn’t know what they will do. Her son, Edward, is a high school senior at Pasadena High School, so the family cannot move far to find a rental home.
Next door, musician Kevin Sandbloom, 57, drove up and donned his own set of white coveralls to inspect the pile of blackened rubble that used to be his home.
“I’m hoping to find some mementos. Maybe some pictures, but I doubt it,” Sandbloom said.
He said a studio and a garage full of music equipment had been in the house, but more important to him were the drawings and paintings of his 11-year-old daughter, which had covered the walls.”
“I don’t think there’s anything left to find but maybe, who knows.”
