"Do you want to buy a car?" Larry Sleep joked on Monday morning, as he looked at the burned-out shell of his Toyota Land Cruiser, parked within yards of his home, which was still standing on North Fairview Avenue. His wife, Ruth Sleep, was busy cleaning the ash from her kitchen tools. All the succulents around the home looked like they'd melted from the Holiday Fire's heat on Friday night, but the Sleeps had escaped to a friend's home. The next morning, Larry said he saw his home in an aerial shot of North Fairview: "It was the most beautiful sight."
While fleeing the night before, Sleep said he'd knocked on a few neighbors' doors to make sure they knew about the fire that was coming rapidly down Fairview. Two houses up the road were among the 13 that ended up burning to the ground that night, as well as one down the road, right next door. The family had been swimming in a hotel pool to escape the 100-degree heat when the fire broke out, said Amy Thoman. They only learned of it when one of their five kids, at a baseball game in Ventura, called because he'd heard a report of a fire on North Fairview.
The vagaries of brushfire were no more evident than at these two homes: Only the chimneys remained of the Thoman house, despite a broad expanse of mown yard and a wide concrete apron in front of the home. The house is on a piece of land that juts into the blackened eastside of the valley behind it. "All our baby pictures," said Thoman tearfully, "their drawings from school and their handprints. We didn't have a chance to save anything."
