January 20

We returned to the house today to see if there was anything recoverable remaining at the site. There were a few items we though might have survived, primarily William's Titanium/Meteorite wedding ring. After suiting up in our PPE, we started poking around from outside the house the area in our bathroom where it was. A few minutes into our search, a group of firefighters on patrol for the red flag wind event today and tomorrow came by and offered to help search. Between us, we sorted through a significant amount of rubble in that area, finding a number of things that were still identifiable (metal storage shelves, nail clippers, lots of disposable razor blades). The most significant thing in this area was a stone tealamp that was mostly intact. We did not find the ring, though we did find a lump of metal that was significantly different than anything else in that area. We will look into getting it tested, as the firefighters concluded it was the most likely candidate for the remnants of the ring. 

We looked in a few other areas, finding a handful of river rocks that had been in the pot of Autumn's tree, signed by people at her baby shower (the signatures had burned off). All that remained of our bikes in the garage was a gear train. The most significant item we were able to recover was a space shuttle tile that was on display in our living room. It was identifiable relatively quickly and we were able to pull it close enough to grab over the exterior wall remnants. Many of the metal kitchen items were visible, though burned and not worth recovering as we wouldn't want to try to use them again. A lot of the ceramic plant pots had escaped outright destruction, but many stared crumbling when we tried to move them. 

While we were there, we encountered two of our neighbors. One family who had lived behind us wanted to see their house, and couldn't yet go up their street so walked through our backyard. Another neighbor next door also came to look through the rubble of their house, and we exchanged some information while going through our respective searches. Later in the day, a third neighbor got in touch and borrowed some tools to look through their house too. The consensus from everyone we've talked to in our area was that nothing much survived the fire. 

We expect to visit the house a few more times, for the insurance and potential to get an estimate for what it might take to rebuild on that site, but we don't expect to search for or find anything else worth retrieving there.