Jay Lamothe woke up on Sept. 10, 2024, the day after the Airport fire broke out, and saw flames in the distance near his home in the El Cariso community in the Santa Ana Mountains.
The fire, started by an Orange County Public Works crew working with heavy machinery in Trabuco Canyon on a hot summer day, had made its way into Riverside County and was on the precipice of destroying one of the rare remaining rural communities in the area.
He’d lived in his home there for the last seven years. It’s a neighborly place, Lamothe said, where people check in on each other and lend a hand. That’s especially important since the community is nestled along Ortega Highway — one way in, one way out.
By the early afternoon, a huge wall of flames neared his home, and it was time to leave. Lamothe and his son, Ryan, were the second-to-last people to evacuate the area. Blocking their way out, though, were flames burning right on Ortega Highway.
“I had to look at my son, the only person I have in this world, and tell him to drive through flames,” Lamothe said. “Flames that I knew could take the oxygen out of the air and stall that car, and we’d be baked.”
Lamothe recalled driving through about 100 feet of flames about 30 feet tall on the road. That treacherous moment, he said, thankfully ended with them making it through OK, but navigating their path forward in life from that day has been oftentimes a struggle almost too difficult to handle.
“I just want to be up on that mountain again. The life there is different,” Lamothe said at the Dana Point duplex he’s had to move into. “I’m just kind of living in a limbo.”
The Airport fire’s wreckage remains largely unchanged, as if frozen in time by the flames that ravaged parts of Orange and Riverside counties and destroyed more than 100 homes last year.
Lathome’s home and a life of belongings burned. The charred shell of his car, motorcycle and chimney of his house and the rest of the debris still haven’t been cleaned up, persistent reminders of what was.
He’s gotten a partial payout from his home insurance, he said, and a settlement offer from Orange County, but he’s fighting to be able to rebuild and account for the new expenses brought by the fire since he’s disabled and on a fixed income.
“I’d like to get on with my life,” Lamothe, 63, said. “But I can’t live off of what they’re offering me, and they don’t seem to understand this. It’s a little bit more than brick and mortar.”
Lamothe is one of many trying to piece back their lives after the devastating Airport fire, especially in the El Cariso Village neighborhood, where most lost their homes.
The fast-moving fire sparked Sept. 9 as a small half-acre vegetation fire that grew to 1,900 acres within three hours and 5,500 acres within eight. In two days, it had blazed more than 22,000 acres, and it took days to get any real containment as more than 1,000 fire personnel worked in sweltering conditions.
Thousands of residents were evacuated as the flames raced up the Santa Ana Mountains, cresting and driving straight toward the Lake Elsinore area, burning cabins in the Cleveland National Forest’s Holy Jim Canyon and then homes in the El Cariso Village neighborhood.
It was 26 days before the wildfire was out, leaving 160 structures, including sheds, cars and such, destroyed and 22 people injured.
Reed Nichols’ El Cariso home was decimated by the fire. Around his house remains a cemetery of burned-out cars, a torched former school bus and fossilized tools and scorched metal.
Nichols has been living on the property in a small mobile home along with some dogs. Two huskies, Rosie and Tonka, found shade beneath damaged trailers and charred vehicles one recent day.
Nichols said he requested to have the wreckage on his property cleaned up last to salvage what he could, such as engines from his classic car collection.
“I want to rebuild,” Nichols said. “Just depends on money.”
He said he received money from Orange County in August, but did not disclose how much he was given.
Over on Calle de Los Pinos, some properties have had debris cleared but remain nothing more than a flat foundation behind a metal gate. Others still have the charred shells of cars, mangled husks of appliances, the odd stack of bricks here and there.
Homes on El Cariso Road that were leveled by the fire show no signs of permanent rebuilding. There are what appear to be a trio of large white tents and a maintained pool on one property, while across a paved path, a pool filled with dark green, murky water is surrounded by remnants of debris and felled blackened trees.
Kelcy Keene, a 34-year-old married mother of four, lost two of her homes in El Cariso to the fire but said she is determined to rebuild and get her family back to the life they had. One where her children can run around on open land and scream like banshees and be themselves, or where raising their chickens, pigs, ducks and more is more manageable than the rentals they’ve endured for the last year.
“My husband and I busted our butts to buy two houses and have property and space and the life that we did with all of our animals and our kids,” Keene said.
Keene had to evacuate her family and 46 animals from their property the day the fire reached them. Since, they’ve paid to live in different rentals, still paying their two mortgages and trying to hasten the slow-rolling process to get their homes rebuilt. Keene was a stay-at-home mom who reentered the workforce since their expenses were just too much.
“It’s emotional for me,” Keene added. “I thought there were a lot of things that I moved past, but as the one-year mark is sitting here, I realized there’s a lot that I haven’t really worked through or faced. It’s hard.”
Keene said they’ve spent $150,000 so far on cleaning up the burnt debris and permits for their home, without even breaking ground yet on a rebuild or factoring in what they’ve spent on rent. Keene said Riverside County told fire victims that it would have dedicated support to help them navigate the rebuilding process but hasn’t come to fruition.
She hopes to spend Christmas 2026 as a family in a rebuilt home in El Cariso, but much needs to be done before then.
“I hope the county learned valuable lessons,” Keene said. “Orange County in the first place should have never have been operating large machinery and moving boulders on the hottest day of the year. I mean, just the stupidity of how the fire even originated, I hope it is a huge lesson from the beginning.”
For Orange County officials, much of the last year has been about sorting through thousands of filings related to claims for damages from the fire.
ALSO SEE: California says OC doesn’t qualify for federal fire assistance grant for Airport fire
Claims filed — some are from multiple people from the same address or duplicates so it is unclear what the total will be — are seeking compensation for properties lost or damaged in the fire, as well as expenses from evacuations.
The deadline for filing a personal injury or property damage claim caused by the fire is six months from the date of loss. For real property or economic loss, it’s one year.
The crew moving boulders that triple-digit September day “didn’t follow directives,” one high-level public works official said in a Microsoft Teams message later obtained by the Southern California News Group. The crew tried to douse the fire with extinguishers once smoke was noticed coming from the basket of a construction loader, but it had been working without a water truck nearby.
Chats and emails later obtained through a records request included comments that a water truck would be considered best management practice.
“It is up to the crew to use BMPs where appropriate. But our Field Operations Manual activity guidelines state ‘use appropriate BMP.’ For every maintenance activity,” then-county engineer Kevin Onuma, now the department’s director, wrote in one message.
“OCPW continuously reviews and updates its policies and procedures regarding fire prevention in response to changing circumstances and improvements in technology,” a department spokesperson said Monday.
A few dozen claims have been paid so far, amounting to about $39 million, but the county has appropriated nearly $500 million to cover expected costs.
An already dwindling cabin community in Holy Jim Canyon was left with only seven homes standing after the first day of the fire. Katie Saalfeld was the owner of one of 27 cabins that did not survive.
She recently settled with the county and now has to decide what her family’s next steps are, as the fate of the cabin community remains undetermined.
Her idyllic canyon getaway had been built by hand in 1980 by her late father, Mike Milligan, a beloved community leader and Holy Jim fire chief. It was where he took his last breath in 2022.
She had hoped the cabin tucked away in the Cleveland National Forest would provide her own children with the same nature-filled childhood she enjoyed, but after being spared in numerous other fires, it is gone.
Saalfeld hadn’t visited her property since last fall, when she surveyed the damage alongside a Southern California News Group reporter.
“It’s just too much,” she said. “I can’t. It’s too painful to go there.”
Ideally, she would like to proceed with rebuilding, but says it’s still a “big question mark.”
While residents own their cabins, the land belongs to the federal government. The permits dictate that cabins located in the floodplain — which includes most of the little community — cannot be rebuilt.
Litigation with the Forest Service has been ongoing since 2018, Saalfeld said, since the Holy fire burned at least 13 cabins. She doesn’t know yet whether her cabin will be determined to be part of that floodplain.
And it is unclear when the debris removal and remediation of the fire will be completed, Saalfeld and another resident said.Even if they’re able to rebuild in the near future, Saalfeld said the land lease is up in 2029. And she’s not optimistic about being able to reach a renewal agreement.
“Rebuilding is still a big question mark,” Saalfeld said. “They were doing a bunch of geological studies trying to see if they were going to allow cabin owners to rebuild, and that still hasn’t been decided.”
With the county settlement, her family will have to decide, “Do we use that money and go find something else that is ours?” she said. “How can we remember Dad? How can we make him proud?”