‘Oh my god, it’s still standing’: A tale of fire and fortune

On Thursday, Tobiska, 75, climbed into a reporter’s rental car to find out if they still had a home, as his wife stayed behind at a hotel with their Irish setter, Apollo.

With a neighbor also in tow, they passed by police checkpoints and turned off the Pacific Coast Highway into a scene of utter devastation in the affluent coastal enclave. The nearly 20,000-acre blaze has left row after row of residences burned to their foundations, businesses in ruins and hillsides covered in ash in all directions. At one intersection, charred shells of cars that evacuees abandoned to flee on foot lined both sides of a deserted road.

“Wow man, it’s scorched the whole canyon," the neighbor, Chris Kellett, 54, said as they wound their way up the mountainside.

The two men live in a townhome community called HOA 4, built decades ago as part of the Pacific Palisades Highlands master-planned development. The Tobiskas moved into their three-bedroom unit in 1997. Kellett and his fiancée moved next door shortly after.

There had been fire scares before, but nothing like Tuesday morning. Kellett, a paralegal, was at his office in Century City when he learned about the fire, and he began texting his neighbor updates. Back at his townhome, Tobiska, a space scientist who runs a company that has flown instruments into orbit, started packing important things: wills, trusts, changes of clothes.

When the air thickened with smoke, Tobiska and his wife followed a police-led convoy down the mountain. “Fire was on both sides of the car," Susan recalled. “It was really scary."

When they made it to safety, Tobiska realized, to his disappointment, that he had forgotten to pack a treasured keepsake: an instrument used to detect cosmic radiation aboard Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rockets. He also had left behind his signed photo of the Earth behind the moon, taken by the Galileo spacecraft, which he helped guide to Jupiter while at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Thursday morning, Tobiska and Kellett arranged to try to return together.

As they ascended the mountain by car, they rounded a corner to discover an oasis of green, with untouched townhomes inside. Even the blue, black and green waste bins remained intact, though mostly knocked to the ground by the fierce winds.

“Oh, my God, it’s still standing," Tobiska said, turning into a drive of the property. Then he raced into his home, using a garage opener that still had power. Stepping onto his deck, he took out his phone and called his wife.

“Hi hun, Susan?" he said.

“Yes," she replied, haltingly. Tobiska continued, his voice breaking: “I got in the house, everything is OK."

“You’re kidding!" she replied. “No," he said, “our little section is the only section that is remaining."

Often in fires, there are homes left standing against all odds. Firefighters attribute this to various factors, including a house having nonflammable materials or vegetation cleared away.

Also, in this week’s inferno, heavy, erratic winds have caused hot embers to blow around haphazardly, igniting fires wherever they land. On many streets, one can see homes leveled on one side and untouched on the other.

Kellett believes there is another reason: luck.

“Obviously we’re very fortunate," he said, as he hurried around. He moved flammable lawn furniture off his deck, righted the garbage bins and packed up boxes of clothes and other essentials to take back to a relative’s home, where he was staying.

Tobiska loaded up more belongings too, including the radiation instrument, which he gave a little hug, some paintings and a big sack of dog food.

Before leaving, Kellett made sure to douse some hot spots smoldering in the street median out front—enlisting the help of a Cal Fire crew when they passed in a truck. “It would be a shame to make it this far and lose the house," he said.

Tobiska had also promised some friends he would check on their homes. “Hi, Robert," he said on one’s voicemail. “This is Kent. I was able to get up here to the Highlands and your place is OK."

Near the top of the mountain where the fire broke out, they ran into another relatively fortunate homeowner, Barry Josephson, an acclaimed movie producer who had borrowed an e-bike to check on his family’s hilltop mansion, which was intact. The home was painted red with fire retardant, which he credits in part to its survival. His relief, however, was tempered by some sorrow.

“My koi fish are going to die in there because the motor burned," Josephson said, referring to an engine that controls a recycling system for the fish he and his young daughter raised.

For the survivors, knowing that so many neighbors have lost their homes is sobering. As lucky as HOA 4 was, a sprawling condominium development known as the Woodies, for its wooden siding, was mostly leveled. Tobiska broke the news to his wife in their call.

“Oh, my God, Nancy and Tom," Susan cried, referring to their friends who lived there. “Yeah," he replied.

Write to Jim Carlton at Jim.Carlton@wsj.com