"You would never know it but it was pretty here. It's never going to be pretty like it was," said Kilgore, 70, a rock guitarist and lifelong Altadena resident.

"The place I grew up in is gone forever. It's a memory."

The fires broke out on Jan 7, when dry desert winds whipped over mountain passes with hurricane force, following eight months without rain. The Eaton fire, in Los Angeles County just east of the city, devastated the community of Altadena, while the Palisades fire leveled much of the coastal Pacific Palisades district.