The Bibby family watched the flames lick at their car doors as they drove away from the home they had just inherited in the hills of Camarillo. Ken and Brittanie had barely enough time to evacuate with their 15-month-old son, mother and grandmother, and two dogs.
That was pretty much all they had with them.
The Bibbys had returned to California just two weeks prior, after over four years in Arizona. They were settling into the house that was left to them by Brittanie’s family.
Around 8:30 a.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 6, she received a text from a friend warning her about the fire and telling her to keep an eye on it. A couple of hours later, the fire jumped the 118 Freeway and started making its way up the mountain towards the Bibby’s home, urged on by fierce Santa Ana winds.
“The winds were so strong, they had torn the gutter off of my home,” Brittanie Bibby said.
A knock at her door by authorities confirmed it was time to go. She called Ken home from work to help evacuate their family. He finally made it, after his regular 10-minute commute from his job at Trader Joe’s took 40 minutes.
“I was walking into the nursery to get stuff for the baby, and I had a tickle in my brain telling me, ‘Look out the window,’ ” Brittanie said. “I looked, and the flames were across the street.”
She had to make the decision to leave everything behind so she could get the family out, including their asthmatic son, once a neo-natal intensive care unit baby, and whose medication was also burned, her mother-in-law, and her grandmother-in-law who suffers from dementia. In addition, she had to scoop up two dogs – a 9-year-old boxer and a 19-year-old Poodle Terrier.
“I held my son to my chest as I’m running out the door, and all I can see the flames across the street that were now touching the front lawn,” Ken Bibby said.
Brittanie described an apocalyptic scene as they sped away from the house, the car windows framing pitch black smoke and the orange fire.
“As we were driving down the street, the flames were reaching over the car,” she said.
By 3:30, they saw the first satellite images confirming their home had been engulfed by flames.
Brittanie said the family home had seen three generations of child-raising. They were eager to bring up their son there too, with a pool, backyard and front lawn for him to enjoy.
“We finally felt like we’d made it,” Ken said. “Now we have nothing.”
Along with the future that went up in smoke, pictures, knickknacks, wedding pictures and other relics of the past were gone, too. Both Ken and Brittanie lost their father’s ashes, along with those of Brittanie’s mother. Avocado and citrus trees planted in the 70s and tended to by Brittanie’s grandparents for decades also were destroyed in the fire.
Ken said that his grandmother had woken up in tears, and spent the entire morning crying, devastated by the loss and confused about the sequence of events due to her cognitive problems. The baby, still recovering from a dog attack three days before the move, also is visibly unsettled by the change.
“We’re moving from home to home, room to room,” Ken Bibby said. “He’s not in his normal clothes that smell like the detergent we use.”
With no place to go, the family is planning to spend Friday night at a homeless shelter, rather than burden friends and family.
In addition to the emotional trauma of losing cherished items and irreplaceable memories, the Bibbys are grappling with devastating financial loss.
The family organized a GoFundMe to replace the baby’s necessary items, like his bottles. But they’re not sure what their financial future looks like. The cost of fixing up the dilapidated house had drained much of their savings. Ken Bibby says that the attorney in charge of the trust that gave them the house believes there was no fire insurance for the property, either.
“I would advise anybody in any fire zone to take any memories and important documents and digitize them,” Brittanie said. “Put them on an external hard drive that’s within grabbing distance and have a go-bag.”
The Bibby’s home was one of 132 structures that have been destroyed by the Mountain Fire so far.
“I don’t wish this upon anyone,” Ken Bibby said. “I feel for the other families and everyone else out there who lost their homes.”
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