Left with just the clothes on his back, 86-year-old Army veteran Roosevelt Pullem said the Eaton Fire demolished his Los Angeles County home but couldn’t destroy the memories he and his late wife shared in the decades they lived in the residence.
“I just cried. Kind of like, I couldn’t help it,” Pullem told ABC Los Angeles station KABC Tuesday night of his initial reaction to seeing his home in Altadena reduced to charred ruins. “I kept thinking to myself, ‘You have the memories, you have the memories.'”
Pullem, a retired nurse who served in the Korean War, said he was inside his house on Jan. 7 when the Eaton Fire swept into his neighborhood, leveling home after home. When he opened his front door to check how close the rapidly spreading fire had gotten to his property, he said he saw flames “twirling towards me.”
Pullem said all he had time to do was grab his car keys and flee. As he drove away, he said the last thing he saw was flames at the back of his house.
When he eventually returned to his home, Pullem said, there was nothing left by rubble. His only intact possession was his vintage 1963 Volkswagen Beetle sitting in his driveway.
“Just tears came to my eyes. I’ve been there so long and have so much wonderful thoughts about my wife and I,” Pullem said of his wife of 29 years, Melwetha Pullem, who died in February 2013 after a long illness.
An obituary published by the Woods-Valentine Mortuary in Pasadena described Pullem’s wife, who also was a registered nurse, as a “devoted Christian” who “took care of those in need. Most importantly, the love and life she shared with her beloved Roosevelt was joyous and inseparable.”
Pullem, who will turn 87 next month, said that he’s too old to start over again. Even so, relatives have established a GoFundMe campaign to help him recover from the disaster, writing, “His home was not just a shelter but a repository of memories, mementos, and the life he built over decades with his late wife.”
In the meantime, he’s living at the Pasadena Convention Center, which has been converted into an emergency shelter for fire victims.
“I’ve experienced the good, the bad, and the ugly,” Pullem said. “But in my life, the good has outweighed the ugly way far than I would ever dreamed.”
The Eaton Fire ignited just after 6 p.m. Pacific Time on Jan. 7, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire).
Fueled by hurricane-force Santa Ana winds, the blaze – one of several that have broken out during what the National Weather Service designated a “particularly dangerous situation” – ravaged many neighborhoods in the communities of Altadena and Pasadena, destroying some 7,000 structures, including homes and businesses, and burning 14,000 acres.
The Eaton Fire, which was 35% contained as of Tuesday morning, is the second-largest of the infernos that ignited over a 45-square-mile area of Los Angeles County. The Palisades Fire in the oceanfront community of Pacific Palisades also started on the morning of Jan. 7 and has grown to nearly 24,000 acres, and is the largest of the fires.
The Palisades Fire has destroyed about 5,000 structures, including homes and businesses. The fire was 17% contained as of Tuesday as firefighters braced for the re-emergence of strong Santa Ana winds, which were forecast to blow through the drought-stricken region through Wednesday, further fueling the fires.
At least 24 fire-related deaths have been blamed on the Eaton and Palisades fires, according to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office.
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