When they got news of the fires in Los Angeles last week, Herb Wilson and his wife cut their vacation short, booked an early flight home, except home wasn't there anymore.

Can you tell me about what you found at your house when you came back?

Well, when we got back, the house was down. I mean, it's pretty much burnt to the ground. Herb Wilson lives in

Altadena. That is where KQED's Beth LaBurge met up with him. She's the other voice you heard there.

Wilson's house was one of an estimated 12,000 structures damaged or destroyed in the fires.

We're just looking down the block at all the devastation and all the houses on the block are gone,

with the exception of one.

Altadena is in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, northeast of downtown.

It's a suburb, and it feels like one.

I've been here 20 years, and I love it here.

I mean, I love the people. It's a quiet neighborhood.

If you want to get excitement or something, you just have to drive five, six miles away.

But up here, this is a family neighborhood.

In those 20 years that Wilson has lived in Altadena, wildfires in California have changed.

They are bigger, more destructive, a year-round threat.

And like we've seen over the past week, sometimes several strikes simultaneously.

Firefighters couldn't save every neighborhood. Wilson said that's been hard to accept.

So that's some of the disappointment and anger with my wife because she thinks they just let it go.

And I told her, you know, you've got a city burning.

And sometimes they have to make decisions and they can only do so much.

Michelle Steinberg at the National Fire Protection Association says these fires are just too fast.

California has some of the largest numbers and best trained

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