Residents Find Their Way To Shelters As They Take Inventory

SYLMAR - When 87-year-old Antoinette Cimmino walked into the Sylmar High School gymnasium this weekend, it all looked so familiar.
Years ago, she watched her son, Paul, and grandson, Michael, play basketball on the same court when they attended the school.
Sunday she found herself there again, chased away by flames that devoured the Oakridge Mobile Home Park.
'My house was saved, as were the houses next door,' she said, relieved but clearly grieving for her friend, Angelina Ball, who lost everything.
Ball figured since she returned last month, pearl rosary beads they would be able to go back unscathed again.
'That's why I didn't think it would burn,' she said as she wept. 'I left my Bible and rosary making kits my rosary. I left my husband's service records.'
While hundreds of firefighters continued to push back the Sayre Fire in the North San Fernando Valley on Sunday, hundreds more people like Cimmino and Ball took refuge in emergency shelters across the valley.
At Sylmar High, buy rosary beads more than 500 people from 281 families assembled in the two basketball gyms. Nearly 200 cots were spread out across the gym floors as food and clothing poured in from local businesses and community members.
Red Cross officials registered the namespersonal information of the refugees, who were given connections to further aid.
'Every agency in the county of Los Angeles has been slammed by this string of disasters,' said Lisa Bialac-Jehlea