Karen Myles, 66, walked out of her Altadena, California home in the middle of the night in her pyjamas, confronted by a forest of red and orange flaming trees and live wires from tumbled electric poles sparking in the street.

Her son, who had woken her from a deep sleep, navigated their path to safety. The fire destroyed her neighbourhood this month, and she is not going back.

“I’m not going to rebuild. Oh no. Hell no. That fire took everything out of me. I’m going to fly away somewhere, somewhere nice. Maybe, Colorado,” the retiree said outside a disaster recovery centre.

She lived in the house for more than 40 years and will miss friends, she said, adding that the fire left her no choice.

Across Los Angeles on the coast, Pacific Palisades residents Sonia and James Cummings lost a house they bought in 1987 and renovated a decade ago. “It was with the intention of staying there until we were no longer above ground,” said James Cummings, 77. Now they see a wasteland.

“I worked two years nonstop building our ideal home,” Sonia added. We were at the point where everything was perfect. I don’t want to do that again.“

Victims of one of the most destructive fires in California history are struggling to decide whether to rebuild, facing a bewildering array of challenges, including soaring construction costs, years of effort and the question of whether the tight-knit communities, especially middle-class Altadena, will rise again.

10,000 burned structures

One issue for many is the toxic ash and other pollutants that blanket destroyed neighbourhoods, stretching block after block. The fires have killed about two dozen people and destroyed more than 10,000 structures.

“Think of ash like fine, dangerous dust that can be inhaled deep into the lungs and can cause major problems everywhere it lands. It’s not just dirt,” an advisory from the LA County Public Health Department warned.

Mark Pestrella, director of Los Angeles County Public Works, said he is setting up a program free to homeowners to clear out the hazardous waste.

“We will dispose of material properly and we will deliver a lot to you ready to build [on],” he told residents recently, adding that the county would also allow private contractors. State and local officials are promising to cut red tape to speed reconstruction.

Many considering rebuilding do not expect it to be that easy, or fast. Altadena resident Shawna Dawson-Beer, 50, renovated her venerable house into what she called a forever home. She did not recognise her street when she returned after the fire.

“We want to come home, and our homes are gone,” she said. “God only knows when the cleanup is going to be done. God only knows if the cleanup is going to be done right. And then you are going to be around construction and then, lucky you, during this whole time you have no community.

“It’s gone,” she said. “We’ve all been uprooted and scattered to the wind.”

Her husband, Marcus Beer, 54, notes they had good insurance on the destroyed house. “If we go back, are we uninsurable? Because we weren’t in a burn area, but oh boy, howdy, are we now,” he said. Realising they are in a burn zone also makes the idea of rebuilding more stressful.

Jewellery designer Charlotte Dewaele, 48, is lucky in one way: her house survived because her husband stayed behind to defend it as the fire approached. It is a rental, but it had their lives in it, she said.

“Now what,” she wonders. Will the landlord keep the house? Does she want to move back in, surrounded by devastation? Will years of construction keep asbestos, lead and other toxic chemicals in the air?

“You are in the middle of this wasteland,” Charlotte said. “Am I going to make my kid wear a mask outside for the next four years?”

Many homeowners fear that they will not collect enough insurance money to cover what they expect to be skyrocketing building costs.

Pacific Palisades real estate broker Adam Jaret, 49, suspects that could be an opening for big developers and investors to change the place in a building process that he believes will take a decade.

Still, abandoning a community is hard. Dawson-Beer and her husband were on the verge of signing a one-year lease on a house about 160 kilometres away, but she could not do it.

“The idea of leaving everything I know gave me a panic attack,” she said.