After a trash truck dumped a fiery load, dozens of mobile homes burned and an 89-year-old woman died
CALIMESA, Calif. - As the siblings stared out at the blackened canyon, flecks of ash from the fire that stole their mother floated down on their shoulders. Even a week later, the stifling air still smelled of smoke.
For several hours last week, Don Turner and his older brother and sister camped outside Villa Calimesa mobile home park, waiting for officials to let them return to the rubble at plot E23 - the spot where, on Oct. 10, their mother, Lois Arvickson, 89, died near her phone inside her longtime home.
"It's on fire," Turner recalled his mother telling him, saying she needed to find her purse. Moments later, the phone cut out.
Five days after the deadly fire, Turner and many others with ties to the mobile home park stood outside a chain-link fence, staring inside and struggling to navigate their new reality. A young mother sobbed into her cellphone, saying she was desperate to get back inside her semi-charred home to retrieve clothes for her baby, and
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