RAMONA, California (Reuters):

When Ray Necochea was building his dream house four years ago, on a whim he wrote the story of his life on a wooden beam below the rooftop, hoping a future relative might serendipitously discover it.

With that beam and everything else inside the home obliterated in the firestorm that has ravaged southern California this week, the 55-year-old electric company worker is vowing to rebuild on the same hilltop overlooking nearby farms and mountain tops.

"The next house is going to be like our house on steroids; it's going to be a lot better," said Necochea, who has four grandchildren.

Such scenes of anguish and hope for the future are taking place across southern California, where officials are gradually lifting evacuation orders to allow residents back into areas ravaged by some of the worst fires in the state's history.

Little remains

Officials estimate the blazes destroyed more than 2,000 homes, often with such fierceness that little remained.

Officials opened up the town of Ramona northeast of San Diego late on Thursday, and a long lines of cars waited their turn to see what fate had befallen them.

As a "troubleman" or repair worker for the San Diego Gas & Electric Company, Necochea had already seen his destroyed home on Monday, but returned on Thursday and mused philosophically on the nature of life and loss.

"I was so devastated," he said as he looked across what had once been a 4,600 square foot, three-bedroom home with a swimming pool in an area where the sounds of cows, coyotes and birds, not the din of modernity, are the soundtrack of daily life. "It was just a smouldering heap of ash. It was a horrible feeling; I don't wish that on anyone."

Misshapen clumps of glass were all that remained of his 500 bottles of wine in a small cellar; even his modest collection of coins transformed into dull metal. His wife rescued the family photos when they evacuated the area on Sunday.