Search dogs and archaeologists look for cremated remains amid a wildfire's debris

LOS ANGELES - Shepha Schneirsohn Vainstein didn't know where her mom was.

The smashed red tile roof of her Agoura Hills home had become the floor. The fireplace was now exposed, its stony chimney set hard against a blue morning sky. A brick oven survived in the kitchen. A washer and dryer a few feet away - scorched and scarred by flames - did not.

Around the corner, or where a corner once was marked by walls, was where she remembered her mom, Evelyn Estrellita Schneirsohn, last being. But then she remembered she'd also kept her cremated ashes on a curled maple credenza in a hallway near the bathroom for a time after she died over the summer at age 89.

Things have been blurry since the Woolsey fire began last month. Escape had been