Laura and Ishu Rao lost their home and most of their possessions when the devastating Holiday Fire engulfed their house in Goleta, California.
Forced to flee from the blaze which destroyed around 20 homes, Ms Rao said she left her most prized possession, a yellow diamond Tiffany & Co. engagement ring, in a dish next to the kitchen sink, according to The Washington Post.
“It’s not like me to not grab the ring right away because I treasure it,” she said.
“But we could see flames coming towards us. It’s almost like you go into shock. All I did was just grab the dogs and the kids and we left.”
But a search of the destroyed two-storey home and a piecing together of the kitchen layout, resulted in the discovery of the ring - still in its dish.
The couple had only been married for eight months, and the chance find prompted Mr Rao to get on one knee again to propose.
Mike Eliason, a spokesman for the Santa Barbara County Fire Department, captured the moment and shared the image on Twitter.
“I just thought it was kind of cute and I thought it might put a smile on her face,” Mr Rao said.
“I think I just said, ‘Will you marry me again?’ There wasn’t anything drawn out about it.”
The proposal took Ms Rao by surprise, and of course she said yes.
“It was so sweet,” she said.
“It just made things feel lighter because it was so heavy around us. There were homes that were down to the studs and neighbours and firemen everywhere. It just made a bad situation better for that moment."
The Holiday Fire, one of more than three dozen major blazes burning across the US west, broke out on Friday evening near the beach community of Goleta and raced through the seaside foothills.
The flames forced more than 2000 people to flee their homes, and left thousands more without power, prompting the emergency declaration which frees additional funds for the firefighting effort.
Some 350 firefighters took advantage of a period of light winds early on Saturday to contain as much as possible of the blaze, which has burned through 50 to 80 acres (20 to 32 hectares), fire officials said.
"It was a small fire but it had a powerful punch to it," Mr Eliason said.
"We're going to hit it hard today."
Winds were expected to pick up again as temperatures rise in the afternoon, he said.
Dozens of blazes have broken out across the western United States, fanned by scorching heat, winds and low humidity in, a particularly intense fire season.
This year's fires had burned more than 2.9 million acres (1.17 million hectares) through Friday, already more than the annual average of about 2.4 million acres (971,000 hectares) over the last 10 years, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.
- With Reuters
