Calif. Man Recovers Engagement Ring amid the Rubble of His Burned Down Home and Immediately Proposes to Girlfriend

A couple had a surprise engagement after losing their house in the Los Angeles fires.

Brian McShea and Stephanie Raynor, who had a home in the Altadena neighborhood that was engulfed in flames by the Eaton Fire, lost everything in a blink of an eye.

They evacuated their home of one year on Jan. 7, the first day of the ongoing wildfires, according to ABC7.

A GoFundMe created for the couple explained that McShea was out of town when Raynor "needed to immediately evacuate with their pets in the middle of the night." Therefore, she wasn’t able to "save nearly any of their belongings."

Reality set in when the pair later returned to their home and took in the rubble. 

Unbeknownst to Raynor, her partner had been planning to propose to her and had purchased an engagement ring that was being kept in a desk drawer. 

"I was thinking, 'Well, maybe the stone can survive and maybe we'll find the little stone.' I thought the ring was going to completely disintegrate [in the fire]," McShea told ABC7. 

However, that did not keep him from searching when they returned to their property. 

"I was like, 'We're going to look over here where my desk is,' " McShea recalled. "I did not tell her why. I don't know what [she] thought we were looking for because it was pretty obvious that a lot of my stuff was gone.”

He continued, "So we're digging around where my desk is ... again, just looking for a stone. I really didn't have a lot of hope, but you just brush away some rubble and there's a little ring, and you pick that up and it's actually a washer to something, and that happened like four times, and then you pick it up, and there's a little diamond."

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

With the recovered ring in hand, McShea promptly popped the question amid the rubble and Raynor said "yes" through tears.

The couple shared their happy news with a joint post on their Instagram which includes two photos of the emotional moment, the first of which shows them in protection gear with their arms wrapped around each other while Raynor flashes her ring on her gloved hand. 

According to ABC7, they do not have a wedding date yet but want to remain in Altadena.

More than 12,000 structures have been destroyed in the fires, per the Associated Press.