SAN DIEGO — When the scent of smoke from wildfires in the nearby hills began wafting through the San Diego air once again last week, residents in Scripps Ranch immediately thought back to 2003, when hundreds of homes burned to the ground.

They remembered watching television from shelters or friends’ houses to try to figure out whether their own house had gone up in flames. They recalled returning home to nothing but a pile of roof shingles and a solitary tin box. If they were lucky enough to have a door to unlock, they opened it to find ash raining down from the ceilings.

As they have for years, local residents eye the towering Eucalyptus trees that shade their streets with dread over their explosively flammable branches. They grimace each time they see a wooden fence in the neighborhood, thinking of it as a Roman candle that could shoot flames onto a nearby home.

Nearly 15 years after a wildfire incinerated more than 300 homes in this suburban neighborhood north of downtown San Diego, the vivid and often bitter memories of destruction and rebuilding come flooding back every time they hear about a fire in California. Before then, they never considered the possibility that a wildfire could eviscerate their cul-de-sacs.