How to use "ruins" in a sentence

Their hopes and dreams seemed to be in ruins

I rushed out onto the grass and saw the tops of the trees around the Oriental College burst into smoky red flame, and the tower of the little church beside it slide down into ruins

The fires had died down now, but the ruins of broken and burnt-out houses and blackened trees were clear in the cold light of the dawn

'It's hit this house and buried us under the ruins!'

At any time the destruction that had already happened to the north-western borders of the city, that had destroyed Ealing, might strike among these houses and leave them smoking ruins

At first I thought a house had fallen across the road, but when I climbed up on the ruins I saw, with a shock, this great machine lying, with its tentacles bent and twisted, among the ruins that it had made