‘You used to be able to hop a wall as a kid and knew exactly where you were. It’s just completely decimated.’ — Daved Benefield
Even that was soothing in its own way. Home is home. It’s comfort and memories.
The fire was one of several that simultaneously popped up in the Los Angeles area, charring huge swaths of land, claiming the lives of at 25 people — a number expected to rise much higher — and displacing thousands of families. Benefield’s elderly parents, Dave and Betty, are among those who have lost everything.
The 1926 home, full of charm from its wrought iron gate to 4.5-metre high window that graced its front, has been reduced to a sea of black and white ash. A brick chimney stands alone in the blanket of destruction, like a tombstone dedicated to a family’s history.
“Our neighbourhood is gone. All these old homes that were built 100 years ago, they’re all gone,” Benefield said. “You used to be able to hop a wall as a kid and knew exactly where you were. And now you can just look clear across; the space is nothing but chimneys. It’s just completely decimated.”
His parents, now in their 80s, did have insurance. But like the increasing thousands of others who have lost their homes, they’ll have to endure the massive backlog as claims bottleneck in the industry.
The Benefields are staying with Daved in Orange County, and now turn to the challenges of a daily life upended, like finding a Veterans Affair clinic for David.
“For my dad especially, (the problems), that’s just kind of magnified,” said Benefield. “It’s so difficult to deal with, but it should be a piece of cake. There’s so much, so many moving pieces.
“Now you just understand,” he added, in a discussion of how it compared to the 2003 Kelowna wildfires that devastated the Okanagan when he was still in the CFL.
“You understand about the people there, and how their lives have changed. Even though it’s not the same scope as L.A., it’s still a community. It’s moving parts, it’s people, it’s lives changing. Whether it’s 100,000 people or 5,000 people, you’ve got to go through to deal with people losing their homes and having to restart. The amount of stuff people have lost in the fire … and the memories, the treasures people have lost.”
Hogan’s Heroes actor Ivan Dixon lived up the block. Stacey Augmon, the ‘Plastic Man,’ who starred in the NBA in the late 90s, hailed from Altadena. Will Ferrell also had a home there.
But there are so many residents whose wealth was built into the homes they’d owned for decades, not in cash or bank accounts, and now those houses are gone.
“Altadena is like Mayberry,” said Benefield. “We have a little street where all these old buildings were from, like, the beginning of time.”
On Wednesday, Jan. 8, the day after staying over at his parents house, he got a call from his sister Davida saying they were going to evacuate. He was in disbelief. They’d seen the fire the night before, but it was a 15-minute drive away in Eaton Canyon. He fielded the call at 3:30 a.m.; by the time he got there 90 minutes later, the city was ablaze.
“I’m just like, ‘they’re just being overly safe.’ There’s no way the fire can go from the mountains where it normally goes, all the way over to all these houses into Altadena. And sure enough, it did,” Benefield said, recalling the evacuation.
“By the time I arrived, my whole neighbourhood was already decimated. The whole neighbourhood, from the corner all the way to the next corner … all the houses were completely engulfed in flames and had collapsed. The fire was just raging.
“Momentarily — and this is the neighbourhood that I grew up in — I couldn’t figure out where I was. I didn’t know where I was, because every house is on fire, on both sides of the street.
“You’re still in a state of amazement and disbelief how fire can jump from one place to another, wind or no wind. It’s just amazing and shocking all at the same time. It just really makes no sense.”
Once the fire had passed, Benefield and Ty sneaked past the authorities to see the house. They were overwhelmed at the destruction where both had spent so many formative years.
Dave and Betty haven’t been back.
Benefield had planned, now that Ty is fully settled at Boise State — the Broncos just finished the CFP playoffs — and daughter Addy is at the University of Washington playing volleyball, to return to Vancouver. But those plans are now on hold.
His parents will share his small home in Redondo Beach until they can be rehoused.
And with the state of the insurance industry, that timeline is indefinite.