Geoff, Rox & 4 cats want to rebuild from the Palisades Fire

This is Geoff Sheldon & Roxane Berger from Topanga.

Our house burned down in the Palisades fire. We tried to build it with fire-resistant masonry walls and a metal roof, but we assume the fire got in through the windows.

We evacuated Tuesday night with our 4 cats to a generous friend's place in Sylmar, only to be woken up to evacuate from the Hurst fire. We ended up at the house of other generous friends in Westlake for a few days and are now back in Sylmar.

We heard that our house looked fine Wednesday afternoon, but saw on the Bravo69 site webcam flames coming out of our house Thursday morning. We called 911, but by then we assume they had no further trucks to send. None came.

But with the Palisades fire, the Eaton fire, and all the others at the same time, we can kind of understand. If we were there, we might have saved it. But one of the neighbors who did stay died, probably from the smoke, and then his place, also with block walls, burned.

Other than our cars and a few bags of things we threw in, we've lost a lifetime of stuff, some of it not a big loss, but... whew will miss all the furniture, art, personal items, etc.

We have basic insurance and may get some money from disaster relief, but we can see it will not cover everything by any means.

We're applying to rent a place. But as you can imagine, the rent even for a basic place is not cheap anywhere within an hour of the site, and the competition is getting worse due to the big burn-out areas around Los Angeles.

We've also lost our rental income from our tenant.

We'll need to rent a place, evaluate, and hopefully get a rebuild plan together and work out all this: the rebuild, the temporary housing, and replacing at least some of what we lost.

Every time we turn around, we remember that we used to have one of those, or wow, we lost the irreplaceable art and one-of-a-kind items.

So any help is appreciated. We are still in early days and trying to piece together the current restrictions, our options, and the path forward. During this last week and a half, people we know, and people we do not know have been kind and helpful to us. We are appreciative and grateful. At this point we don't have relocation funds, so the first money will go to renting a new place.