By Jacob Bernstein
Situated on Amalfi Drive in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles, opulent residences owned by stars remain intact. However, at the Pacific Palisades Bowl Mobile Estates, a trailer park located on Pacific Coast Highway directly opposite the beach, nearly 200 homes have been devastated.
“Just a heap of ruins,” remarked Maria Nol, who shared a mobile home there with her daughter, son-in-law, and three grandchildren.
Nol was among many individuals who toiled to achieve a middle-class existence but now found herself sifting through debris for any remnants.
“The media focuses on and highlights all the celebrities who lost their homes, but the residents here inherited their properties from parents who bought in the ’70s,” stated Nol’s daughter, Lynda Park, 43, on Friday.
Park had been employed at the Pacific Palisades Presbyterian Church, which also succumbed to flames last week. Additionally, the home of the family her mother cleaned for was also destroyed.
Nol owned a property on the 16000 block of Pacific Coast Highway but lacked an insurance policy. She mentioned that acquiring one had become prohibitively expensive due to the high likelihood of natural disasters in this picturesque, yet fire- and landslide-vulnerable region.
“The only possessions we have left are the clothes we are wearing,” Park said.
She was dressed in a blue down vest over a white T-shirt and Gap jeans. Her mother wore a red zip-up sweatshirt and black sweatpants, with Nol estimating her outfit cost approximately $50.
Nearby was their neighbor, Bonnie Kanner, 63.
That morning, Kanner had been so flustered that she accidentally wore her top inside out. Now, she was taking pictures of the wreckage around her house with her iPhone, as mandated by her homeowners insurance policy. She stated that her policy covers $400,000 — $250,000 for the property and $150,000 for her personal belongings.
To claim the full amount, she would need to provide an inventory of her belongings, but all her documentation had been lost in the fire.
To her left, there was a hollow washer and dryer, and to her right lay a circular item about 3 feet wide with charred springs.
“That’s my trampoline,” she noted.
Kanner employed a metal detector to search for her sterling silver utensils. When it began beeping, she retrieved a metallic object resembling melted Play-Doh from the debris. Her forks, knives, and spoons had fused together.
She departed from her home’s ruins with the melted bunch of silver, suggesting she might be able to sell it for a few hundred dollars.
