“When our son Martin was born, we bought a small 4-story house in Altadena, located 500 m above sea level, at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains.“, tells us this civil engineer trained in Louvain-la-Neuve, who became a computer system architect. And this in this city of 40,000 inhabitants, more oriented towards the middle class with numerous artists, US scientists and expatriates, while JPL, NASA’s research center that employs thousands of people, is just a few miles away.
Rushed departure at 11 p.m. to visit friends
“Nothing remains of Altadena. 95% of houses and businesses disappeared during the day on Wednesday. In our neighborhood, only our neighbor’s villa is miraculously intact. For our part, we found refuge with friends after leaving around 11 p.m. the previous night. The power had gone out, it was starting to get cold and we could see the fire getting closer. My wife convinced me that we had to leave. The evacuation order came only the next morning. Many people were in denial and stayed at home until the end… We will certainly find dead people under the charred debris.”
“They just saved the most beautiful villas”
This is not the first time that residents of the Los Angeles suburbs have seen fires on the horizon in the forests… but these have never reached homes, at least in the 21st century. “In 2003, there had already been an evacuation, but the firefighters managed to save the residential areas, remembers Nicolas. This time, they just saved the neighborhood of the most beautiful villas. There were not enough men, water reserves, or plan to avoid disaster. Global warming is of course the main cause, but there have been many failures. For our neighborhood, it is a still active electricity pylon which, upon contact with the flames, projected sparks over hundreds of m, pushed by the wind…“
Fires in California: Trump denounces the “incompetence” of Los Angeles leaders in the face of the fires
Rebuild or leave, depending on insurance
Now, this Belgian couple and their son Martin have found refuge in an Airbnb in the neighboring city of Pasadena, where they rented a room for a month at the price of… $5,500.
“As I have proof in photos and videos, taken when I returned to the site a few days after the fire, that my house disappeared, our insurance certified us that we would quickly receive compensation of $10,000 to relocate us, so that compensation is capped at $110,000 at this level. But we will probably have to wait a while… “Insurance companies are indeed overwhelmed, while tens of thousands of homes have gone up in smoke all around Los Angeles.
-“For now, we’re staying in our Airbnb, while our son finishes his final year of high school in Pasadena – he starts classes this Monday -, while my wife is waiting for her main job, classes. art given in French. We do not yet know if we are going to rebuild or if we are going to leave, this will depend in particular on the clauses and the possibilities of insurance… while this type of disaster risks multiplying, in Altadena as elsewhere on the planet.”
“It’s a miracle”: the striking image of a house that resisted the fires in Malibu, while the neighbors burned to the ground
Plus the $10,000 and crowdfunding
In the meantime, Nicolas launched a crowdfunding operation to help them via gofundme.com (Help Martin, Catherine & Nico to rebuild) which has already raised more than $10,000 in three days. “We have received a lot of support from the four corners of Wallonia, from people we have not seen for a long time, this really makes us happy during this difficult time, Nicolas pointed out to us again… an inveterate cyclist. I was planning to return to Belgium in the spring to do the Tour of Flanders and Liège-Bastogne-Liège routes reserved for amateurs, but there it risks being complicated ” he concluded, with a smirk. “In the United States, insurance is a real business, we will almost be obliged to call on a specialized agency to hope to recover something financially.“
On the material level, however, there is nothing more to hope for. “Our 160m2 house was on one level, without a cellar. It was made of wood, which is more stable and recommended in a region prone to earthquakes. And which has the advantage of being rebuilt very quickly, if the foundations have withstood the shock. At best I can find a few charred objects under the debris. But not my computer equipment, nor my collection of comic books or other memorabilia. The Republican Guard may well have been put in place to protect neighborhoods from looting. At home, there is nothing left to plunder… “
