Decades of memories reduced to ashes

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Today is Wednesday, January 15th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Lindsay Mast.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: the California fires.

Currently more than 6,000 personnel are fighting the Palisades and Eaton fires. Dry conditions and high winds are driving the intensity and spread. Together those two fires are likely to become the most costly in the history of LA County.

MAST: Many families say it’ll be impossible to rebuild. WORLD’s Mary Muncy talked to one family who lost more than just their home.

GEORGE CRANDELL: She said, ‘Yeah, well, you know, I had my bag packed, and I just did the normal evacuation thing. But I never thought this was the big one.’

MARY MUNCY: George Crandell spent his childhood in the Pacific Palisades. He’s talking about his 87-year old step-mother Yvonne who now lives in the family home he grew up in.

CRANDELL: This was the fifth time she had to evacuate.

Over the last 15 years, Yvonne has kind of become used to evacuations. Last Tuesday afternoon she left with her important documents and the clothes on her back—thinking she’d be back in a couple days. But on Wednesday morning, she got a notification on her phone that the fire alarm in the house was going off.

CRANDELL: Overnight, everything got wiped out.

Yvonne is devastated. So much so that she declined to speak with us. The house has been in the family for five generations—the centerpiece of extended family gatherings for nearly 75 years.

CRANDELL: In the late 1940s my grandparents and my parents moved to Southern California.

Crandell was only three or four years old when his parents walked out onto a bluff overlooking the Santa Monica Bay.

CRANDELL: They walked out there and he said, ‘Babe, this is it.’ He picked up the ‘for sale’ sign and put it in the trunk of his car.

No one else was going to get that property.

Pacific Palisades was founded in 1922. It began as a Methodist retreat. It was a place for retired missionaries and pastors to buy houses or little lots.

CRANDELL: And they were made so they'd be affordable for the for the retiring church people

Crandell’s father and uncle built a one-story, ranch-style house with a big yard that overlooked the bay. There was a big magnolia tree in the back yard and his grandmother put in brick paths around it and along the bluff.

George Crandell, left, and his father sit in front of the kitchen window. Photo courtesy of Keena Ganage

KEENA GANNAGE: I mean, that was my first home.

Keena Gannage is George Crandell’s daughter. She lived in the house until she was ten.

GANNAGE: It had that old charm, just because it was such an old home and had been kept nice.

Gannage and her kids also lived on the property on and off in 2008.

GANNAGE: And our children all began to have that same connection to the home and property because of that time, and it became a very special place for them.

Throughout the years, many generations shared the home, but none of them did much to change it.

GANNAGE: I grew up on the same property with my grandparents and my great grandmother.

AUDIO: [Sound of piano playing]

Gannage remembers her great-grandmother sitting on the couch in the living room and walking the paths with her cousins and Thanksgiving ending in everyone around the self-playing piano.

AUDIO: [Sound of birthday party, singing]

A few years ago, Gannage had her 50th birthday at the house.

GANNAGE: It wasn't a fancy house. It wasn't, you know, it wasn't anything about the house itself. It was what, what, what the house and property facilitated. And that was what was special.

While the house had remained relatively untouched, the town changed around it. George Crandell once again:

CRANDELL: The older bungalow houses were being transformed into huge places that took up most of the lot with Mansions…

Mansions that have now gone up in flames.

FOX: We do continue our coverage of the wildfires that are burning across California…

WGN NEWS: Thousands of families have lost their homes this week.

FOX: We are watching a house burn down and it never gets any easier and our hearts go out to the folks who call that house a home.

The Palisades fire started on January 7th. In the eight days since, the fire has scorched more than 23,000 acres. It’s destroyed nearly 1,300 homes and structures and at least eight residents have died in the fire.

Now, a 6pm to 6am curfew remains in effect and tens of thousands of people have evacuated the area.

GANNAGE: I think the dispersion is going to be very unique, because people have completely lost their community.

Many of the area’s wealthy residents may have the resources to rebuild, but that takes time—time that many of the old timers probably can’t invest.

GANNAGE: You won't have the the old influence of the people who've been there for generations coming back, it's likely to be all, you know, more new residents, or all new residents, and because the home would never be able to be built nowadays the way it was back then.

As for the Crandell family, George says they likely won’t rebuild and his step mother Yvonne isn’t sure where she’ll go.

CRANDELL: I expect a lot of people won't return, and it will take years and years and years before that community starts to look like a community again. It was just sort of like something got erased.

And regardless of how many do return, Crandell says that he doesn’t think it will ever be the same. But they’re grateful for the memories that the fire could not destroy, and they look forward to making new ones—wherever that may be.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Mary Muncy.

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