Belizean Family Loses Home and Belongings in LA Fires  

A Belizean woman who has been living in Los Angeles for the past twenty-five years has lost her home and everything she and her two children owned in the raging fires that have been burning. Anaceli Mendez made a video recording to share with us the sequence of events leading up to and just after her home was gutted by the blaze. She shared that just before the fires, they experienced strong winds that knocked down trees and her fence. The night before her house was destroyed, her neighbour woke her and her son, and she believes that was what saved them from getting burnt in the blaze. Her daughter was at college several miles away, she said. An evacuation order was given for the families in her area early the following morning, but by that time, she and her son had already left with just overnight clothing that they had packed. She said they drove for miles looking for a hotel, and even though their prices were inflated, there was no room. She said they drove for hours and then they got the awful news.

 

Anaceli Mendez, LA Fire Victim

“We get evacuated from here at three-forty in the morning. Everybody jumps in their car, and we drive far. All the hotels there, everything booked, everything packed up. And, so you just continue to drive till you can find a hotel. All hotel prices are two hundred and forty U.S. dollars minimum for a night. They just want to raise the prices for everything because they don’t see the situation, right? So then they try and make their dollars work. I end up a good probably thirty miles away. And, the next day we get the notification, or like the confirmation that our house burnt down. I live on a property that had three houses. All three houses gone down. All three families, we packed just overnight stuff, if as much. Everything gone. We were never ready for this. We never think this will happen. It looked like the gates of hell opened because we did drive, and the winds were sixty to eighty miles, and they beat down on the pan, and we did try to drive on the freeway, and you can see all the fire, like the wind blows it towards the car, so you feel the car is not even stable, you feel the car move. I can’t take pictures; I can’t take videos because I feel like I would lose control of the car. It’s sad to see everybody who they are going through right now. It’s sad to see everything. Back here they still have everything locked up. They have the National Guard, and we can’t go up; we can’t even have a little last closure. All I want right now is to just go up and see if maybe pictures survive, anything. I just lost my pa one year ago, and to think that I lose him all over again, but this time, it’s for good because I don’t have pictures; I don’t have anything. My son lost his school. My son lost everything in the house. So we have a life, and we appreciate that, you know.”