People remember the things they lost in the LA fires — tangible or not

More than a month after the devastating L.A. wildfires, the reminders come daily for people who lost their homes.

“Every day or two we remember something that's irreplaceable,” said Adam Lewis. The three-bedroom house he was renting with his wife and two teenage sons burned down in the Palisades Fire.

Lewis was alone at home the day the fire broke out. When he saw the flames get too close for comfort he packed his SUV with a couple changes of clothes and grabbed two memory boxes that his wife had put together that included “some old artwork that the kids have and some old report cards and just some keepsakes.”

His wife had made one for him and one for her, too.

“I didn't take those, you know, there were things from my Bar Mitzvah… my high school yearbooks and junior high yearbooks,” he said.

Adam Lewis saved a memory box if his son's school work and mementos. He did not save a box of items from his own life.

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Adam Lewis

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As people who lost their homes in the L.A. fires begin to rebuild their lives, the memories of what they lost tug at them, while also providing a type of encouragement to go forward.

Lost: his son’s sense of pride

Television and film actor Phil Abrams lived in a house near Bienvenida Avenue and Sunset Boulevard in Pacific Palisades for 30 years with his wife and sons.

Phil Abrams, right, and his wife Michelle Bitting, outside their Pacific Palisades house, which destroyed the house.

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Phil Abrams

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On his property, the only things standing are the porcelain toilets and bathtubs and a Peloton bike, “completely melted except for the frame.” The Eaton Fire also destroyed his childhood home in Altadena.

Abrams’ 28-year-old autistic son had started working at the Ralph’s supermarket in Pacific Palisades.

“He was proud, still challenged at times with interactions with people, but he was proud and very happy to be working there,” Abrams said.

It was a milestone for his son, Abrams said, because earlier in life Abrams did not believe his son’s autism would allow him to be this functional in social and work settings.

But the fire, which burned 23,707 acres and killed 12 people, destroyed the store.

The family is living in Marina del Rey and Abrams suggested his son apply to work at the Ralph’s nearby, but his son didn’t immediately embrace the move, saying he didn’t know the layout of this store.

“Did you know the layout when you started at the Palisades [Ralph’s]?” Abrams asked his son. “And he went, ‘No,’ and that was it. I didn't press him or talk to him any more about that.”

His son eventually reconsidered, and the company transferred his employment to the Marina del Rey location.

A loss of a running community

Altadena had runners’ clubs before the Eaton Fire’s destruction, but those routines have been altered.

“We've gotten together to run around the streets in Pasadena” after the fires, but not their usual routes in Altadena, said Jinghuan Liu Tervalon, a member of Altaruns.

Jinghuan Liu Tervalon holds a pair of her running shoes.

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Samanta Helou Hernandez

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LAist

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The group ran twice a week by the Pasadena Waldorf School in Altadena and the Altadena Town & Country Club. Both have burned.

“We haven't run the exact same route, it would be really heartbreaking to see all the destruction,” she said.

She took up running after her now 17-year-old son was born, and found it helped her cope with the challenges of being a single mom. For over a decade she’s trained in Altadena for marathons around the world. She also pursued writing, including this piece for Runner’s World, about an anti-Asian incident she experienced in Altadena.

The fire burned down the Altadena home Liu Tervalon shared with her husband and two children. She can still picture the nearly two dozen running shoes by her front door and other parts of the house.

“I have so many different pairs of trainers that I put most of my miles on. I have racers. I have spikes for track meets and I have trail shoes. I have recovery sandals. I have all these different shoes,” she said. “I just had two pairs that night of the evacuation.”

And she's still using those shoes she saved for her runs. She also saved some of her daughter's art work and a metal drink container given to her at a retreat that combined writing and running.

Jinghuan Liu Tervalon saved a painting her daughter made in November.

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Samanta Helou Hernandez

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LAist

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Resurrection from destruction

Visual artist Mary Anna Pomonis walked among dozens of people attending the opening of her art exhibit on Sunday, Jan. 5, at Alto Beta, an art gallery in Altadena.

Zabalam Temple, an acrylic painting on canvas over shaped panel that measures 30 x 30 inches, was created by Mary Anna Pomonis. The piece and nine others were destroyed in an Altadena gallery by the Eaton Fire.

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Mary Anna Pomonis

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“For the first time in my life, I felt like this was the best work that I knew I could make,” she said.

Pomonis, 51, is a self-described mid-career artist.

The pieces brought together thoughts she’s had since growing up attending Greek Orthodox mass in Champaign, Illinois.

“As a kid I didn't really relate well to most of the stories in the kind of structure of the Orthodox Church,” and, she said she didn’t like being excluded from some of the church’s rituals.

“I was really interested in the stories that were not often as elaborated on…the stories that centered on women and female heroes,” she said, pointing to the Roman goddess Pomona.

The paintings’ geometric designs blended elements of traditional religious iconography with nods to feminine spiritual and goddess references.

Two days after her opening, the Eaton Fire destroyed the gallery and all her artwork on its walls.

Moving forward

Pomonis lives in nearby Glassell Park and teaches art at Cal State Fullerton. She’s since realized that the fire didn’t destroy her work, it transformed it.

“What has been surprising to me is that without [the artwork’s] physical presence, that I still can have a relationship with their memory in the same way that we have relationships with the memory of people that we've lost,” she said. It's a sort of resurrection after the physical death of the artwork.

A work in progress by artist Mary Anna Pomonis. The work is a reaction to the destruction of ten of her paintings by the Eaton Fire.

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Mary Anna Pomonis

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Pomonis has taken the memory of the art lost and is creating similar, but not identical, new work, much like spirit and physical presence are different.

She's showing two of these new pieces at an exhibit to benefit artists affected by the fires, from Feb. 19 to 22 in Los Angeles, as well two other new art works at Bergamot Station Art Center in Santa Monica starting Feb. 19 in an exhibit titled “Out of the Ashes,” gathering the work of artists affected by the L.A. fires.

Altadena resident Liu Tervalon says her native Mandarin language has helped her wrap her mind around the paradox of destruction and regeneration.

Jinghuan Liu Tervalon writes out the Chinese characters for the word "crisis."

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Samanta Helou Hernandez

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LAist

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“In Chinese, a crisis, if you read it in a different way, it could also mean an opportunity. Weiji, if you say it in a different way, it means opportunity, jiyu,” Liu Tervalon said. “It's all about how you respond to a certain situation. You can give in, you can worry about things you cannot control, or you can rise up from the ashes, literal ashes.”