A month or so ago, with construction crews still plugging along, Ted Koerner lost sight of the finish line. He wasn’t sure when he’d be able to move back home to Altadena with Daisy May, his 13½-year-old golden retriever.
Koerner’s home was destroyed in the Eaton fire in January, but he has pushed and persisted, trying to speed the rebuilding for Daisy’s sake as much as his own. Whatever time she had left, Koerner told me back in October, he wanted her to spend it where she’s comfortable and happy.
“She’s almost 14,” he said, and that’s well beyond the average lifespan for her breed.
On Tuesday, they made it back home, and it was hard to tell who was happier.
“She’s been out here doing zoomies,” Koerner said on the front lawn, his favorite place to spend time with Daisy at their hilltop home. He has his morning cup of coffee out there while Daisy sniffs around, works her guard duty shifts, and takes in the million-dollar view, which stretches all the way to Santa Catalina Island.
Koerner said friends and neighbors would be coming by over the holiday weekend to help celebrate the homecoming.
“A neighbor down the street, who didn’t burn, is cooking three turkeys,” Koerner said.
When the county inspector showed up Tuesday afternoon and told Koerner he was clear to move in, Koerner activated the video tab on his phone and asked the inspector to repeat what he’d just said.
“You have permission to move in tonight,” the inspector said.
Koerner is believed to be the first person to move into a rebuilt house in Altadena, where 19 people were killed and nearly 9,400 structures were destroyed. Another Altadena project, an accessory dwelling unit, was also completed this month. And on Friday, I visited the nearly completed Pasadena home of Jun Li and Bobby Lujan, who were about to move in.
“We already made final inspection,” Jun Li Lujan told me. “I don’t want to miss any holidays.”
She said her new stove was on the way, and she planned to go with a classic Thanksgiving meal of turkey, mashed potatoes and stuffing.
“And pumpkin pie,” she said.
Speedy returns are not the norm for victims of the Eaton and Palisades fires. The vast majority have either not yet begun the permitting process or are still in the early stages, and many are still undecided about rebuilding, due in part to financial considerations.
In the Palisades, the first certificate of occupancy was issued recently for a “showcase” home that was built to market the work of the development company. Meanwhile, Palisades resident Craig Forrest, who lost everything in January, thinks his new house could be finished within a week or so, although he might not move in until the new year because the contract on his Santa Monica rental runs through December.
So what’s the secret for him and others who have managed to rebuild in the same calendar year as the fires? In Forrest’s case, he said, the recipe included “fortitude, guts, will, strength, pushing through, making fast decisions, and having the financial wherewithal.”
Having three teenagers was also a factor, Forrest told me. He said that rather than sink in despair, he chose to remain optimistic and keep moving to “show them what you do when something this traumatic and dramatic happens to you.”
In the case of Jun Li Lujan, she had an insider’s edge. She builds houses for a living.
“Being a contractor, a designer and a project manager for many years, she knew what to do and how to do it quickly. … She’s a force of nature,” said her husband, Bobby Lujan, a musician and brother of the late Chicano artist Gilbert “Magu” Lujan.
L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who attended an open house at the Lujan residence on Tuesday, told me that bureaucratic hurdles and other challenges have hampered rebuilding efforts. But she met neighbors of the Lujans who were encouraged by their rapid return.
“It gives people hope,” Barger said. “Next week, two homes are going to get certificates of occupancy. One leads to two, leads to five, leads to 10. I feel like we’re on that road.”
Koerner had Daisy as a motivator, along with a figure-things-out mentality from running an investigations and fraud-prevention company that deals with government agencies and multiple businesses. And he knew he didn’t want to live in limbo any longer than he had to, especially after staying in an Old Pasadena hotel for several weeks with other evacuees.
“Every single person in the building was a victim,” Koerner said. “Every time the elevator opened … there were people standing there, leaning against the wall, sobbing. And I mean openly sobbing.”
Landlords in the area were gouging renters, Koerner said, and he briefly considered living in his car before one of his employees offered a La Crescenta space that had just become available.
Koerner was told by an Army Corps of Engineers official to pour his new foundation as soon as the contamination was cleared, even if he hadn’t gotten an insurance check yet. You don’t want to be “number 2,200 in line,” Koerner was told.
That was good advice, and it fit Koerner’s personality. He’s not one to waste time overthinking things, which is best illustrated by his philosophy that a house is a house, not a museum to one’s creativity.
“OK, are you going to spend nine days deciding what color toilet?” Koerner said. “Or are you just going to pick one and live with it. It’s a toilet. It’s not a trophy.”
Koerner robbed his retirement fund to front the start of construction and said that once insurance payments are added up, he’ll be a few hundred thousand dollars in the hole. But he’ll be home.
Whenever there was a pause in the county’s permit machinery, Koerner said he let everyone up to and including the governor’s office know about it. He said U.S. Rep. Judy Chu and Barger — one of whose staffers called Koerner “tenacious” — helped keep things moving.
Koerner also credits building manager Jossef Abraham of Innova Creative Solution for understanding that this was not simply about building a house. It was about getting a 67-year-old man struggling mightily with displacement, and a dog on her home stretch, back where they needed to be.
“We were here on Sunday for six hours, just us, and I brought a bed for her and I fed her here,” Koerner said. “And when I laid down on the floor next to her … she leaned over and started catching the tears, one at a time, as they were rolling down my cheek.”
Koerner stood in his new kitchen, going through everything and everyone he’s grateful for this holiday season. The longtime friends who offered support, the new friends he made in La Crescenta near his temporary home, his builder and his therapist, who taught him “how to let things flow through and get behind you.”
“I’m first and foremost grateful that Daisy has been strong enough to hang in there,” Koerner said. “She has just stayed with me, and that is an answer to a daily prayer.”
Koerner and Daisy May frolicked for a while in his new office, which had a golden glow in the morning light.
Daisy seemed to have turned back the clock and had that expression dogs get, mouth open and eyes aglow, when it looks like they’re smiling.
Koerner looked like he was celebrating a double holiday — Thanksgiving and Christmas all in one.
The post Up from the ashes: How fire survivors rebuilt in time to get home for Thanksgiving appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
