The same day Craig Forrest watched flames destroy his Pacific Palisades house in January, he was on the phone with his insurance company. Within about three weeks, he\u2019d received almost all of the money he was owed by Progressive. On April 29, crews from Lush Construction broke ground on his new house in the El Medio neighborhood. And on Oct. 5, when Forrest read a column about an Altadena man who was about to become the first person to complete a new house after losing everything in the Eaton fire, he sent an email to say he might be the first one to make it home to the Palisades.<\/p>\n
\u201cI moved as fast as I could,\u201d Forrest said, telling me he was entering the final phase of construction. \u201cWe have three teenagers and I had to give them hope and a positive outlook and show them how to deal with adversity.\u201d Mission accomplished.
\nLiv Forrest, 14, left, and her brothers Gustav Forrest, 16, center, and Axel Forrest, 19, right, play pool inside their newly rebuilt home in Pacific Palisades.
\n(Kayla Bartkowski\/Los Angeles Times)
\nThe job was completed on Wednesday, and Forrest told me the family planned to begin moving their belongings in on Friday and possibly be home for Christmas, capping a year of catastrophic loss with a celebration of rebirth.<\/p>\n
And how do Axel, 19; Gustav, 16, and Liv, 14, like their new two-story house, erected on the lot where their one-story house was incinerated? Unanimous approval. \u201cI didn\u2019t have my own shower and I didn\u2019t have \u2026 a walk-in closet\u201d in the old house, Liv said, but now she\u2019ll have both. \u201cThe entrance is like, wow factor,\u201d said Axel. \u201cYou walk into this huge room and you see the kitchen. It\u2019s just amazing. And the \u2026 natural light that comes in just makes the whole room.\u201d That main room is \u201cgrand and nice and modern \u2026 while still being modest,\u201d said Gustav, and he\u2019ll have his own bedroom after sharing one with his brother.<\/p>\n
Before meeting with the family on Sunday, I drove around the Palisades and saw that while some houses are nearing completion, the vast majority of lots are as empty as they were when the fire debris was cleared months ago. There\u2019s a long, long way to go, and the Forrests are going to have to keep their doors and windows closed for months to block out construction noise and dust.
\nCraig Forrest and his family plan on moving into their rebuilt home by the end of this month.
\n(Kayla Bartkowski\/Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
I checked with Sue Pascoe, editor of the local publication Circling the News, which has covered every angle of the Palisades fire and the long road to recovery. She said as far as she knows, the Forrests are indeed the first family to complete a total rebuilding project. But the majority of residents are nowhere near the finish line, Pascoe said, and some aren\u2019t even at the starting line. Pascoe lost her home and hasn\u2019t begun to rebuild because of the gap between what her insurance company will pay and the cost of rebuilding. She said she thinks she\u2019s in the majority of fire victims in that regard, noting that some people are still wrestling with their insurance companies, even as the state\u2019s lax regulation of the industry has been exposed.<\/p>\n
Forrest and his wife, former journalist Ulrica Wihlborg, used personal assets to supplement their insurance payout and complete construction. He owns Branding Studios, which crafts promotional products to help companies market their brands, and he and Wihlborg own a yoga studio in her native Sweden, where their kids have lived for part of their lives. That experience might have helped the teens adapt to living in five temporary locations in the last year. \u201cWe\u2019ve always been people who can adapt to different cultures \u2026 and living in different environments,\u201d Axel said.<\/p>\n
While chatting outside the new house, which was built with fire-resistant materials, we gazed up at the ridge where the fire started. Fierce winds sent it racing down the hill in their direction. Only Forrest and Gustav were home at the time, and they scurried through the house to grab what they could. Gustav got his sister\u2019s computer, some clothes and a stuffed animal \u2014 a dog named Trevor \u2014 that she\u2019d had since she was 5. He also grabbed a stuffed tiger Axel had kept from his childhood in Sweden. The rest of their possessions were destroyed. \u201cEverything we ever had in the house was just ash,\u201d said Axel. \u201cThe hardest part over the months was remembering little things \u2026 that burned\u201d said Liv. She misses a favorite hat she\u2019d had for years, along with a pair of shoes Axel bought her as a birthday present. \u201cBut you know, you\u2019ve just got to accept it.\u201d
\nCraig Forrest enters his newly rebuilt home in Pacific Palisades.
\n(Kayla Bartkowski\/Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
Just the other day, Craig Forrest figured it was time to get out the Christmas tree ornaments. Then he remembered they don\u2019t have any. \u201cIt\u2019s just physical things,\u201d said Gustav. \u201dI haven\u2019t grieved that much over the house being gone. I\u2019ve just been excited about moving into the new one.\u201d To help them through the past year, Craig Forrest said, he involved his kids in the rebuild, letting them help make design choices and reporting back to them on hurdles and progress. He brought them to the property frequently so they could witness the transformation of the blueprints into the bones of their new home.<\/p>\n
The teens said that for all the second guessing there has been about how the Palisades fire started and whether it could have been prevented or knocked down sooner with better pre-deployment and smarter strategies, they aren\u2019t inclined to point fingers, nor will they worry about the possibility of another firestorm. Sure, it\u2019d be wise to focus on prevention in the future, Liv said, \u201cbut you can\u2019t live in constant fear of things you can\u2019t control. Every place in the world has a risk of something going wrong, like a fire or a tsunami, hurricane or whatever it is. \u2026 You can\u2019t just live like, \u2018Oh my God, oh my God.\u2019\u201d Liv said she thinks she gained something in struggling through loss. \u201cThis definitely put things into perspective in a maturity kind of way,\u201d Liv said. There were lessons in \u201chow to deal with things that are hard, and how to push past it.\u201d Just what her father had intended.<\/p>\n
Q: How long did it take for the Forrest family to receive their insurance payout?
\nA: The Forrest family received almost all of their insurance payout from Progressive within about three weeks.
\nQ: When did construction on the new house begin?
\nA: Construction on the new house began on April 29.
\nQ: How do the Forrest children feel about their new home?
\nA: The Forrest children are unanimous in their approval of their new two-story house, with each of them expressing excitement about the various features of the new home.
\nQ: What challenges are other families in the community facing in rebuilding their homes?
\nA: Many families are facing challenges such as gaps between insurance payouts and the cost of rebuilding, trauma, and uncertainty about how to proceed.
\nQ: How did the Forrest family adapt to living in temporary locations?
\nA: The Forrest family has experience living in different environments and cultures, which helped them adapt to living in five temporary locations over the past year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Family’s Journey to Rebuilding Introduction to the Forrest Family’s Story The same day Craig Forrest watched flames destroy his Pacific Palisades house in January, he was on the phone with his insurance company. Within about three weeks, he\u2019d received almost all of the money he was owed by Progressive. On April 29, crews from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":26002,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rank_math_lock_modified_date":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-26000","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health-wellness"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/ca-times.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/164d84b\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/7526x3951+0+534\/resize\/1200x630!\/quality\/75\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F87%2F74%2Fd4d2eed544f488b6e2ff7be87ee8%2F1533872-me-palisades-fire-first-family-rebuild-move-klb-142.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/los-angeles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26000"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/los-angeles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/los-angeles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/los-angeles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/los-angeles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26000"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/los-angeles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26000\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26003,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/los-angeles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26000\/revisions\/26003"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/los-angeles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/los-angeles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/los-angeles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/los-angeles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}