“I worked my whole life to buy this house”: a French expat in Los Angeles recounts the hell he experienced during the fires

An expatriate in Los Angeles, David gave a long interview in which he looks back on the first hours of the fire. While the flames are still ravaging the Los Angeles region, the toll is currently 11 dead and 10,000 buildings reduced to ashes.

As fires continue to ravage the Los Angeles region, many residents have been forced to abandon their homes in the face of the flames. Among them, David Fenard, a French expatriate in the Californian city. He spoke to BFM2.

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“A chaotic landscape”

The Frenchman first said he started smelling a lot of smoke around 10pm on January 7 when the fires broke out. His children were quickly evacuated and his wife was away on business. At 2am, he received an evacuation alert. “I went outside and the mountain was on fire, a chaotic landscape”, he says.

The man then tried, with the garden hose from his garden, to extinguish the embers as best he could. He says he had no more water pressure after an hour. “I was on the roof, I looked to the right, to the left, there was ashes everywhere, I saw neighbors' houses burning, mountains on fire, I said to myself 'Ok, it's over, save your life'”.

“I worked my whole life to buy this house”

“I worked my whole life to buy this house”, the Frenchman testifies. For him, the rest is still very vague. He says he now has to “fight with the insurance companies. The disaster is so huge, we have no idea what the future will be like”