We were living the American dream – British expats lose business in LA wildfires
Mandy and Raymond Church have spent the last 40 years building their plumbing business which has been lost in the wildfires.
A British expat family living the “American dream” have described their devastation of losing their business to the southern California wildfires.
Mandy and Raymond Church moved to Los Angeles from South Ruislip, in west London, in 1985 and have spent the last 40 years building their plumbing business in Pacific Palisades.
At least 25 people have been killed and thousands of homes and businesses have been destroyed in a series of wildfires that started in the Los Angeles area on Tuesday January 7.
Mrs Church, 66, who owns Palisades Plumbing with her husband, 67, and daughter Shavahn Ahmadi, 35, said they are desperately trying to rebuild their business after it was burnt to the ground.
“We lost all our equipment, all their tools and then we lost our customer base because Pacific Palisades is our patch,” Mrs Church told the PA news agency.
“If we had any hindsight we would, of course, have taken some equipment out, moved the trucks out, but we didn’t, and we lost everything.”
Mrs Church said the family are trying to continue to operate the business, which has a staff of seven, from their home in Tarzana in the San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles.
“My guys are desperate for work to feed their families,” she said.
“We do have a GoFundMe, which someone set up, which was kind, which we will use to pay our guys for now.
“Right now, Ray and I don’t have income, these were supposed to be our golden years.
“We built this business from scratch. We came here as immigrants, had nothing, and now it’s like, what now we just start over?”
Mrs Ahmadi described the shocking scenes from Pacific Palisades as they drove to the area last Wednesday to check if their business had survived.
“We had about a two mile drive to get to the office,” she said.
“And that two mile drive truly was like being in a war. It looked like someone had dropped bombs on these properties, and they were still engulfed in flames.
“The whole top floor of businesses had caved down to where our office was and it was just ash and rubble.”
The family who lost 100,000 US dollars (£81,000) in stock and essential equipment, said their insurance cover is liability only and will not cover any contents inside the office or the trucks.
Mrs Ahmadi criticised the local government for the lack of preparedness for this disaster.
“It should never have happened,” she said.
“We found out that our water reservoir was completely empty.
“I had customers tell me they would ask the firefighters to please save my house. And they said, we have no water.
“These are our firefighters. They did everything they could with the resources that they had. They were just failed by the system. The system didn’t have enough to fight these fires.”
A GoFundMe set up by a family friend has raised over 16,500 US dollars (£13,500) so far to help them to pay staff and buy new equipment.
“Any money that comes from the GoFundMe will be used for tools and payroll to pay the guys who work for us,” said Mrs Church.
“Ray and I will continue to pay until we can’t continue to pay. Then we will have to rethink our life.
“We were living the American dream but now we’ve lost everything.”
