Wordsley scientist who lost home in LA wildfires tells of hope for future
Warren Skidmore, who grew up in the Black Country before moving to the USA for work, and his family lost their house and belongings when fire swept through Altadena, Los Angeles.
The family sought sanctuary in an Air BnB in Pasadena after fleeing the Eaton fire left their home razed to the ground in January and luckily they soon managed to find rented accommodation to move into.
Warren, a research scientist working on the Thirty Meter Telescope project – which aims to create the 'world's biggest telescope', said the family had received overwhelming support from family, friends, their community and members of the public who heard about their plight.
A Go Fund Me page has raised nearly $70,000 to help the family since the disaster.
The remains of the Skidmore family home after the Eaton wildfire (Image: Warren Skidmore)
In an update on the online donation page, he said: 'We are incredibly grateful for the love and support that we've been shown, it has been a great help in these weeks since the wildfire decimated Altadena and turned our lives, and so many of our friends' lives upside down. Since the moment we evacuated, we've been extremely lucky with many offers of places to stay and people making sure that we're ok."
Warren said the family has managed to find a rental apartment a few miles from their home allowing his daughters to commute to school and college and for him to hitch a ride with them to work and he said: 'Life is pretty stable again.'
Warren Skidmore in his Black Country cycling top (Image: Warren Skidmore)
But he added: 'Our hearts keep going out to our many friends that are still seeking long term accommodation and badly in need of some stability. Many of them are still hotel-hopping. All of us who have lost homes have a long and very uncertain road ahead.
'Seeing our house for the first time after the fire was very emotional for us all. The level of destruction was incredible and complete. Nothing was left other than steel and a few ceramic items, the chimney and foundations. In some ways, that helped us to get past the loss of the only home the girls had ever known.'
In a stroke of luck, the emotional return to the property was buoyed, however, when they discovered their friendly neighbourhood rabbit had survived the fire.
The friendly neighbourhood bunny rabbit that survived the fire (Image: Warren Skidmore)
He said: 'A big lift for us was that during that first visit, we were standing looking over the destruction when Tessa heard a rustle. We looked down and our friendly wild cottontail rabbit hopped out from under the burned-out debris and ran around her feet.
'She was covered in soot, and her whiskers and tail were singed, but she had made it through the fires. We left some water for her and returned the next day with lettuce, hay, and her favorite treat - bread.
'We continue to visit the house almost daily to make sure the rabbit is okay. Seeing her gives us hope. If she can make it, so can we.'
He said he expects the ashes and debris of the property to be removed any day now and added: 'That will certainly be an emotional event because any possibility of finding vestiges of life prior to the fire will be gone.
The remains of the Skidmore family home after the Eaton wildfire (Image: Warren Skidmore)
'A hundred or so of the approximately 6,000 destroyed houses have been cleared now. ' He said the family has engaged a designer for the new house but added: 'The long-term uncertainty about whether we're going to be able to afford to rebuild the house is still causing me a lot of worry.
'The supports that we received through GoFundMe are earmarked to cushion the shortfall. As such, we continue to see that we are amongst the lucky ones that have been through this.'
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