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ALTADENA, Calif. () — The Eyewitness News team was on the ground as the Eaton Fire roared through the Dove Creek neighborhood and burned nearly everything in sight last year.
A couple who lived in the community didn’t know if their home was gone. What happened live on air was a moment they will never forget.
Amid the chaos, Lisa Troncoso Van Bennekum called the Eyewitness News station.
One year later, Lisa and her husband Dave Van Bennekum met with Eyewitness News’ Leanne Suter, the reporter at the scene who informed the couple that their home was destroyed in the fire.
Eaton Fire destroys neighborhood: ‘The whole thing is gone’
The Dove Creek condominium complex in Altadena was one of the first casualties of the Eaton Fire.
Only 16 of the complex’s 64 condos survived the fire.
“It was our home for seven years… Maybe it might be another time, but not for now,” Lisa said through tears a year after the Eaton Fire.
Lisa and her husband Dave still can’t believe almost all of their treasured neighborhood is gone.
“We were the last ones out of the neighborhood,” Dave said. “By the time we had actually left, the smoke was in the house, the embers were falling on the cars, they were falling on the roof.”
The couple managed to grab their two cats, a bag of belongings, some important paperwork and flee.
As the wind-fueled flames roared through the area, Lisa and Dave could only wait and hope.
“We’re watching the news, we’re watching (Eyewitness News reporter Leanne Suter),” Lisa recalled.
“You’re literally standing in front of one of our good friend’s home, and the whole thing’s on fire,” Dave recounted to Eyewitness News. “And I knew right then that, yeah, the whole thing is gone.”
‘I feel like I lost my history’
Lisa called in to the Eyewitness News station, talking with anchor David Ono – anxious for an answer and hoping someone could grab her purse and a very important bag she had left at the door in the chaos.
“I was in agony that I can’t believe that I had them in my hands, and I just left it,” Lisa recalled. “Maybe the reporter can ask a firefighter to go in, just open the door and just grab. And I couldn’t let it go.”
Leanne Suter informed the couple on live television that their home and other homes on the street were gone.
“I think I was in shock. This isn’t happening… Now what? It’s gone. It’s all gone,” Lisa said.
“It was just too much all at once.”
The bag held something much more precious than a possession. It contained Lisa’s entire childhood.
Lisa grew up in the foster system and only had a couple of photos of herself as a child and a few mementos. It was all gone.
“I lost everything, yes, but I feel like I lost my history cause that’s all I had,” Lisa said.
“She said, ‘I feel like I’ve been erased,'” Dave said. “That’s when it kind of hit me. That it wasn’t just about losing stuff, you know. It was about losing identity, about losing a sense of self.”
‘We’re gonna make our home a home again’
A year after that fateful phone call, Leanne Suter met Lisa and Dave and talked about that emotional encounter that played out on TV – a resident desperate to know if she still had a home and a reporter desperate to get her the answer.
“You were kind enough to be able to relay that information to us in that moment, so we didn’t have to wait more hours in the day or maybe till the next day to find out,” Lisa told Leanne.
Lisa and Dave don’t know if they will be able to return to the neighborhood they loved as they continue to rebuild their lives a year after it was forever changed. The focus remains on a brighter future.
“I know that wherever we go, we’re gonna make our home a home again, and I do look forward to that,” Lisa said. “It’s just the in-between time of where that’s going to be and when that’s going to happen. And I know it’s going to happen.”
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