When Sandra French returned to her beloved 1930s apartment, she found the building reduced to rubble and ash. “It was so weird,” she recalls. “Out of the rubble, there was a little bright object. It was a pencil holder I bought in Italy, I believe, in 2008 and was sticking up in the air. That was the only thing that survived the fire.”
French lost her home, including irreplaceable family photos, her baby book and her late mother’s jewellery, when wildfires fuelled by dry conditions and powerful winds swept through Los Angeles on 7 January, killing at least 29 people and destroying thousands of structures.
