My Apartment Burned Down 6 Years Ago—These Are the Vital Lessons I’ve Learned Since
Photo: Apu Gomes/Getty Images
In early January I watched in horror as beloved communities in Los Angeles burned in the Palisades and Eaton fires. While I live two hours east of LA, near Joshua Tree, witnessing the lives of friends and strangers splinter in an instant felt all too familiar: In April of 2019 I lost my apartment in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, to a five-alarm fire started by a careless neighbor who left a candle burning by a curtain on a windy day. In minutes the conflagration tore through the roof, leaving our 56-unit, six-floor, pre-war building uninhabitable.
Now, watching thousands of Angelinos try to make sense of their loss, I remember how I rebuilt my life and the surprising lessons I learned about accepting community support, mourning, and moving on.
The loss of a future is as painful as the physical and financial loss
I’d lived in Sunset Park, a working- and middle-class neighborhood in southwest Brooklyn that’s home to generations of immigrants from Scandinavia, Latin America, and China, for 17 years and owned my one-bedroom condo for 10. I planned to make it my forever home. I was at work when the fire began, so I only had the belongings in my purse and gym bag, and I had no chance to rescue my cat, Crackers.
Children flying a kite in Sunset Park, Sunset Park neighborhood, New York City, USA
It took time to understand how to grieve. I could mourn Crackers’s passing, but I was physically safe, and no people died. Unlike some of my neighbors, I had personal property insurance and could stay with my boyfriend at the time. “It’s just stuff,” well-meaning acquaintances told me, but my loss was a dark hole that had been kicked through my life. Trauma studies professor Sandra Stark Shields recently noted on KCRW that “losing a home is similar to the sudden death of a family member,” and this short sentence helped articulate the grief I tumbled into.
When the ash settled, the damage assessed, and repairs estimated, it became clear that the condo board lacked sufficient insurance coverage and could not afford to rebuild. We would not get our homes, or their equivalent value, back. As reality sunk in, I grieved the future I once dreamed of: Growing old in Sunset Park, a predictable routine of summer park picnics and swims in the public pool and stunning winter sunsets observed from my fifth-floor fire escape. I was experiencing “ambiguous loss,” a term coined by Pauline Boss in the 1970s, to describe loss without true closure. More than the undoing of financial or physical security, losing my imagined future has been the hardest to reconcile.
I had to be specific about what I needed
In the dizzying aftermath of the fire, support from our neighbors through donation drives, fundraisers, and skill sharing enabled me and other building residents to get our immediate bearings. However, securing what I would need to move forward was overwhelming. After a few weeks, I had a rental apartment, but little furniture; a refrigerator, but no desire to cook; blank walls, and empty bookshelves. I learned to ask for the specific help I needed in order to establish some kind of “normalcy.” My friends set up a gift registry of necessary household items, from baking dishes and spatulas to pillows and a pressure cooker. Others dropped off homemade lentil soup and kitchen staples like fresh spices and Maldon salt. A fellow writer arranged for book lovers to send me my favorites to rebuild my library. These generous acts grounded me, and these objects serve as a daily reminder of the community support I received.
Solidarity is energizing, but only goes so far
Though I had scarcely known many of my immediate neighbors before the fire, in the aftermath the solidarity between owners and tenants, and English, Chinese, and Spanish speakers was energizing. We shared resources, attended community meetings in search of solutions, and checked in regularly to support each other in person and over text. However, our unity was fragile, and within a year fractured along the lines of class and language. While I quickly moved into a nearby rental, paid by my personal insurance for one year, others had to move out of the city, and later the country, because they did not have sufficient support. The disintegration of our community as residents attempted to move on was a deep, and unavoidable, loss.
Old building being destroyed by full flaming inferno
Rebuilding is a decades-long process
Nearly six years later, rebuilding and financial recovery remains a moving target. We’ve encountered numerous legal and logistical hurdles, from housing courts shut down due to COVID to a potential building buyer disappearing at the closing to multiple lawsuits between the condo board and residents. What’s left of the building has yet to be cleaned up, much less rebuilt. I’m still paying property taxes on a home where I cannot, and never will be able to, live again because the building is unsold, and I technically still own what’s left of the apartment in the eyes of New York City. In LA, as politicians promise a “fast track” to recovery, I know that each neighborhood, building, family, and individual faces their own specific situation, and there will be unanticipated setbacks along the way.
It’s okay to move on
After the fire, living in New York without a path toward a permanent home felt deeply painful and emotionally stifling. Walking the streets of Brooklyn, I obsessed over well-kept co-ops and stately town houses, all financially out of reach. So in 2020, when a friend called me about a small midcentury cabin for sale in her neighborhood in the California desert, I decided it was time to allow myself a fresh start. At first I felt guilty for abandoning my cherished neighborhood, but I needed space to fully mourn and was ready to imagine a different future.
Now, from the outside, my recovery looks complete. I have a beautiful house I’ve renovated by hand in a stunning landscape, but the loss of my Brooklyn apartment stays with me. I fear each time I leave my California house it will be the last time I see it intact, especially on clear, windy days. I’m adrift without the anchor of the decades-long relationships I built with people and places of Sunset Park, from the owners of my favorite laundromat and mechanics at the bike store to close friends in walking distance to my daily stroll through the park to take in the striking view of the Manhattan skyline. The process of recovery means understanding contradictory truths: I continue to mourn the home and future I lost while appreciating the unexpected life I’ve been able to rebuild.
Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest
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