America’s unluckiest family lose their most precious possession to LA wildfire
A Los Angeles couple have spoken of their heartbreak after losing their one-year-old daughter’s ashes in the catastrophic wildfires.
Holding back tears, Giorgi and Leonardo Antinori revealed how they lost the remains of their firstborn, Vita, who died 15 years ago when their house went up in smoke.
Worse, the couple has no idea how to rebuild their lives because they stopped paying their rapidly rising insurance premiums when COVID-era lockdowns plunged them into financial ruin.
A GoFundMe has raised $68,000 so far for the couple and their two-year-old daughter, but that won’t be nearly enough to recover from the devastating fires.
‘Fifteen years ago we had a daughter. She was supposed to be 15 and died when she was one, and her ashes were in our house and they are gone,” Giorgi, 37, a music producer, told CNN.
“Every memory, every physical evidence of her life is just gone. And that hurts. I feel numb right now because I feel like I’ve cried all my emotions out.”
The Antinori family lived in a blue wooden bungalow in the Palisades Bowl.
The Pacific Coast Highway mobile home community is across the street from the beach; all of its nearly 200 homes were destroyed.
The couple runs NewVine Music & Publishing but has struggled financially since COVID-era lockdowns damaged their business
The couple’s first daughter, Vita, died 15 years ago, they said in a tribute to the beloved child
They evacuated with their two-year-old daughter as the fire spread — then returned to find nothing left but piles of ash and a few charred palm trees swaying in the wind.
“It’s so mind-boggling what happened and so tragic that it’s just beyond words,” said Antinori, 41, who runs NewVine Music & Publishing with his wife.
The Antinoris say they will struggle to rebuild their lives in the aftermath of the disaster, having been unable to continue paying insurance premiums on their home.
They struggled to make their business profitable during the coronavirus pandemic lockdowns and couldn’t keep up with rising insurance premiums.
“Like hundreds of other people, insurance prices just got so high,” Giorgi said.
“We were still trying to recover from the last four years of everything changing after COVID, where we thought, ‘We’ll recover quickly and then we’ll just pick up our insurance again and everything will be fine.’
She added: “We never, in a hundred million years, thought our house would go up in flames.”
Other residents of the mobile home community have shared similar stories of their lives turned upside down and their inability to cover insurance costs.
Premiums had risen rapidly due to the high likelihood of a natural disaster in this scenic, but fire and landslide-prone area.
An online fundraiser for the Antinoris says they have yet to receive any assistance from the state or federal government.
The couple evacuated their mobile home park in Pacific Palisades before flames engulfed their property. They are pictured with their second daughter
When they returned to their home, Giorgi and Leo Antinori discovered that nothing was left but ashes
“Every memory, every piece of physical evidence of her life is just gone,” says Giorgi, 37, a music producer
Nothing was left of the blue wooden bungalow where the music producers raised a family
They say nothing remains of the rubble from their property, next to the Pacific Coast Highway
All 200 homes in the mobile home community on Pacific Coast Highway were destroyed
“We’re asking all of our friends, family, community and even strangers to come together and help in any way they can,” the fundraiser says.
“Your generosity will not only be a financial building block for this new beginning, but also an emotional blessing.”
The Palisades Fire is the largest of the wildfires engulfing LA.
23,000 have already been burned and are not yet under control.
At least 24 people have died in what California Governor Gavin Newsom said could be the most devastating natural disaster in US history.
The fires destroyed thousands of homes, forced 100,000 people to evacuate and burned an area the size of Washington DC.
Dangerously high winds are expected to return to LA on Monday, jeopardizing efforts to contain two massive wildfires that have leveled entire neighborhoods.