This Palisades family never lost hope. They are now moving into a newly renovated house

On the same day Craig Forrest watched a fire destroy his Pacific Palisades home in January, he was on the phone with his insurance company.

Within three weeks, he had received almost all of the money he was owed by Progressive.

On April 29, Lush Construction workers broke into his new house in the El Medio area.

And on October 5, when Forrest read my column about an Altadena man who would be the first to finish a new house after losing everything in the Eaton fire, he emailed me saying he might be the first to come home to the Palisades.

“I moved as fast as I could,” Forrest said, telling me he was entering the final stages of construction. “We have three teenage children and I had to give them hope and hope and show them how to deal with adversity.”

Mission accomplished.

The work was completed on Wednesday, and Forrest told me that the family planned to start moving their belongings on Friday and possibly be home by Christmas, combining the year of the tragic loss with a celebration of rebirth.

And how did Axel, 19; Gustav, 16, and Liv, 14, as their new two-story house, built in the place where their one-story house was burned down?

Unanimous approval.

“I didn’t have my own shower and I didn’t have … a walk-in closet” in the old house, Liv said, but now she’ll have both.

“The door is like, wow factor,” Axel said. “You walk into this great room and you see the kitchen. It’s amazing. And … the natural light that comes in makes the whole room.”

That master bedroom is “big and beautiful and modern … while still being humble,” Gustav said, and he’ll have his own bedroom after sleeping with his brother.

Before I met the family on Sunday, I drove around the Palisades and noticed that as some of the houses were going to be finished, the big house many of the lots are empty as they were when debris from the fire was removed months ago. There is still a long, long way to go, and the Forrests will have to close their doors and windows for months to keep out construction noise and dust.

Craig Forrest and his family plan to move into their remodeled home at the end of this month.

(Kayla Bartkowski/Los Angeles Times)

I asked Sue Pascoe, editor of a local publication Around the News, which covered all angles of the Palisades fire and the long road to recovery. He said that as far as he knows, the Forrests are the first family to complete the reconstruction work.

But most residents are nowhere near the finish line, Pascoe said, and some aren’t even at the starting line.

Pascoe lost his home and has yet to start rebuilding because of the gap between what his insurance company will pay and the cost of rebuilding. He said he thought he was among the majority of people who were turned off in this regard, and said that some people still had their own insurance companies, as did the government. lax regulation of the industry was revealed.

“There’s a group of people where there’s no money at all,” Pascoe said, pointing out that the Palisades is home to many middle-class residents who can’t close the gap. “There’s a group that’s so traumatized they don’t know what to do, and there’s a group of older people who are asking, ‘Do you want to rebuild when you’re 80 years old?'”

Forrest and his wife, former journalist Ulrica Wihlborg, used their assets to supplement their insurance payments and finish construction. She owns Branding Studios, which makes promotional products to help companies market their products, and she and Wihlborg own a yoga studio in their native Sweden, where their children have spent half of their lives.

That experience may have helped the youth adjust to living in five temporary shelters in the past year.

“We have always been people who can adapt to different cultures … and we live in different places,” said Axel.

As we chatted outside a new house built with fireproof materials, we stared at where the fire started. Strong winds sent the race down the mountain on its way. At that time only Forrest and Gustav were home, and they roamed the house to take what they could find.

Gustav found his sister’s computer, some clothes and a stuffed animal – a dog named Trevor – that she had had since she was 5 years old. He also held a stuffed tiger that Axel had kept since his childhood in Sweden. All their belongings were destroyed.

“Everything we ever had in the house was just ashes,” said Axel.

“The most difficult thing in these months is to remember the little things … that were new” said Liv. She remembers a favorite hat she’s had for years, and a pair of shoes Axel bought her as a birthday present. “But you know, you have to accept it.”

Craig Forrest walks into his newly remodeled home in Pacific Palisades.

(Kayla Bartkowski/Los Angeles Times)

Just the other day, Craig Forrest realized it was time to get out the Christmas tree decorations. Then he remembered that they didn’t have one.

“It’s just physical things,” said Gustav. “I didn’t feel that bad about the passing of the house.

To help them over the past year, Craig Forrest said, he has involved his children in the rebuild, allowing them to help choose designs and report back on issues and progress. He brought them to this place regularly to see the transformation of the plan into the bones of their new house.

Young said for the second time there is speculation about how the Palisades fire started again it would have been blocked or knocked down immediately with better forward-looking and clever strategies, they are not inclined to point fingers at each other, and will not be bothered another storm is possible.

Sure, it would be wise to focus on prevention in the future, Liv said, “but you can’t live in constant fear of things you can’t control. Every place in the world is at risk of something going wrong, like a fire or a tsunami, a hurricane or whatever. … You can’t just live like, ‘Oh my God, oh my God.’

Liv said she thinks she gained something by struggling and losing.

“This puts things in perspective in terms of maturity,” Liv said. There were lessons on “how to deal with difficult things, and how to get through them.”

Just what his father intended.

steve.lopez@latimes.com