Massachusetts native loses house in California fire, business threatened
BOSTON - Julie Paige never imagined she'd be in this position. "I feel broken, and I'm trying so hard to hold on to the light inside of me," she said.
The Andover native lost everything from the Eaton Canyon fire in California, which completely destroyed her neighborhood. She's lived in California for nine years.
"A ball of fire"
Moments before she evacuated, she and a neighbor "looked to the sky, and we saw like a ball of fire, not just smoke and red smoke, but a ball of fire in the not too far distance," she said.
That was the moment Paige knew she had to evacuate. She grabbed her three-year-old daughter, her dog, some family photos, outfits for two days, and legal documents, and left.
Now, she has nothing to come home to. "My entire neighborhood is burnt to the ground," she said.
Paige is staying at a childhood friend's home, a fellow Andover native who also lives in California now. She is applying to FEMA for assistance and filing a claim with her insurance, which she was told could take months because of the amount of devastation.
"I don't like to ask people for help, and this is so uncomfortable," she said. "I'm very bad at receiving, and I have no choice but to ask for help in this moment."
Dance studio threatened
While her home is gone, one other major facet of Paige's life looms in the path of the fire. "One of my businesses, the dance studio, which is where I make most of my income, is under mandatory evacuation right now. So, if that burns down, I don't know what next."
Paige is also a life coach and says she's trying to learn from her own work as she goes through the most challenging time of her life. But the biggest challenge is helping her three-year-old daughter, Vivia, understand what's happening. "She keeps asking me, 'did the fire take my bike? Did the fire take our toilet?' And I just have to keep telling her yes," she said. "I'm trying to share with her that home is our family, and our house is just where we live, and so as long as we're together we're home."
Paige says the fires and the devastation - and the grace that's coming from them - reminds her of New York after 9/11, where she was living in 2001. "The disparity between the horror and the grace is confusing," she said.
When asked what message she'd share to people back in her home community on the East Coast about the fires, Paige said, through tears, "our planet is burning and that's really what's happening, and we all need to do something about it."