They lost their insurance. Then their homes burned

When Chad Comey heard sirens outside the Palisades condo he lived in with his parents last Tuesday, he didn’t think much of it. Then the fire alerts started.

When Chad Comey heard sirens outside the Palisades condo he lived in with his parents last Tuesday, he didn’t think much of it. Then the fire alerts started. “I’m holding out hope, I’m rationalizing things, like, we’re right in the heart of the village, this is the last place to make a stand, because if this burns, the whole village is going to burn,” he remembers thinking as he watched the fire approach. “You never would expect that everything you’ve come to know can be gone.” Comey, a caretaker for his disabled parents, delayed evacuating as long as he could, ultimately enlisting a neighbor to help him carry his mother in her wheelchair down five flights of stairs. When he was able to return to the wreckage of his neighborhood days later, he found his home destroyed, one of the more than 12,000 structures lost in the Los Angeles wildfires. “We all cried,” he said. “We were distraught.” Now he and his family face the daunting task of figuring out what lies ahead – made even more difficult by the fact that they don’t have a safety net. “My family and I have no insurance,” he said. His parents had lived there long enough to pay off their mortgage and were no longer obligated to carry a policy, so they opted out because it was too expensive. “They’re both disabled. They can’t afford it. What they have goes toward medical equipment, food and paying the HOA fees, which are pushing  one thousand bucks a month.”