‘Everything was gone’: Local athlete loses childhood home in California wildfires
A Belmont Abbey College basketball player tells Channel 9 the California wildfires forced his family out of their childhood home – burning all of their belongings inside.
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Brian Carter Jr. said his family is safe but left with a financial mess.
“That night my mother called me and told me how it looked,” he told Channel 9′s Eli Brand. “There have been fires before and they contain them pretty quickly.”
Carter said he moved into this home in the Eaton Canyon area of Los Angeles County when he was seven. His grandmother bought it 50 years ago and it has been in his family ever since.
He said there have been wildfires in the area before but as this one continued to grow, his family quickly knew it would affect them.
“They got an evacuation warning,” Carter said. “They didn’t really know what was going on and so that morning, when they said the fire was spreading quickly and everything was gone, it was pretty shocking to hear.”
After 50 years in the home, it took just a few hours for that fire to destroy it, uprooting his family partly made up by his grandmother who is a florist in Pasadena and his father who owns a barber shop.
Brian Carter Jr. said it took just a few hours for one of the fires in L.A. County to destroy his childhood home, uprooting his family partly made up by his grandmother who is a florist in Pasadena and his father who owns a barber shop.
It has left his family staying with relatives, hoping to find a solution: “We’re not sure how long financially it will last, or how it will last long-term, but we’re keeping good faith and trying to stay strong.”
Carter said he’s doing everything he can to help his family from afar. His main goal now is to share their story and ask for help from others.
He said his father is from this area and still has family in Pineville. Carter told Channel 9 he knows his parents will be ok: “I just say keep faith. Keep faith everything is going to work out and be in our favor. Stay strong.”
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