After the fires, starting from scratch in their 70s, 80s and 90s

Toothbrushes. Slippers. Hearing aids. Walkers.

One day you have all of your stuff. The next day it’s gone, and you’re starting from scratch — something you never expected to be doing in your 70s, or 80s, or 90s.

“We had to go buy underwear the first day,” said Diane Williams, 86, who lost her 100-year-old English Tudor home two months ago in the Eaton fire and is now furnishing a Pasadena apartment that’s serving as a temporary home.

Steve Lopez

Steve Lopez is a California native who has been a Los Angeles Times columnist since 2001. He has won more than a dozen national journalism awards and is a four-time Pulitzer finalist.

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She bought a couch, a kitchen table, some lamps and a new bed for Tommy, her 13-year-old terrier.

“It’s piecemeal,” her 89-year-old husband Verne said about stocking up again. “One day I go and get some more shirts, or get a pair of pants. Two times I had to get shoes before I had this pair that I like.”

Regrouping after the devastating Eaton and Palisades fires can be a nightmare at any age, but older adults have an added burden — the practical and psychological challenges of starting new lives when time is running out.

When they lost their house in the Palisades fire, Joe and Arline Halper, 95 and 88, took up temporary residence in a grandson’s home and began sorting out their options. They had always hoped to live out their days in their home, but rebuilding could take years.

“At our age, it doesn’t make sense,” Joe said.

Diane Williams is framed by a portion of her home that was destroyed in the Eaton fire.

“In the beginning, I was truly in shock, and I thought, ‘What’s going to happen to us?’ This was not in our plan,” Arline said. “We didn’t even have a tooth brush … so I was just overwhelmed. I’d go to CVS and just kind of wander around, not knowing where to start.”

Arline was shopping for kitchen supplies one day when she saw a cutting board that triggered a memory, and she broke down in tears. Her son had made one for her nearly half a century ago when he was a student at Paul Revere junior high, and it was lost in the fire.

“It’s just so emotional, and you try to repress it and try to move ahead and be thankful for what you do have,” Arline said. “And yet it’s all there, all these memories.”

The Halpers have a good friend and former Palisades neighbor named Alice Lynn, whose house survived. But Lynn, a therapist who’s in her mid-80s, doesn’t know when she’ll be able to return, and she’s in the midst of moving to yet another temporary home.

“Moving is daunting,” said Lynn, and so is the chaos of displacement, particularly for older people who find comfort in familiarity and routine.

“Where’s the spatula? Where’s the coffee cup?” Lynn asked, and how can you know how long of a lease to sign when you have no idea when the fire debris will be removed from your property? “It’s like your whole life has been switched into this parallel universe.”

In Altadena, Kathi and Ed Ahnstedt, both 77, lost their apartment in the Eaton fire. They evacuated in a hurry, leaving behind their hearing aids. The fire also destroyed Kathi’s cell phone, her walker and her CPAP breathing machine.

Kathi and Ed Ahnstedt look over a handful of Kathi’s snow-baby figurines that they recovered from their apartment in Altadena, which was destroyed in the Eaton fire.

But that’s not what she wanted to talk about:

“What I miss most,” Kathi said, “is all my Christmas stuff.”

She lost hundreds of ornaments, and fire swept through a couple dozen miniature Christmas villages that were boxed up for the next holiday season.

“I leave my Christmas tree up all year long, decorated,” Kathi said. “I used to change it every month. Change it for, like St. Patrick’s Day. It had 40 or 50 years worth of ornaments on it. It was almost solid ornaments. Not like one every five inches or so.”

All of that was incinerated, along with the artificial tree.

But there was one miracle on Mendocino Street. A couple dozen of the porcelain snow-baby figurines from Kathi’s collection, which numbered in the hundreds, survived the inferno even though the shelves they were displayed on burned.

A few snow-babies from Kathi Ahnstedt’s collection were salvaged from the ruins of her home.

“We looked where they might have fallen when the roof caved in,” Kathi said, and there they were, buried in the ashes, mostly intact. Her daughter, Michelle, has been sifting through the rubble and said the search and rescue mission might still turn up more survivors.

Kathi has been cleaning the figurines with baking soda paste, and she’s also been doing a bit of shopping.

“Ed’s here and I don’t want him to hear this, but I already have 12 new nutcrackers,” Kathi confided, adding that she’s also been replacing some of the lost snow-babies. “I went kind of crazy on eBay.”

Ed knew more than he let on to his wife, explaining that he was wise to her indulgences, but chose to honor a personal code:

“I just refuse to say anything, because happy wife, happy life.”

The Ahnstedts are staying at their daughter’s home in La Ca?ada Flintridge while drawing plans to build an ADU in her backyard. It’ll make for a big adjustment, but “compared to other people, we are golden,” said Kathi, who isn’t the only one who lost her most prized possessions. Ed, who makes custom fishing rods and reels for a living, lost all his supplies. But like his wife, he’s rebuilding his collection and has already built a new workshop in his daughter’s backyard.

The Halpers, meanwhile, are in the midst of their own unexpected transition. They never saw themselves as being cut out for a retirement community, but a few weeks ago, they moved into one in Playa Vista.

“I’m getting used to it,” said Joe, a Korean War veteran, longtime public servant and current board member of the Los Angeles Parks Foundation.

Arline, who’s socially active and, like her husband, has never felt defined by age, is going through her own adjustment. “The people are friendly and it’s very nice,” Arline said of the retirement community. “But it’s very age-specific, and kind of an awakening for me. And I’m, ‘Oh, I guess I do belong here.’”

Diane and Verne Williams have made a different call.

Diane Williams and her husband Verne visit the site of their home. They want to rebuild to leave something to their six children, six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

For decades, Diane said, their house on Braeburn Road, near the Altadena Golf Course, was a home base and holiday gathering place for their blended family (her three children and his three children).

They want to rebuild, Diane said, and so does the rest of the family, which includes six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

“We might not live to see the house totally built, or to move into the house, because we might have died,” Diane said. “So we’re rebuilding as a legacy to the family.”

And who will own the house when they’re gone?

Kathi Ahnstedt looks at some of her recently purchased snow-babies. She lost hundreds of them in the Eaton fire.

Their kids will figure it out, Diane said.

“You have a choice. You can either take the insurance money and leave it to your kids, or you can rebuild a home that will be special to the children and grandchildren. And so that’s my thinking about it, and that’s what helps me get through, day to day,” Diane said.

And wouldn’t it be something for Diane and Verne to host the first family Christmas party in the new house?

“Brings tears to my eyes,” said Verne.

steve.lopez@latimes.com