Mia Amer has undergone a lot of firefighting training before. The Hollywood publicist spent a decade raising her children in the Pacific Palisades area, where fires often threaten her home from the hills to the north. Historically, she added, “never before has a fire swept through Sunset Boulevard and threatened our city.”
But that changed on January 7, when a fire tore through her idyllic neighborhood, just north of Santa Monica on the western edge of Los Angeles city limits. The Palisades Fire and the devastating Eaton Fire to the east that swept through Altadena and parts of North Pasadena created a terrifying display of wildfire destruction that the world watched unfold in real time via relentless news coverage.
Only two door frames and part of Amer’s fireplace remain intact in the house she bought in 2015, on Bienvenida Street, near the now-razed Palisades Charter High School (where the 1976 film “Carrie” was filmed). In a shocking twist, the house contained priceless scrapbooks and the ashes of Amer’s late husband – beloved film marketing executive Jeff Amer, who died unexpectedly 13 years ago. That was the last time Amer had to rebuild her life from the ground up.
“It’s really the only thing he cared about. There were some memory books that friends had put together with photos and handwritten letters about how much Jeff meant to them. That was the only thing I wanted for my kids and it’s gone,” Amer said. diverse. “His ashes were there too. It’s where they’re supposed to be.”
A family friend took an old jacket that belonged to Jeff after he died in 2012 at the age of 62. The friend returned that jacket on Saturday to Mia’s son, Jeff Amer Jr., 19, who returned home from college at UCLA. Santa Barbara will be with his mother and sister Annie, 17. He has not taken off the jacket since.
All that remains of Mia Amer’s house in Pacific Palisades: Photo courtesy of Bo Bridges.
Boo bridges
Amer tells a story that echoes the experience of countless others in the area over the past week. She experienced “panic”, “numbness” and “complete shock” as she watched her home disappear in snippets of cell phone camera footage.
“We’ve been through a lot of these fire warnings and you don’t know how seriously to take them. My house was never in danger. All my neighbors were thinking the same thing: We’re just going to come back. That’s why a lot of people left with just the clothes they were wearing,” she said. The Palisades Fire is an unprecedented economic and environmental disaster, but Amer said it is first and foremost “a housing crisis, unless you’re wealthy.”
On the day the fires broke out, Amer was working as vice president of entertainment at the public relations firm Sunshine, Sachs, Morgan & Lylis. She has made a name for herself as an effective and beloved corporate communications executive, working at studios including Sony Pictures Entertainment, 20th Century Fox, and Paramount Pictures. Her daughter, Annie, was the only person in the Bienvenida home when the fire warnings escalated.
Jeffrey Amer Jr.’s destroyed truck. Credit: Bo Bridges.
“The alerts woke her up after I called her about 27 times. I reminded her of some things to take, and she ran out of the house with our hoodies and our passports,” Amer said. Annie, a student at Palisades High, was immediately trapped in a catatonic state. When she escaped, fortunately, she knew a shortcut to her school and avoided abandoned cars and the “utter chaos of the evacuation of people driving on the wrong side.” From the street.”
Amer’s house survived that night but soon caught fire (along with the entire building) on January 8. Amer, her partner Eric Logan, former CEO of the World Surf League and former co-chairman of Oprah Winfrey’s OWN channel, and her children visited the home. The remains of their home the next day.
“We lived next door to a house in town, and there was a ton of debris. The safe in my bedroom closet had exploded. Everything was gone. We found a ceramic bear that Annie had made in class, and her bedroom door handle,” she said.
Amer and her daughter moved into Logan’s house in Manhattan Beach. Tears come often, she said, inspired by “the way this community has come together.” Sunshine Sachs has been incredibly supportive. (My client) Constance Schwartz Morini of SMAC delivered a box of clothes to my daughter in less than two seconds. The generosity has been so overwhelming. I’m very humbled by it, and it makes you optimistic.
As a widow and single mother, Amer said she would not have been able to survive the loss of her husband without having friends and neighbors in the Palisades area, which was her village. These same neighbors organized a relief fund for the family.
“It was unique because there was no better place to raise a family,” she said. “I wouldn’t have been able to get through this without the Palisades community. From driving my kids to school – I don’t know what I would have done without her.
It’s hard to find silver linings nowadays, but Amer is encouraged by neighbors and friends who are moving to the South Bay area of Los Angeles and staying together.
“There are a lot of families that have moved here in the South Bay between Hermosa and Manhattan Beach. We’re kind of rebuilding here,” she said. “I know not everyone is that lucky.”
(Pictured above: Eric Logan, Mia Amer, Geoff Amer Jr., and Annie Amer survey the remains of their home in Pacific Palisades. Photo courtesy of Bo Bridges)
Jeffrey Amer Jr. takes in the remains of his childhood home. Photo courtesy of Beau Bridges.
