Victims of Newport Beach trailer park fire lost everything, face challenges finding new home
Newport Beach resident Michelle Martin remembers the morning of Aug. 16.
Martin, 69, and her 99-year-old mother, Lynn Scherer, were sound asleep in the aging trailer the two shared in the Beach/Bay Mobile Home Port at 7204 West Coast Hwy. She remembers waking up early, but on that particular morning she’d been groggy enough to want to catch a few more winks.
It would be the only morning she didn’t get up at her usual hour that there would be a fire, she said in an interview Wednesday, pointing out the irony of her decision to go back to sleep.
“Both of us are hard of hearing and we didn’t hear the hard pounding on the gate [around our trailer], but [neighbors] literally broke the gate post trying to wake us up. We were asleep, wearing next to nothing. I had pants and a top on, and [a man] grabbed my mother. I grabbed our dog, her wheelchair and we ran out,” Martin said.
“By that time, our trailer was already catching fire, and the heat — I’ve never had an experience like that. He kept saying, ‘Go, go, go’ down the street, and I have a degenerative disease so I wasn’t walking so well, but I was pushing her wheelchair and I forgot the [footrests] so her feet were dragging. I’m trying to see the humor in it, but it wasn’t there at the time.”
She said she remembers seeing the plumes of black smoke, the firefighters and her mother, who has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, being moved into to an ambulance.
The Newport Beach Fire Department reported they responded to calls about a fire at around 9:35 a.m. that day, and that the blaze was put out by 10:08 a.m., but not before it destroyed three homes and damaged three others.
The cause of the fire remains under investigation, according to Newport Beach Fire Department spokesman Josh Leith.
One of the trailers destroyed in the blaze was Martin’s. She and her mother lost everything.
Right now, Martin is living out of a friend’s spare room while her mother is being cared for at an outpatient facility, where she’s been improving and is expected to be discharged this weekend.
Martin said she doesn’t know what the two of them will do going forward. Finding a new home has been her biggest priority, though so far she’s had no luck. Her hope was to stay in Newport Beach or Costa Mesa, so they could remain nearby Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian, where her mother’s medical team is, but the rental costs are proving prohibitive.
“We have nothing,” Martin said tearfully, adding that every little thing was a new expense that neither she nor her mother could afford. Clothes have been generously donated, but she simply does not have the money to replace basic household items or have work done on her car.
For those reasons her friend, Natasha Beavin, launched a GoFundMe charity drive for Martin and her mother with a goal of raising $300,000. As of Thursday afternoon, just $1,000 had been raised. Any funds would to go toward housing and replacing essentials such as their medical necessities, including hearing aids.
Beavin and her own mother, Sanne, described Martin and Scherer as attached at the hip. Beavin said there was a time she lived with the two when she was in between housing herself. She said she’s done what she can to help during the duo’s displacement.
The Beavins believe firmly that Martin needs an advocate to find housing that works for her and her mother. But securing the help is a nightmare, said Sanne Beavin.
“I know the system is difficult,” Sanne said, briefly sharing a story about her other daughter, who suffers from a concussion that has since impacted her everyday life. “We have walked through that system with her, and again at a distance because she lives somewhere else. But it’s so far away, and her whole life’s changed. The system really sucks. It’s so hard to get help.”
They’d been hopeful their GoFundMe would gain traction on social media, but beyond some donations from a friend of a friend’s, Natasha said, the response has been low.
“I know no one knows [Martin]. I got a donation … I don’t even know this lady [who donated personally], but our friends posted it on there. It’s really cool when a stranger donates. They know someone that’s connected to me. That’s true help when a stranger gives,” said Natasha.
For now, Martin and her mother remain uncertain of where to go or what they can do. She expects to have to temporarily move her mother in with her, sharing the same room at her friend’s home, though she doesn’t know if it will fit another bed or even a double bed.
But, she said, there’s always a reason to hope for better times. She recalls the night before the fire she’d taken her dog, Toby, for a walk along the river jetties. A homeless man, unprompted, said to her, “God works in mysterious ways.”
Interested readers can donate to Martin at gofund.me/12433827.
All the latest on Orange County from Orange County.
Get our free TimesOC newsletter.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Daily Pilot.
