California Wildfires

Pacific Palisades woman loses home and business to brush fire

“I kept saying the whole time, ‘God, please don’t take both,'" said Tawnya Warren, a Pacific Palisades resident and small business owner.

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A Pacific Palisades woman is grappling with the loss of not only her home but her business as she and her teenage son navigate where they will be staying after.

Tawnya Warren, a single mother from Pacific Palisades, said she is facing her new reality after the Palisades Fire destroyed her rent-controlled apartment and her business. She owned Tawnya, a fine jewelry and clothing shop on Sunset Boulevard near where the Pacific Palisades Village once was.

“I took every single dime that I had and put it into my business as my future,” she said. “I thought that was my retirement plan.”

When she and her 17-year-old son were forced out of their home during the fire, she said she prayed she wouldn’t lose everything.

“I kept saying the whole time, ‘God, please don’t take both. Either save my sanctuary where I live or save my retirement, my store. Just don’t take both; I’m a single mom,’” Warren said.

“It really just doesn’t feel real,” said Ile John, Warren’s son.

The two are now bouncing from home to home.

“We were put up in Larchmont, we were put up before that in Koreatown, then someone gave us a home to stay at,” Warren said. “Now, we are in Venice for 10 days.”

As of Monday night, the Palisades Fire was at 61% containment. It destroyed nearly 5,000 structures in its unforgiving path.

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