HAVILAH, Calif. (KERO) — 'One Heart, One Havilah' is the message Elissa Beckham printed on stickers and shirts to give to her neighbors.
- Elissa Beckham is a Havilah resident, who like many of her neighbors, experienced extensive damage on her property due to the Borel Fire.
- July 26 was the day the Borel Fire moved through the small historic community of Havilah, causing widespread devastation.
- Beckham and her husband have been fostering children in addition to raising their own for around three years now.
BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT:
One of the reasons Elissa Beckham and her husband bought their house in Havilah is because it was large enough to have space to foster children with special needs.
“The entire month of June we were having a new bathroom rebuilt, it was going to be wheelchair accessible, all of those things, it was due to be done Friday,” Beckham said.
Elissa Beckham, a Havilah resident, is talking about Friday July 26, the day the Borel Fire went through Havilah, destroying property.
Her and her husband were modifying the bathroom in order to adopt a child with special needs.
“Obviously that’s definitely come to a stop, because right now we are technically homeless. We are staying with my father-in-law, so all my children are in one little tiny room.”
Beckham and her husband have fostered children in addition to raising their own.
“It’s really in our hearts to give our home to kids in need.”
However, Beckham is currently standing as close as she can get to her home due to the closure of Caliente-Bodfish road and has only seen it once since the fire, courtesy of a police escort.
She says her house is still standing but has immense damage.
“A lot of infrastructure that was damaged and ruined, the house was filled with smoke.”
Beckham says she thinks about the long road ahead of her towards normalcy.
“That’s one of the most devastating parts I think, knowing that when I rebuild and look out my kitchen window, that my neighbor and her children aren’t there and that our neighbor Judy that we love, her home’s gone, what does it look like when we look out our windows?”
She says the community of Havilah was close-knit -
“There’s not very many of us that lived in that little tiny community, so we are very close, we were all very connected, we were all.. One heart.”
Despite the loss, she believes the community of Havilah that she loved will return – giving out bumper stickers to her neighbors with a unifying message.
“I cry with my neighbors and for them, at this time when I go up there it’s so devastating that I feel like we're gonna unify and be our community again and rebuild, we’ll continue to help each other and support each other as one unified heart, one family.”
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