Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr told reporters Thursday that his childhood home burned down in the Los Angeles wildfires. His 90-year-old mother, Ann, who had been living there since 1969, evacuated safely, he said.
“It’s been tough,” Kerr said, via The Athletic’s Anthony Slater. “My family is fine, my mom is in good hands. But her house is gone and I’ve been on the phone with my siblings quite a bit. Family calls, just with my mom. But she’s got a lot of support and friends, so she’s safe and sound. But that’s my hometown, and all of my friends who are from there, pretty much they’ve all lost their homes, their family homes, childhood homes.”
Kerr continued: “The town looks like it has just been completely wiped out. It’s surreal and devastating. But fortunately almost everyone escaped. The pictures reminded me of Lahaina from a couple years ago. I’m so happy that there wasn’t the loss of life that people in Hawaii experienced. But it’s hard to even fathom how Pacific Palisades rebuilds and how it becomes a thriving community again. It’s just shocking.”
Just two weeks ago, Kerr visited his mother and had dinner at the house, he said. It was the night before a Warriors game. Last summer, he celebrated her birthday there.
“We had 100 guests up on that hillside,” he said. “And a beautiful night, great memories. It’s an idyllic place. It’s a beautiful town. Sunsets every night, just amazing memories. And my dad taught at UCLA, so that drive from Pacific Palisades down Sunset Boulevard to the campus at UCLA is one I’ve made a million times, and so many great memories. And then to see the images of Sunset Boulevard and the Palisades — just shocking. It looks, like, apocalyptic. And devastating.”
Kerr said that he doesn’t think his mother or anyone in his family cares much about the items that were lost in the fire.
“She took as much as she possibly could: photos and paintings and everything that she could possibly get out, she did,” Kerr said. “But yeah, it’s the memories, it’s a lifetime of memories and occasions and birthday parties and everything else, and to just see the destruction, the devastation is just, like I said, unfathomable.”
Kerr said this in Detroit, where the Golden State Warriors will play the Pistons on Thursday.
Nearly 180,000 people are under evacuation orders because of the ongoing fires, per CBS News.
