A “miracle” £8million Malibu house remarkably became the only building on the street to survive the deadly LA wildfires.
David Steiner incredibly saw his his white three-story home remain intact, despite the homes around him falling victim to the fires. According to the retired waste-management businessman the fact that the 4,200-square foot, four-bed home stood defiantly amid the horror blaze was no accident.
As reported by the Mirror, he said the property was built to withstand earthquakes – revealing it has stucco and stone walls, a fireproof roof, and pilings driven 50ft into bedrock to help withstand the surf below.
Steiner told The New York Post on Friday: “To be totally honest with you, I never in a million years thought a wildfire would jump to the Pacific Coast Highway and start a fire.
“I thought, ‘If we ever have an earthquake, this would be the last thing to go.’ I honestly didn’t think that if we had a fire, this would be the last thing to go. The architecture is pretty nice. But the stucco and fireproof roof are real nice.”
The 64-year-old, who is from Texas, said it was a complete shock to find his home had managed to survive the wildfires and believed it would have succumbed to the flames like many other homes. He said: “It’s a miracle – miracles never cease.”
Steiner was getting updates about his home when he was sent a video from a local contractor who had been monitoring the fire. The video showed flames at the edges of Steiner’s home, which was vacant at the time, having already burnt down his neighbours’ homes.
‘[The contractor] was watching the news reports and saw my neighbour’s house going down and told me, ‘It looks like your house is going, too,’ Steiner recalled. “It looked like nothing could have possibly survived that, and I thought we had lost the house,” he said.
People had started to contact Steiner and said his home was “all over the news” but remarkably when photos started to emerge his home was still standing, surrounded by the debris. “I started getting pictures and realized we had made it through,” he said.
Steiner said he started getting calls and texts from friends following the devastating fires but he was quick to downplay the luck. “It wasn’t a happy time, but I can replace it. It’s not a person”, he said. ‘I was getting texts from people saying, ‘We’re praying for you. It’s so horrible”. ‘I said, “Don’t pray for me – what I lost is material goods.” … I lost a property, but others lost their homes.”
Although the Malibu home is signifcant it is not his main family home. He said: “I didn’t have my family’s mementos there. My heart truly goes out to those who lost everything.
“My wife sent me something this morning that said, ‘Last house standing’ and it brought a pretty big smile to my face at a pretty bad time”.
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