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Weber County natives picking up the pieces after losing home in California wildfires

By Ryan Aston - | Jan 30, 2025
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Weber County natives Jeff and Amy Dixon lost their home in the Palisades Fire earlier this month. Photo undated.
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In this undated photo, Jeff and Amy Dixon color Easter eggs with their daughters. The Dixons' home was lost in the Palisades Fire earlier this month.
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Weber County natives Jeff and Amy Dixon lost their home in the Palisades Fire earlier this month. Photo undated.

Years ago, Weber High School grads Jeff and Amy Dixon left the Ogden area and set out into the world with big dreams in tow. As Amy Dixon tells it, they were “two kids from Utah, high school sweethearts, who got in a U-Haul and moved to L.A. and tried to make it happen.”

By all accounts, they succeeded, too. Jeff became a writer and maker of things like Apple TV’s “Curses!” and Amy became a star of the fitness world as a teacher, trainer, spokesperson and more. The couple also raised two daughters, Bella and Ava, both of whom are currently pursuing their degrees at the University of Utah.

The dream life took a sharp detour into a cruel, new reality on Jan. 7, though, when the family’s Pacific Palisades condo — and other places that have shaped the story of their lives — were lost in the Palisades Fire.

“I was home working. I was on a Zoom call with some producers, and Amy was at work at the office,” Jeff Dixon told the Standard-Examiner. “We got a warning the night before saying, ‘Hey, there’s going to be high winds.’ … I started hearing all these sirens in the background, and the people on the call heard them, too. And I was just like, ‘Yeah, it’s just difficult high winds.'”

After the call ended, he carried on with his day, taking a walk to the UPS store. What he saw along the way was much more than high winds.

“On the other side of the street, on the other side of Sunset, I saw 10, 20 people just standing there staring up at, like, behind me,” Jeff Dixon said. “It looked like a scene out of a sci-fi movie because it was like, ‘What are they all staring at?’ So I turn around, and sure enough, there’s huge flames, like, right there.”

The Dixons quickly met up and converged upon their home, grabbing what they could over a period of 20 or so minutes — clothes, some documents, a box of photos — and getting out. Even then, though, the full gravity of the situation hadn’t set in.

“You’re just kind of in this state of, ‘Well, it’s not going to happen to me. It’s not going to jump to the city,’ you know?” Amy Dixon told the Standard-Examiner. “I never thought it would happen. Like, there wasn’t a part of me that thought our condo complex will burn down.”

In the end, that’s exactly what happened. Gone was the home the couple had made, along with those of their neighbors and friends. The place where they lived, loved and formed a unique extended family with others who had dared to dream was consumed by fire, and the Dixons witnessed the destruction on live TV.

“We were raised to have events, to have people over, to host things. Like, we hosted every holiday. We had a Monday night supper with friends,” Amy Dixon said. “So, the loss of this place is so extreme. Like, you never imagined this would happen to you. Ever.”

Now, Jeff and Amy are scrambling to pick up the pieces, trying to ensure they have the things they need to live their daily lives; contact solution, a spare battery, a place to lie their heads down at night.

Right now, they’re staying at a friend’s house, and they’ll move to another friend’s house this weekend. All the while, they’re working to secure long-term temporary housing. Although life marches on despite the fire, fulfilling these basic needs and navigating things like meetings with attorneys, insurance adjusters, banks, tax people, applications for grants and other assistance, et al., has almost become a full-time job.

“It’s 12 hours a day waking up at 7 a.m. after not sleeping and just starting your day full of phone calls, Zoom calls, meetings, going to relief centers or FEMA centers, standing in lines, filling out forms,” Jeff Dixon said. “By the time it’s like 6 or 7 at night, you just basically are passed out from exhaustion, and then you just do it again the next day.”

All the while, the Dixons still have a mortgage and even HOA fees for their ruined home to worry about, on top of future rent considerations. They’ve also discovered that their condo insurance falls well short of the benefit provided by regular homeowners insurance (which has been problematic in its own right for many fire victims).

“Homeowners insurance, most of them give you 24 months temporary placement in a (similarly-valued) property,” Jeff Dixon said, noting that he and his wife’s insurance yielded the equivalent of three months rent and groceries in the L.A. area. “When all is said and done, the insurance does not fill the gaps, and you’d be lucky if insurance fills about 5 to 10 percent of the gaps. … That was very eye-opening to us on how much insurance does not make you whole, or at least condo insurance.”

The proud parents are thankful their daughters have been back in the Beehive State, living the college life, as this has occurred. However, they worry about what the reaction will be when the two return home and see everything firsthand.

“Bella graduates in May and Ava will also be coming back,” Jeff Dixon said. “They’re not going to feel — I think they’re going to be in a weird, ‘it’s not real’ mindset until they get here, and then they’re going to have to relive it all over again.”

In the wake of their loss, Jeff and Amy have found comfort in the outpouring of support they’ve received in the form of texts, calls, meals and donations. They say that people they haven’t seen or talked to in decades have reached out or offered help. A GoFundMe to benefit the family was launched earlier this month.

Dealing with the outpouring has been strange in its own right, but the Dixons are nonetheless overcome with gratitude.

“As a human being, you’re like, ‘Okay, that’s great!’ But, it’s constant. So, you’re dealing with this immense state of loss on one side of the continuum and then, on the other side, like, the most maximum state of love and compassion that you’ll ever get. So, you’re trying to balance both because there is no middle. There’s absolutely no middle between the two. So, it’s definitely extremes on both sides, but it has been unbelievable, the amount of people who have shown up for us.”

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