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“This isn’t the first time I’ve had nothing,” Ballantyne said this week as he surveyed what remained of the house.

“Around 9 o’clock, I could start to see the flames now,” Ballantyne said.

“No longer did you have to look all the way east to see the fire, it was creeping up closer,” Ballantyne said.

When Alex Ballantyne was 18, he found himself kicked out of his latest foster family’s home and unsure where to go next.

But in the summer of 2022, when Ballantyne was 22, everything changed when he reconnected with his biological aunt and uncle, who opened up their Altadena home to him.