California bank customers await word on safe deposit boxes

ALTADENA, Calif. — The Spanish Revival house where Marie Laurin had lived since 2017 is now a pile of rubble — burned down, along with the rest of her block, in the massive Eaton Fire.

A few hundred yards away sits what remains of the Bank of America branch where Laurin, an actor and filmmaker, rented a safe deposit box. She used the box to store much of the output from the last decade of her career — unedited footage from her yet-to-be-released movie.

Laurin, who’s staying hundreds of miles away, is now waiting to hear whether that footage survived. Nearly four weeks have passed since the blaze raged through town. She has yet to get word from Bank of America about whether the contents of her safe deposit box were destroyed.

Laurin has the edited version of the movie, but she fears that she’s lost the so-called dailies — raw, unedited footage from filming.

“If my dailies are burned down, it’s not good. I will never be able to make any change to the film,” she said.

A Bank of America spokesperson said it’s still unknown what at the Altadena branch, if anything, survived the Jan. 8 fire. The bank is working with local authorities on the situation, and structural engineers have deemed the area unsafe, which means no one has been able to get near the safe deposit boxes.

The spokesperson also said Bank of America has reached out to customers who were using the safe deposit boxes. If the boxes can be recovered, the spokesperson said, they will be moved to another location where customers can access them.

In an email to customers, Bank of America said: “Our initial focus will be on stabilizing the structure to safely remove and relocate the safety deposit boxes in order to provide safe access for you to view your contents. This process is proceeding as quickly as possible. We appreciate your patience and please know that we are committed to completing the work in a safe, secure and expedient manner, and will continue to update you.”

The uncertain fate of the safe deposit boxes in Altadena is an example of the kinds of operational challenges banks face after wildfires, floods and other natural disasters.

Dave McGuinn, president of the consulting firm Safe Deposit Specialists, said site clean-up must come first in a situation like the one unfolding in Southern California. “You can’t put anybody into that area — into their safe deposit box or in that vault — for that period. They’re going to get hurt,” he said.

Later on, the bank will have to set up appointments with safe deposit box customers, where they can recover whatever property is remaining, McGuinn said.

He recalled a situation involving an Iowa bank where safe deposit boxes, which were located in a vault, remained intact after a fire. “Their boxes survived it, but they couldn’t get to them, because the entire building collapsed, like what we’ve seen in California,” McGuinn said.

The Iowa bank arranged to move the safe deposit boxes to a neighboring bank that had vault space available, and then cleaned them up, he said.

On Saturday morning in Altadena, a security guard was stationed on the Bank of America property, and a fence surrounded the building. Its mid-century modern exterior facade was still standing, but the building’s interior had clearly sustained major damage.

Kyle Grillot/Bloomberg

Before the fire, Altadena had two bank branches, which were located next door to each other on Lake Avenue, a major street connecting this foothill community to the larger city of Pasadena.

Just south of the Bank of America building is a JPMorgan Chase branch that survived the fire. It remained closed on Saturday, but a mobile ATM was stationed outside.

If half of the community’s bank branches burned down, that would not be far off the impact on the town as a whole. Roughly 40% of Altadena’s residential units were destroyed, according to a Los Angeles Times analysis.

Laurin, the filmmaker, said she was unaware until after the fire that the contents of safe deposit boxes require a separate insurance policy. One of the items she lost in the blaze at her house was the key to her safe deposit box.

Laurin described her film, “The Uncanny,” as a psychological horror movie that deals with depression, suicide, loss and grief. She wrote the film with her daughter, who directed it.

“We shot 90% of the film in my house that burned,” she said.

Jose Bugarin, another Altadena resident who had a safe deposit box at Bank of America’s branch, said he recently got a call from the bank informing him that the boxes would be moved to a safe location.

If the plan is to move the safe deposit boxes without the customers being present, Bugarin indicated that he would object. He said he was keeping cash and jewelry in his box at the time of the fire.

“I want to be there when my box is moved. I want to be there when my little door gets opened, or when it’s pried out with a crowbar,” Bugarin recalled telling the Bank of America employee.

“Because if there’s anything missing, or there’s an issue with anything, I’m going to hold you guys liable, because you are not giving me the opportunity to be there when they’re opened,” he said. “And that defeats the idea of it being a safety deposit box.”

McGuinn, the president of Safe Deposit Specialists, said that if the vault that held the safe deposit boxes was destroyed by fire, BofA’s affected customers will likely have little recourse against the bank.

“If they bring some kind of lawsuit, it’s pretty much up to the court to determine whether the bank really has any liability in cases like this,” McGuinn said. “And typically the bank’s going to win, because they lost all of their items, and there wasn’t a whole lot anybody could do about that raging fire.”