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Mandy Moore had a simple message for Amazon on Tuesday (Feb. 11): “Do better.” The singer/actress lashed out at the global giant in her Instagram Story after she said the company delivered a package to her in-laws’ house in Pasadena, which was totally destroyed by last month’s devastating wildfires.
“Do better, Amazon,” she wrote in the Story that has since timed out, alongside a photo of the charred home and an image of the package sitting amidst the destruction. “Can we not have better discretion than to leave a package at a residence that no longer exists? This is my mother and father in law’s home. Smh.”

According to TMZ, Amazon responded to Moore’s post, with a spokesperson saying, “We’ve reached out to Ms. Moore via Instagram to apologize for this and to ask for more information from her in-laws so we’re better able investigate what happened here.” The representative added, “For weeks, we’ve advised those who are delivering on our behalf in southern California to use discretion in areas that were impacted by wildfires – especially if it involves delivering to a damaged home – that clearly didn’t happen here.”

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Moore, who initially reported that her home was also partially destroyed by one of the half dozen fires that killed 29 and destroyed more than 16,00 homes and other structures, also posted an emotional chronicle of her own flight from the Santa Ana winds-fueled conflagrations. “We never got an evacuation notice. Sometimes in the quieter moments of processing the last month, I play the game of what would have happened if I didn’t have my phone next to me, playing my typical ‘piano for deep sleep’ mix as I nursed Lou before bed, so I could answer the call from my brother-in-law?” Moore wrote on Instagram on Tuesday along with an image of the damage caused by the fire.

“It was 6:45 p.m. and he told me he, his wife, and our niece were evacuating, grabbing my in-laws (his parents) and getting the heck out of Dodge and we should do the same,” Moore continued. “I calmly walked downstairs and relayed this to my husband and without skipping a beat, we promptly packed up the kids (in their pjs), our dog, and scrambled to find our 3 cats as the power went out. I’ll never forget Taylor trying to figure out how to manually open our two little garage doors (they’d just finished construction around Thanksgiving and we’d just started using them—) in the harrowing 60 mph winds, as the sky glowed a dark red and ash started to fall all around us.”

Moore described racing across town dodging fallen tress on the freeway on their way to the safety of a friend’s home and getting her three kids to bed before running to Target to buy a litter box and some water. She also chronicled obsessively refreshing the Watch Duty wildfire map all night as she watched the evacuation zone narrow in on the eight-block radius around her home.

“It took until 4 a.m. for it to turn red. All the while, tossing and turning with a stomach-churning anxiety I’ve never experienced before, both boys passed out between us in bed,” Moore wrote. “[Oldest child daughter] Lou slept on the floor in a travel crib, and the dog curled up protectively by the door.”

She said that they just found out this week that their house is still standing, but that because of the proximity to the fires around their home, everything inside of it was a “near total loss. Clothes, furniture, pretty much everything will have to be disposed of… maybe even the walls too. We won’t be there for a very long time as it and the neighborhood itself get sorted out and cleaned and the rebuilding starts. I say all of this because i’m struggling. Yes we are exceedingly lucky to technically still have the structure of a home. But also… do we still have a home? I think my definition is in flux. The physical space? No. It goes without saying that our sweet brood and our pets are ALL that matters and home is where we are together… but having a sanctuary and safe space to feel settled really goes a long way too.”

The singer described “stumbling” on the home in the early days of COVID, instinctively knowing it was where they wanted to raise their kids; she found out she was pregnant with youngest son Gus two weeks after they closed on the home. Moore said they painstakingly restored and remodeled the home to make it their own and were just weeks away from finally finishing the work when the fires hit.

“I’m not saying all of this because I’m asking you to feel more sorry for us than someone else. Like I said, I am grateful. We’re so lucky!,” Moore wrote of the loss of the home and its contents, as well as the destruction of Taylor’s home studio. “By the grace of god we found a place to stay in the meantime and the kids are happy and safe. We’ve even starting collecting the books and toys that they’ve lost. It’s not a competition of who lost what or more. Real human beings across this town, regardless of their jobs or socioeconomic status, lost the life they’d come to know and count on in an instant. My whole heart is with them. Every one of them. This place, our home and the town itself, was our dream and I hope in time it will feel like that again… just a slightly different one.”

Last month, Moore’s brother-in-law, Dawes drummer Griffin Goldsmith, revealed that Moore and her family were taking shelter with her friend Hilary Duff. He also noted that he’d convinced his whole family and some close friends to move to Altadena years ago, including the siblings’ parents, who lived around the corner from him. Both Griffin and the Goldsmith’s parents lost their homes, while Taylor and husband Dawes singer Taylor Goldsmith had to flee their home and former Dawes bassist Wylie Gelber and his wife and their first crew member and old friend Jake lost their homes as well.