They lost their Oscars in the wildfires. What happens next?

When past year’s wildfires forced Colleen Atwood to evacuate her location successful Pacific Palisades, the Oscar-winning costume decorator grabbed a fewer photographs, gathered her pets and left. She didn’t walk overmuch clip deciding what to take. She couldn’t ideate that her location connected Aderno Way, wherever she’d lived for much than 30 years, would burn.

“I had to bash a runner,” Atwood jokes, describing her hurried exit connected a caller greeting telephone telephone from Australia, wherever she’s been moving connected Tom Hanks’ World War II play “Greyhound 2.” “I didn’t truly judge it was real.”

What she didn’t drawback were her Academy Awards she had earned implicit the people of her career. One of the 4 Oscars — her first, for the 2002 philharmonic “Chicago” — was safely connected show astatine the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. But the different three, for “Memoirs of a Geisha” (2005), “Alice successful Wonderland” (2010) and “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” (2016), had been sitting connected a bookshelf successful a enactment country conscionable disconnected the eating room.

When Atwood was yet allowed backmost onto the property, astir thing remained. She and an adjunct picked done the rubble, searching for thing that mightiness person survived the devastating fires that destroyed much than 6,800 structures successful the Palisades, Topanga and Malibu. Her 3 BAFTAs and 2 Emmys were gone, on with her Disney Legend award. Two of the Oscars had melted entirely, but 1 of the statuettes had endured — conscionable barely.

Colleen Atwood’s scorched Oscar soon aft it was recovered from the rubble of her erstwhile Palisades home.

(Bryan Kopp)

The gold-plated fig she’d won for “Fantastic Beasts” was warped and blackened by heat, its aboveground blistered and twisted similar thing pulled from a furnace. Atwood gave the damaged trophy a nickname: “my crispy critter.”

For astir a century, the Oscar statuette has been Hollywood’s astir enduring awesome of success, a gold-plated knight gripping a crusader’s sword, designed to look arsenic imperishable arsenic the grant it represents. But similar everything else, the entity itself is not immune to catastrophe. Fires, thefts and the occasional mishap person destroyed oregon scattered a tiny fig of the statuettes handed retired each twelvemonth by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

When that happens, the question becomes: What, exactly, happens to an Oscar erstwhile it disappears oregon is damaged beyond recognition?

In the days aft the fires, a melodramatic representation of a charred Oscar lying successful the rubble circulated wide connected societal media, with immoderate posts claiming it showed Robert Redford’s statuette destroyed successful the disaster. Isabella Rossellini shared it with her million-plus Instagram followers, calling it “heartbreaking.” The representation turned retired to beryllium an AI-generated fake.

For Atwood, though, the nonaccomplishment of her Oscars was each excessively existent — and she was not alone.

Production decorator Rick Carter, a two-time Oscar victor known for his enactment with directors specified arsenic Steven Spielberg, Robert Zemeckis and James Cameron, had been successful Paris erstwhile a person called to pass him that the blaze was moving toward his Palisades neighborhood. By the clip helium returned, his location and astir everything wrong it were gone, including the Oscars helium had won for 2009’s “Avatar” and 2012’s “Lincoln.”

“When we went back, we didn’t find immoderate hint of them,” Carter said by telephone earlier this period arsenic helium prepared to committee a level astatine LAX for different travel to Paris, wherever helium travels regularly. “Everything was destroyed. All my artwork was gone. There was nothing. It was truthful painful.”

Carter’s statuettes had been displayed connected a mantel. They represented the 2 precise antithetic sides of his enactment arsenic a accumulation designer: the fantastical world-building of “Avatar” and the grounded humanities realism of “Lincoln.”

“I person 2 kids — I person 2 arms, 2 eyes,” helium says. “It conscionable acceptable that someway I’d been fortunate capable to get these 2 Oscars.”

Like Atwood, Carter initially wasn’t definite what would hap next. The academy tightly controls the statuettes. Each bears a unsocial serial fig and since 1950, winners person been prohibited from selling them connected the unfastened marketplace without archetypal offering them backmost to the enactment for 1 dollar. Carter didn’t cognize whether the mislaid trophies could beryllium re-created. “I thought, ‘Well, I wonderment if they really regenerate these things,’ ” helium says.

Colleen Atwood accepting the Oscar for costume plan for her enactment connected “Memoirs of a Geisha” successful 2006.

(Mark J. Terrill / AP)

The academy seldom discusses publically what happens erstwhile 1 of its statuettes — much than 3,000 of them are present retired successful the satellite — is mislaid oregon destroyed. When contacted for this story, the enactment said it would repair oregon regenerate Oscars belonging to surviving winners successful cases of terrible harm oregon catastrophic loss, though it declined to item however those requests are handled oregon however often they occur.

Even earlier past year’s wildfires, astatine slightest 1 erstwhile Oscar victor mislaid an Academy Award successful a blaze. In 1983, Gene Kelly’s Beverly Hills location was destroyed aft a Christmas histrion ignited successful the mediate of the night. Kelly escaped with insignificant burns aft his son, who was downstairs, rushed to assistance rescue the histrion from his bedroom, but the occurrence consumed overmuch of the actor’s memorabilia, including the honorary Oscar he’d received successful 1952.

Despite their aura of permanence, Oscar statuettes person occasionally vanished implicit the years. Vivien Leigh’s Oscar for “A Streetcar Named Desire” was stolen during a break-in successful the 1950s. Margaret O’Brien’s miniature “juvenile” Oscar for “Meet Me successful St. Louis” was taken by a housekeeper who offered to polish it but ne'er returned. Olympia Dukakis’ statuette for “Moonstruck” was stolen by a thief who brazenly tried to merchantability it backmost to her, portion Whoopi Goldberg’s Oscar for “Ghost” concisely disappeared aft she mailed it to the academy to beryllium replated and polished, lone for it to beryllium recovered days later, mysteriously, by a information defender who recovered it successful a trash bin astatine Ontario International Airport, 35 miles eastbound of L.A.

And Jared Leto erstwhile revealed that his 2014 Oscar for “Dallas Buyers Club” disappeared during a determination and remained missing for six years earlier resurfacing successful 2024 — a communicative that someway feels precise Jared Leto.

While the plan of the Oscar has stayed mostly unchanged since the award’s inception, the materials utilized to marque the trophies person evolved implicit time. The archetypal statuettes, introduced astatine the inaugural ceremonial successful 1929, were gold-plated coagulated bronze. Within a fewer years the academy switched to a lighter tin-based alloy known arsenic Britannia metal, plated successful layers of copper, nickel metallic and gold. This alloy softens and deforms astatine comparatively debased temperatures — astir 500 F — good beneath the strength of a emblematic location fire.

During World War II, erstwhile metallic was scarce, the trophies were made of painted plaster for 3 years, with winners aboriginal invited to speech them for metallic versions.

In 2016, the academy returned to bronze arsenic the statuette’s halfway material. Today’s Oscars are formed successful molten bronze astatine a fine-art foundry successful upstate New York, polished to a reflector decorativeness and electroplated successful 24-karat gold, a process that takes respective months to nutrient each year’s batch. Bronze typically melts astatine temperatures approaching 1,800 F, somewhat supra the scope reached successful aggravated operation fires. The academy besides maintains a long-standing narration with its erstwhile manufacturer, Chicago-based R.S. Owens & Co., which services and restores older statuettes that person mislaid their luster.

“My astir caller Oscar was made by the foundry they’re utilizing now,” Atwood says. “I deliberation that’s wherefore it survived.”

In the months aft the L.A. fires, the academy yet stepped in.

Carter, a five-time Oscar nominee, says the enactment contacted him not agelong aft his location burned and arranged to make replacement statuettes. A fewer months aft the fires, helium went to the academy and received them from its main executive, Bill Kramer — a infinitesimal helium hadn’t expected to find arsenic affectional arsenic helium did. The replacement Oscars are present astatine a household compartment successful Carmel portion helium waits for his Palisades location to beryllium rebuilt.

“I didn’t rather admit until they were gone however overmuch I had valued what they meant connected benignant of a talisman level,” Carter says. “When they were abruptly determination again, I realized however overmuch that mattered. The older I get, the much they mean. They’re imbued with what you enactment into them — immoderate imaginativeness was attached to them that meant thing to you and different people. It’s intangible but, you know, it’s a golden statue and it’s heavy.”

Atwood besides received replacement Oscars aft sending the academy a photograph of her scorched “crispy critter” and informing them that 2 others had been wholly lost. (She’s besides keeping the archetypal arsenic a memento of the fires.) Atwood says the acquisition made her recently alert of however overmuch the awards inactive resonate beyond Hollywood.

“I realized however overmuch different radical worth what the Oscar is,” says the 12-time Oscar nominee, presently staying with a person successful Santa Monica. “People I cognize who aren’t successful the manufacture kept asking, ‘Did you get your Oscars?’ As overmuch arsenic everyone says it’s hard to support radical watching the Oscars, radical each implicit the satellite inactive clasp what the Oscar stands for.”

For now, Atwood’s replacement Oscars are safely stowed away.

“They’re locked up successful a retention unit,” she says with a laugh. “They’re having a nap close now.”