Brandon Garner was armed with only a garden hose atop his grandparents’ home in Altadena as the flames encircled him.
“I only thought to leave once,” Garner said. He fended off the Eaton fire from engulfing his family’s residence last week, livestreaming the feat on Facebook. “I just kept saying, ‘God ain’t gonna let nothing happen to me.’ I got it. He got me. I got the house.”
The 37-year-old lived to tell the tale, saving the house, but the rest of the block is gone – only four homes are standing. With mandatory evacuations still in place a week later, Garner has not been able to return to fix his home, instead keeping himself busy by handing out water and other essential needs to his displaced neighbors in the parking lot of La Pintoresca library in Pasadena.
“Even though I’m in need, coming out to help everybody that’s more in need than me is easing my mind a lot more to help me get through this,” Garner said. “I’m a blessed individual.”
In the days after 7,000 structures were destroyed in the Eaton fire and a further 5,000 in the Palisades fire, businesses and community organizers rushed to aid the victims. It seemed every block was bustling with donations – clothes, toys, shoes, things evacuees had not been able to grab in the rush to escape their homes.
‘They’re looking for cadavers’
Thousands of residents who lost their homes in the Eaton fires have had to relocate numerous times, struggling to find a place to sleep.
“A church was able to find us an accommodation [in Anaheim] just for the weekend,” said Danielle Williams, 21, whose home at the northern edge of Altadena burned down. Although her father’s house was still standing in east Pasadena, the tap water had been declared unsafe to drink, and truck convoys were now posted on every street as the national guard blocked people from entering on Sunday afternoon.
“They’re looking for cadavers,” said David Williams, 64, as he unsuccessfully attempted to return to his home to drop off supplies. Evacuation warnings were issued in the dawn hours of Wednesday morning, when some residents in his neighborhood were least expecting it. “They’re looking for people who died up there.”
Danielle and her family have yet to find a long-term place to stay, making it difficult for Danielle to return to work as a child caretaker at a Montessori school in nearby Eagle Rock. Every day, they drove hours back and forth from Orange county to Pasadena to pick up donations at mutual aid sites.
A tight-knit community
In Pasadena, Octavia’s Bookshelf had transformed itself into one of dozens of mutual aid hubs where toiletries, towels, masks and hot foods were stacked on every available ledge.
“People are really distraught when they come in, and they don’t even know what they need, because they’re just feeling so much stuff,” said bookseller Kiki Williams, 35.
Williams, a third-generation Altadena resident, is still in disbelief that her childhood home and beloved hiking trails have burned to the ground.
“Altadena and Pasadena are gorgeous,” Williams said. “You’re hugged by these beautiful mountains, and there are trees all around you.”
It wasn’t just the natural landscape, but the tight-knit community that Williams loved in Altadena. After the civil rights movement, Black Americans realized their middle-class dreams in the unincorporated suburb of Los Angeles, as the Black population boomed from 4% in the 1960s to over 40% in the 1980s.
“It was a place where Black people could buy homes. That’s exactly why my grandparents moved there in the 60s,” Williams said.
Black icons such as Jackie Robinson and Octavia Butler had found prosperity in the region – now that legacy is at risk. But Williams continues to find hope in the works of the science fiction author Butler, whose prescient writings predicted that in the year 2025 flames would engulf Pasadena.
“A lot of her writing and her work comes from the other side of disaster,” Williams said. And that, she said, was also an encouragement and challenge to her. “What is the possibility of the way that things can become?”
Mom-and-pop charm
On Monday morning, Agnes Do, a 44-year-old nurse, was dropping off her sons Nicholas, nine, and Brandon, 12, at a care camp set up at the LA county arboretum for children affected by the Eaton fires.
Do’s extended family lost two homes in Altadena – her husband’s childhood home of almost five decades, and the home they had bought together.
“They’re refugees from Vietnam,” Do said of her in-laws. “That was their first house.”
Do loved the mom-and-pop charm of her neighborhood and worries that the fires might irreparably change its culture.
“I want the same community of people,” Do said of the diversity of her neighbors. “I don’t want these corporate people … buying off and making these condos in that area.”
Angelenos are already shifting into gear to help build back what was lost. In less than a week, Community Aid Dena raised over $10m by putting together a directory of more than 500 Black families in Altadena and Pasadena with GoFundMe efforts.
Grassroots collectives such as Help Altadena have started organizing Zoom workshops to help renters and homeowners recover their losses through insurance and Fema (Federal Emergency Management Agency) assistance.
“What we envision is that we’re able to connect neighbors, so when it comes time to rebuilding there will be a coalition of four or five homes, so they can negotiate better terms on the construction,” said Moises Perez, a local homeowner who works as a commercial real estate lender.
He has already foreseen that some people might be more vulnerable to misinformation due to language barriers among Spanish-speaking residents in Altadena, and hopes his mutual aid organization can meet those needs.
“We want to be here long term, because it’s not gonna be solved overnight,” Moises said of working on their non-profit status. “It’s probably going to take two to three years – or maybe longer.”
‘You can’t replace the memories’
Although Altadena might find its footing again, there are parts of the city that may never be recovered from the ashes, some natives worry.
“You can rebuild a home, but you can’t replace the memories that came along with that home,” said Danisha Keith, as she passed out free children’s clothes from her small business KayG Kids Boutique alongside her friend Mahoganie Berryman , 48, to victims in Pasadena. Keith and Berryman no longer live in the area, although they were born and raised in the Pasadena and Altadena region.
“Our parents worked so hard to make sure that their children had generational wealth. [Now that] is gone,” Keith, 47, continued.
But Berryman hopes that their home town won’t be defined by this loss forever. “We are more than just a city burned down,” Berryman said. “We were a community before the fires. We will continue to be a community after.”
