The reopening of Altadena reveals the damage – but the community is still standing

As she surveyed the charred remains of her Altadena neighborhood, Jocelyn Boyd stared in disbelief.

Loma Alta Park, where the public swimming pool once served as a summer retreat for him and other Black residents, had been destroyed by the Eaton fire.

Standing outside a nearby community garden, many of whose plants were untouched, he took out his phone to record a video of the apparently planned destruction.

On Tuesday, Boyd returned to his childhood home, with authorities opening the burned areas to the public for the first time since the Jan. 7. While driving up Lincoln Avenue, he had stopped and passed just before the security check. where a group of National Guard soldiers armed with rifles were checking the IDs of passing motorists.

Boyd, 57, who was displaced from his Pasadena home and his pets, spent days wondering if his home would be there when he returned. It was.

He felt a pang of survivor’s guilt every time his Altadena friends called to ask how he was doing, looking for the right words to express the relief he felt for those who had lost everything.

“It will never be the same again because many people will not be able to rebuild,” he said.

Boyd, who retired after owning a dog grooming business, explained that foreclosures and other discriminatory housing policies pushed many Black Altadenians into homes west of Lake Avenue, which serves as the Mason-Dixon line that separates West Altadena from the historically white east side. of the city.

For him and others who looked like him, Loma Alta Lake served as a refuge from both the ongoing racism and the hot summers of the small mountain town in the San Gabriel Mountains.

Eaton fire victim Kara Marsh was overcome with emotion as she searched for valuables and personal belongings in the home she and her husband shared on W. Marigold Street. The Marsh family plans to rebuild their home and is staying with friends for now.

In the 1980s and 1990s, gentrification priced Black residents out of the area, and many moved further afield. Many of those who were able to stay lived in large family homes passed down through the generations, some of which were destroyed in the Eaton fire.

Some of Boyd’s friends lived outside the campsites in their burned-out buildings, worried about reports of “land marauders” sniffing the area. Many had received business cards from strangers asking if they were interested in selling their properties, some offering them “pennies on the dollar” for their homes, he said.

His message to those friends: “Be strong. And don’t sell.”

Records reviewed by The Times suggest that residents west of the Lake did not receive evacuation warnings until hours after the Eaton fire started. Fanned by strong winds, the fast-moving fire burned large areas of West Altadena, eventually destroying 7,000 structures and resulting in at least 17 deaths. All of the victims lived west of Lake, records show.

Although officials have reopened roads to the rest of the community, it is still a patchwork of ruined homes next to others that were largely spared from the fire.

But amid the destruction, there were signs that recovery efforts were underway.

Utility crews were out all day, working to restore power. Meanwhile, neighbors and officials in FEMA jackets streamed in and out of a nearby Stumptown coffee shop, which was offering free cups of hot coffee until Friday.

In the next house, volunteers were handing out free food to people waiting in a long line that wound around the empty lot.

Eaton fire victim Jose Velazquez, left, gives a donation of household goods to a woman in front of his burned garage.

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

The night the fire started, 39-year-old Randolph Ware was in his bedroom at his grandmother’s house on Glenrose Avenue when thick smoke began to fill him. After driving his grandmother to safety, he and his uncle began watering the yard and fence of the house with a hose, while chasing golf ball-sized coals that landed on their property.

When the authorities turned off the water sometime during the night, he and his uncle threw down a hose to use shovels, piled up dirt to put out the flames.

Ware said he refused to leave, as Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department officers drove by and ordered people out using loudspeakers.

“I wouldn’t let it burn,” he said. “I’m not trying to be Superman, but by the will of God I did it.”

Some displaced residents have started to retreat back to the area in recent days. Among them was Jose Velazquez, 30, who worked at the aid station outside his mother-in-law’s house at the corner of Woodbury Road and Glenrose Avenue.

The station grew last week, and in the days since volunteers have worked to sort through donations of clothes, wipes, toys, diapers, canned goods and fresh produce from as far away as San Francisco.

Ruiz Linares, of the Guardianes Del Muro volunteer group in the USA, stands in the center holding up a homemade sign he wrote in charcoal. A large donation and food center has opened for Eaton fire victims returning to their homes in Altadena.

“One woman drove a U-Haul full of goods and left them here,” he said, adding that many of the goods were donated to people who are still without electricity in their homes. “Everyone is really into instant noodles right now.”

Velazquez said he felt compelled to help after his family’s home was largely spared, while other houses, including his neighbor’s, were a total loss. He was also looking for a way to pay those neighbors who had been loyal customers for years at the store where his family was running away from the street. He said about 40 of his regular players lost their homes.

Velazquez’s uncle, Jose Medina, 64, was home the night the fire broke out. He remembers hearing a loud noise, later realizing that a roof storm was taking part of the roof off the house.

“I thought the spaceship was crashing on Earth,” he said.

He ran outside to find an eerie red light in the distance, on a hill in Eaton Canyon. Within 20 minutes, he said the fire was across the street where he and his sister have lived for 40 years.

Eaton fire victims Liz Oh and Ray Ahn sort through debris at W. Marigold Street in Altadena. They are staying in a hotel with their child while they wait to hear about insurance from California’s FAIR Plan.

As the flames got closer, Medina said he climbed onto the roof and started emptying a hose into his and his neighbor’s yard, trying to stop the flames. He watched helplessly as a violent storm carried coal down Woodbury Road, setting fire to a row of palm trees in his neighbor’s yard.

Miraculously, her sister’s house was spared, but the fire consumed the garage where Medina slept and the tools she used in her work as an independent contractor. For days, Medina searched through the burned-out garage to find his saws and ladders, but they were all destroyed. He was able to salvage a few shovels and poke bits out of the ash heap.

On Tuesday, he was working at the aid station along with volunteers like Yolanda Barra, 30, who is part of a church from South-Central LA called Minesterio Cordero, who came to hand out prepackaged food to residents. Crediting the church for helping him overcome his drug addiction, Barra said he saw this as an opportunity to give back.

“Everyone is struggling, you know, but this is the time we have to unite and help each other,” he said.

Times photographer Allen J. Schaben contributed to this report.