They gathered in the streets that were their homes until they exploded westward, forcing them to escape and destroy everything but their memories.
A cat who chases a nearby dog on a daily basis.
Children playing in the front yard and the street before they grow up and move on.
Horse Hoof Clip Crop Sound.
The actress wandered the streets, bowed her head and memorized the lines for her next performance.
Steve Lopez
Steve Lopez is a California native who has been a columnist for the Los Angeles Times since 2001. He has won over 12 National Journalism Awards and is a four-time Pulitzer finalist.
Robert’s homemade instrumental music, Julio’s backyard grill sizzle, and Steve and Lily’s Sunday gathering at Yellow Farm House.
We measure losses from the Pallisard and Eaton fires by numbers. Thousands of structures are destroyed, billions of dollars in damages, and measurements of lost lives. But the victims include some of the things we often take for granted. The daily rhythm and routine, the in and out of our neighbors, the history of what we call home.
Brian Martinez finds the camera that was burned at the ruins of his home on West Palm Street, Altadena.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Anthony Ruffin and his wife, John Miller, are social workers in the business that houses homeless people, who became homeless on January 8th.
Longtime friend Ruffin said that about a week after Inferno he and his evacuated neighbors had established a text chain in the early days of shock and sadness. They are scattered now, but their accommodation is temporary and their future is uncertain, but they wanted to keep their neighborhood together in their speaking style.
Dozens of these neighbours, mixed by race, age and income, will return to their block on February 15th and rebuild what life is like before the fire. We talked about whether or not. Whether it is possible to replicate the community they cherished.
“When this all happened, I was like, ‘Where is our next Altadena?’,” Monica Kosky said. “Maybe we all should just go and make a new Altadena if this takes a lot of time. And I don’t know where it is.”
Robert S. Hilton passes the house of his neighbor, Monica Kosky, who was destroyed by Eton Fire. Hilton’s house survived, but many of his neighbor’s houses survived.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
West Palm Street extends east and west of Altadena Drive, not too far from where the metropolitan city runs towards the mountains. The slopes of the San Gabriels rise sharply, with fire only at low elevations still covered, but they are still majestic, in stark contrast to the flattened wasteland below.
The palm stretch between North Olive and Glen Avenue, all but a few houses are gone and replaced by a row of rectangular ashtrays. The carbonized trees are dead or almost dying, some are blackened fruits, some have charcoal limbs that hold the sky.
We gathered in the backyard of Koskie’s property, sitting in a patio furniture next to the prominent, lush green grass, and still unharmed garage as if the fire was rumoured. But a few feet away, the house appeared to have been removed by a missile. The chimney rose like a gravestone on top of the fragments of the structure that had stood for a century.
“This was Janes,” says Kosky, architect Elisha P., who built several English-style cottages, as well as several Spanish-style homes in Altadena between 1924 and 1926. He said, referring to Janes.
Speech pathologist Koski and homeowner of the burnt home, Koski said they share notes on the feasibility of reconstruction in the same style.
Right across the street from the ruins of Kosky’s house, a house owned by film, television and stage actress Lily Knight, but Kura Rub is easy to remember the script on foot, and her husband Steve・This is Hofwendal. He is also an actor, a master gardener who was a backyard paradise, with dozens of fruit trees.
When they moved 25 years ago, the soil was rich and the trees were thriving, so Hofbendal planted more and more, and transformed his garden into an orchard. He went from standard citrus fruits, apricots and avocados to a more exotic collection, adding finger lime, Valentine’s Day Panmelos, Jabotitiva, Cherimoya and Pawpaw.
There were far more fruit than the two of them could eat, so they started making baskets for their friends and neighbors, and at the time of harvest they held a porch market with homemade jams and scones along with all the produce. Miller described it as a “neighborhood hub.”
Anthony Ruffin sits with neighbors Brian Martinez, Lily Knight, Aimin Lee, husbands Vigan Zion, Maxwell May and wife Lauren Ward.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Robert Hilton, a retired art teacher with an interest in African and Indian music, wandered through stringy instruments like lutes, or one of his other homemade instruments to provide entertainment. .
“He put on a spell and that really defined the space,” Knight said.
When Ruffin and Miller got married, Knight and Hofvendahl set lights throughout the garden and held receptions. “The people from Brock came and celebrated with us,” Ruffin said.
Residents of West Palm Street return to their neighborhood where their homes were destroyed in the Eton Fire.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
In the Chinese New Year, Knight and Hofbendal met at Chinese medical school decades ago and now worked in medical research to neighbors Eimin Lee and Lin Xiong. I took it with me. After 30 minutes, Li returned the favor and delivered the homemade dumplings.
For the neighbors, “they had a party to make dumplings,” says Koski, who I think, hosted the incident in the backyard with Lee and Xiong. Lee wanted to hand over her skills to her friends. Throw the flour, roll the dough, stuff it with meat and shrimp. And with vegan Hilton vegetables.
“They all got that ghost,” Lee said.
One Fire Lesson? Your possessions can be “steered in an instant,” Knight said: “These connections we all share – that’s what’s true.”
Maxwell May and his wife, Lauren Ward, moved to the block about two and a half years ago after a walk to check out the atmosphere. They found Janes’ home within walking distance of their favorite coffee shop in May, and the neighborhood reminded him of Mount Washington, where he grew up.
“Everyone walked around, hello, stopped and spoke for five or ten minutes, I think that’s what really told us,” May explained. He is a technology in the autonomous automobile industry, and Ward is a costume designer for television and films. “We wanted to come here and be a part of it.”
Hilton, who lived on West Palm Street for 50 years, said when he entered the neighborhood was primarily black. Ruffin and his family came in almost the same time. Black families chose Western Altadena as they were excluded from many other parts of the Los Angeles area.
Hilton said Western Altadena has changed as the property’s value rose over decades. “We have people from all ethnicities and backgrounds.”
Despite all the in and out, Ruffin still says that he still goes up and down the street, just like when he was a child, he jumped into a neighbor’s house or hit someone’s backyard to grab fruit from the tree. He said he knew the residents. The friendlyness makes him feel safe on the block, Ruffin said, “and protect it.”
Eimin Lee stands at the ruins of her home on West Palm Street, Altadena.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Residents don’t assemble on the streets every morning to sing “Kumbaya.” Some people were more likely to simply wave and nod, but they maintained their privacy. And Altadena wasn’t without the problems, Kosky said.
“You’re still hearing gunshots, right? So it’s not like the safest place you can probably live,” she said, but for her, positivity outweighs the negative. “I don’t feel that there is racial tension in Altadena. You look in people’s eyes, you don’t feel [it]. I think that’s really rare… raising my son in a place like this was really important. ”
Knight reflected that sentiment.
“I think this is what the world needs more right now,” she said. “It’s a sense that we’re all together and we’re going to pull each other out.”
On the evening of January 7th, when the fire was still a few miles east, Li and Xiong checked in along with Knight and Hofbendal. They hugged each other, and the Chinese couple went home and stuffed their passports, diplomas and photos.
In the middle of the night, Knight summons some of her neighbors to inform her that the fire is closing. Everyone left safely, but with the exception of Hilton and a few others, the house descended like dominoes.
“I’m very angry,” said Miller, who has many questions, like many others.
Why did so many county firefighters get pulled away by the Palisade fire? Why did it take so long for the evacuation warning to arrive before we reached the low-income area of Western Altadena, where all 17 people who died from the Eton fires were killed? Why wasn’t a march west of the fire not expected earlier, and why so many homes were burning without firefighters arriving?
It may take years to get the answer, or it may take years to clean up and rebuild the waste. Most of the residents I met said they were coming back, but the paperwork, plans, financial considerations and uncertain timelines are exhausting. And given the reality of climate change that has driven this fire, can they be safe and they can afford to buy the costs to guarantee their new home?
“It’s a trade-off because we love mountains, but it’s a very extreme fire risk area,” says Miller and Ruffin, the real estate agent who lives between Knight and Hofwendal on one side, on the other. said Brian Martinez, a real estate agent who lives in the area.
Lily Knight, facing the camera, embraces Shigan Zion as Johnni Miller to the left and Monica Kosky is doing the same thing while leaving a gathering of her homeless neighbors at Eton Fire.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
The Knights and Hofwendal, which were extremely important parts of the atmosphere cherished by their neighbors, are yet to be decided. They are approaching 70, Knight said, and it will take years to grow another orchard. The farmers they worshiped, built before World War II, are made of wood, and Hofbendal suspects that the new building code will likely ban it.
“We love this neighborhood and we love all these people, so I think we’ve been torn apart,” Knight said, but they did a lot of sorting out before committing on the way home. Masu.
There is no doubt about Ruffin. He is determined to recreate the exterior and layout of the house he loved, and start his days again in the front yard, listen to birds and stare at the mountains. Already, the garden has twigs of green growth.
In May, he and Ward said they are staying nearby at their parents’ house, but he visits West Palm every day.
I asked Giulio Partida, who works in construction and lives next to Ruffin and Miller.
He answered in one word:
“all.”
steve.lopez@latimes.com
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