As Altadena Clears Its Fire Ruins, Resident Pride and Unity Crashes Into Reality of Uncertainty

Ken Haber walks through the charred vegetation in his backyard and points to a large burn mark on the side of his intact house. It was where a compost heap was set ablaze by an ember carried by the hurricane-force winds that turned January’s Eaton Fire into a historic disaster that consumed thousands of homes in Altadena. 

Haber, a retired location manager whose work includes “Fatal Attraction,” “Wall Street,” and picking out Utah’s Moab Canyon for the iconic ending of “Thelma & Louise,” could have seen his home join those thousands if it wasn’t for the quick thinking of a neighbor who had risked his life to return and use the water in his hot tub to put out as many embers as he could.

Largely because of the neighbor’s efforts, both of their homes were among five still standing on their street, even as the charred remains of countless more surround them.

“We suffered a lot of smoke damage, but it could have been so much worse,” Haber told TheWrap. 

Outside Haber’s home on the southwest edge of the 8.5-square-mile community that has largely been reduced to rubble and ash, excavators, water trucks and other demolition vehicles pass the largely empty streets driven by a mix of crews from the Army Corps of Engineers and some private companies. Next to signs from the EPA and ACE noting those trucks progress in removing hazardous materials and the remains of thousands of homes are signs bearing the mantra that has swept over the community: “Altadena Is Not for Sale.”

As this San Gabriel community of working and middle class residents — hundreds of whom work in entertainment — begin the years-long process of rebuilding, several members of it say that a mixture of determination and confusion is in the air. Various grassroots organizations have been formed by residents and local professional groups to help those who have lost everything move past mourning and try to preserve the eclectic nature of Altadena. 

But that wave of local pride and unity is crashing into a reality of uncertainty, as questions still abound as to how and when the rebuilding will take place. And it may be several weeks or perhaps months before government officials on the local, state and federal level have all the answers.

When is it safe to move back in? 

“People are loath to give out answers either because they don’t have them or they are afraid of it coming back to bite them,” Haber said of guidance from local officials. “The biggest questions are when people who have lost their homes can start rebuilding, and for those whose homes survived, when it is fully safe to move back in.”

While still stopping by his home to check on it, Haber is currently living elsewhere while his home goes through the final steps of smoke remediation. Water and power have also been restored, though other residents say that utilities have not been restored to all houses and apartments that survived the Eaton fire. Haber also says that he and his wife want to wait to move back in out of concern over asbestos and other pollutants from the surrounding debris that are still lingering in the air. 

In the meantime, Haber has teamed up with a group of fellow location managers who are using their professional work to help residents. With its history of rich architecture, Altadena’s neighborhoods have been used by location managers for exterior shots on films and TV shows for decades. One house in particular, called the “Rubio House,” has been used on shows ranging from “7th Heaven” and “This Is Us” to “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.”

“Because a lot of residents only had minutes to get out, a lot of documents were lost in the fire,” Haber said. “So I’ve been in a group of location managers that have been going through their pictures of the neighborhood and sending residents photos of their houses to show to insurance companies as part of the claims process.”

Haber has also helped organize community meetings for residents as a board member of Altadena Heritage, a group that prior to the fires was focused on preservation of historic homes and gardens in the community. With so many of those decades-old architectural wonders now destroyed, the group has pivoted to helping residents get back on their feet and provide spaces for them to gather and share information on rebuilding. 

“We are seeing residents getting together, neighbor to neighbor, block by block, to try to figure out how to rebuild as a group,” Val Zavala, retired journalist and former host of the PBS SoCal news program “SoCal Connected,” said. Like Haber, Zavala is an Altadena Heritage board member whose home survived the Eaton Fire, but she notes that half of the board was not so fortunate. 

“The biggest challenge for rebuilding, I think, is that the reality of rebuilding is so vastly different from person to person,” she said. “Everyone has a different situation with their savings, with their insurance or lack thereof, with the extent of the damage to their homes and how much they lost. What makes Altadena so special is that it is so diverse ethnically and socioeconomically, but that is also making it more difficult to ensure that no one gets left behind as we recover.”

Indeed, the populace of Altadena is a far cry from Palisades, not only in terms of the average income of its residents but also in terms of the political entities at play.

Palisades is part of the City of Los Angeles and therefore under the jurisdiction of Mayor Karen Bass and City Councilmember Traci Park in addition to County Supervisor Lindsay Horvath. Those multiple layers of local oversight have led to conflicts in the early weeks of recovery, not to mention the confusion that has risen from federal and state officials as well as various private groups like Rick Caruso’s Steadfast LA also giving their input on rebuilding. 

At least in terms of local governance, Altadena has a singular official with whom the buck stops: County Supervisor Kathryn Barger. The sole Republican on the five-woman Board of Supervisors was re-elected to a final four-year term last November and in interviews with the press has referred to herself as the “de facto mayor” of Altadena as she works to coordinate recovery plans with federal and state officials as well as private business groups and displaced residents. 

One-stop rebuilding shop

Barger’s communication director, Helen Chavez, told TheWrap that the supervisor’s biggest focus is on trying to expedite rebuilding in as many ways as possible. To that end, her office has established a “one-stop rebuilding shop” where residents can get information on debris removal, rebuilding permits and other steps to help residents be prepared for when they get the greenlight to start construction. 

“If there’s anybody that can identify roadblocks or bureaucratic hurdles that can be removed to help Altadena residents rebuild, it’s going to be the supervisor,” she said.

But as Haber said, not all of the answers residents need are available, the most pressing being how long they will have to wait to start rebuilding. At the moment, the only clear date on the rebuilding timeline is March 31, the deadline set by the Army Corps of Engineers for “right of entry” forms. Those forms are required from residents to be able to have the Corps clear out the ruins of their homes or, if they wish, to opt out of the public service if they want it done by a private company.

For those who could afford the high prices for private debris removal by a certified contractor, one advantage is knowing when they’ll be able to start rebuilding. With 9,400 structures destroyed by the Eaton Fire, it will take months for ACE to complete the cleanup, even with the process already underway and officials from Barger to the Trump Administration urging as fast a cleanup as possible. 

Opaque situation for residents

According to two individuals with knowledge of the cleanup process, ACE and local officials have been encouraging residents to complete their right of entry forms as quickly as possible to expedite the cleanup process as much as possible. Those forms are processed overnight, with local subcontractors sent out by the federal agency to areas that have had hazardous materials removed by the EPA.

So far, approximately 1,000 lots of land in the Palisades and Altadena have been fully cleaned by ACE crews. To increase efficiency, the Corps is prioritizing clusters of blocks that have multiple adjacent lots with completed right of entry forms. This allows them to dispatch subcontractors and their cleanup equipment to handle whole blocks in a single trip, rather than having to go back-and-forth to the same block across multiple days as forms are submitted by residents on a longer basis.

In the meantime, Barger’s office is encouraging residents in weekly online town halls to make as many preparations as possible with developers. One common option being considered is collective development, where residents on the same block get together and pool their resources to rebuild under a single contractor. On paper, it’s mutually beneficial for residents, who can get a group discount, and developers, who get multiple projects. 

In practice, it can be trickier to organize if there are differences in architecture tastes, which developer they prefer to use, or if some of the residents can’t contribute as much to the redevelopment due to low finances or being underinsured.

Kirsten Schaeffer, the CEO of Women in Film who showed TheWrap her destroyed block a week after the fire, has joined a grassroots program called Altagether as a neighborhood captain, keeping residents informed on recovery updates and getting them connected to needed resources. She says she is weighing four different rebuilding options, some of which involve collective development.

“It can be hard to get everybody on the same page,” she noted.  “I’m eager to build now because our insurance runs out in two years on our rental property, but at the same time, I’d much more prefer taking our time and have all the preparations done in the best way possible so we can move quickly. Slow start to finish fast.”

Schaeffer also says that a big concern for a lot of community organizers is how much the socioeconomic disparity will play a factor in which residents stay and who leave. Altadena is one of the oldest Black communities in L.A. County, shaped by decades of racist redlining practices and discriminatory displacement for freeway construction that left the foothills as one of the few affordable neighborhoods for Black residents.

Generational wealth in houses

Despite this, generations of Black families have built a middle-class life in Altadena, including the legendary actor Sidney Poitier. But for many of those families, their generational wealth was in their now-destroyed houses rather than their bank accounts, increasing the pressure on the decision whether to fight to rebuild or to sell their lucrative land to move elsewhere, sometimes with families out-of-state. 

Architect Carla Flagg has a sister who lost everything when a home that had been in their family for decades was burned down. As a member of the Southern California chapter of the National Organization of Minority Architects (SoCal NOMA), she’s now devoting her time to helping Altadena’s residents of color navigate the rebuilding process.

“It’s been a learning and listening process for us over the last two months,” Flagg said. “We’ve been studying what other NOMA chapters have done to help residents after disasters like Hurricane Katrina. We’ve also had listening sessions just to get an understanding from residents about what they need the most help with and to build trust between architects and the community.”

SoCal NOMA has prepared information packages to teach residents the basic questions they should ask their insurance companies and any developers they may speak with about rebuilding. Developing those packages came as a result of those listening sessions, which the organization will continue to have in an effort to monitor where residents are having problems as they rebuild and keep them from being left behind.

While the final timetable for cleanup is far from complete, it may not be until summer at the earliest when residents will start slowly being notified that their lots and the surrounding area are safe and ready for construction. Along with clearing debris, the Army Corps of Engineers is doing analysis of three to six inches of topsoil to ensure that hazardous chemicals haven’t soaked into the ground and become a health hazard.

But even then, there may be more delays at the state level, as debates are still unfolding over how many permitting regulations wildfire survivors should be exempt from, including new California regulations requiring that solar panels be installed on all new construction in an effort to decarbonize the state.

Supervisor Barger is pushing for more exemptions, calling on state officials to remove as many permitting requirements as possible or to create tax credits for those who lost their homes in the fires that go towards home hardening and other climate and disaster resiliency.

“I talked to a probation officer whose home had been in the family forever, and I’m not going to look her in the eye and say, ‘You can’t build. Sorry. Climate change,’” Barger told Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez in January. “But what I will say is we will provide you with all the resources that we can so that when you rebuild, you do it in a way that recognizes that you are in a high fire zone.”

Striking that balance in a community that will be beset in the future by increasing likelihood of climate-related disasters, rising rent and insurance rates, and other affordability problems will be the big challenge facing Altadena in the years to come.

Even with a litany of government, business and grassroots entities trying to coordinate, it is unclear how many residents will be able to stay in the community, but location manager Haber hopes that the energy his neighbors are showing as they move forward out of the ashes will stay strong.

“So many different people from so many walks of life have come to live here,” he said. “I don’t want to lose that.”

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