Beyond The Firestorm

How Does A Neighborhood Rebuild Itself?

Many of you probably never heard of Altadena California before you became aware of me. I often talked and wrote about my modest home there, and the neighbors that I hold dear.

But now most everyone in the country knows Altadena as the quaint hillside town largely wiped out by the Eaton Fire. The second, and second-largest, conflagration making up one of the worst firestorms in US history.

What fire has done to the better-known seaside suburb of Pacific Palisades, (picture above) it has done to the hometown I adopted 25 years ago. And that adopted me in return.

Several of you have reached out to me asking if I got out okay. When flames driven by 80mph gusts burst from the low foothills of Eaton Canyon to sweep west and south through the neighborhoods I’m known to wander on my nightly walks.

Some have wondered if I managed to fire up the motorhome where I’ve lived for almost exactly ten years, and roar down the hill to safety.

No, I didn’t manage a dramatic last minute getaway in my 32’ Holiday Rambler. When you live in a dry-docked vehicle, it sort of takes root. Over time, I’d built a porch and filled much of that porch with storage shelves that were in turn filled with all of the many things, needed and not needed, that accumulate over the life of a decade. The stuff I wanted nearby, but took up more room than my RV had to offer.

Including two beautiful old-school console radio/record-players that I’d inherited from my grandparents and my parents. These under protective plastic, each still sporting the original manuals from the forties and fifties.

And in the yard, also blocking a quick escape, a ton of gear under heavy-duty tarps, that was destined for the portable garage that had just arrived from Amazon, in preparation for the rains sure to come next month.

So what I did, when panicked evacuation orders hit every cellphone in town, every five minutes … was to gather what I could by dim lantern-light, and stuff it all into my van. It was pitch dark because earlier that day, the power company had proactively shut off the juice.

And then I joined the freaked-out traffic jam clogging every outbound road, as the sky turned an evil red in our rear-view mirrors.

By that time we knew that embers were jumping through the blocks of houses setting fire to the drifts of dry leaves, and twigs, and palm fronds. All of the fire fuel that had been accumulating since dawn when Santa Ana winds like we’d never seen came blasting over the San Gabriel Mountains from the deserts beyond.

By then we knew that the second trip most of us needed to make, probably wouldn’t happen.

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Still, we all had lived here through several serious brush fires on these slopes of chaparral and mesquite. Very rarely, one of these fires would snatch a house right at the edge of the wilderness, like wolves would at the edge of an elk herd. But never had any fire reached downslope as far as my own neighborhood.

So when packing up, most of us did so in a somewhat casual way. I mean, I was happy to go through the motions, but I didn’t really think that my block would burn.

I slept soundly that night on Alexia’s couch. And woke the next morning expecting to hear that the fire had been stopped a mile to the north-east of where I’d left all of my legal-paper records, and my vinyl records, and the big box of Kodak Instamatic records of my life before selfies and social media.

What had happened instead, is that firefighters - completely overwhelmed - had dug in at New York Drive, just 100 yards south of The Dojo, and called that the line across which this fire would not be allowed to leap.

And therefore my neighborhood, and so many others of which I am familiar and fond, were sacrificed to the greater good. And my ‘portable’ home burned just as readily as any of the quaint wood-frame homes that gave this town such a cozy comfy feel.

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That day, I tried as did we all, to get news of our neighborhoods. All advisories said that we should stay away. But by late afternoon, I drove a backstreet route to within a couple of blocks, and a kindly police officer let me in. And after seeing what there was to see, he allowed me to retrieve a video camera from my truck. So that I could catch my breath, and calm my voice, and record this video.

It was another full day - which felt like half a week - before I could watch that dimly lit footage, or make it worth sharing by upping the exposure in my editing program. What I wanted to do was return to the site. And walk the routes that I always walked. Past all of the houses I admired. Owned by people I both admired and envied.

To see for myself what had befallen the local businesses I’ve frequented since 1999 when I first moved to my snug cottage on Maiden Lane. To, hopefully, see that other blocks were not as decimated as was my own.

But when Alexia and I did go back up there, on Thursday the ninth, we were absolutely refused entry. By armed Sherriff’s deputies, under threat of arrest. There we stood gazing up Maiden Lane, with a neighbor we’d just met named Gonzalo, who had not been lucky enough to sneak in the previous day.

In the distance. Through the rubble, and the downed power-lines, walked a lone woman. Down the hill, down the street, toward us waiting at the yellow police tape. She was a reporter, and therefore allowed into the areas denied to residents. She had kindly offered to walk to Gonzalo’s address, and bring him news.

”I’m sorry sir … but your house is gone.”

This good dignified man gave out one sharp peal of laughter - expressing a last dying hope that all of this was some sort of joke. And then his shoulders pulled inward, contracting under my supportive hand, as sobs choked off his voice.

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A version of this moment will play out for many days here in Southern California. Now there are National Guard soldiers stationed to deny us entry, and the right to see for ourselves, and to begin the grieving process that no two of us will do exactly alike.

Not just here where Altadena sits smoldering in ashes between the blackened mountains, and Pasadena, where life is otherwise not too badly affected. But also out where my adopted busking home of Santa Monica meets the decimated Pacific Palisades. And at PP’s northern and western edges. And at the outskirts of each smaller fire that has nonetheless destroyed homes and lives.

As of Friday night The Palisades Fire was only 8% contained, and The Eaton Fire only 3% contained.

Where next will homes be snatched away and eaten by this unliving predator that is really only an intention-less chemical reaction gone wild? Malibu Canyon? Brentwood? Who can say?

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My mind reels at what the next year will bring. I do think that - if I am able - I will return to the village that I love, and help in some small way with the rebuilding efforts. I picture a day like today one year from now, where Altadena is a cacophonic symphony of power saw and nail guns.

Every street having long been cleared to reveal the true scope of the damage. After most of the debris has been carted away to landfills. And every family has decided whether to stay and rebuild - or escape to another small town far away where never has the vicious Santa Ana come to call. Where snow is the biggest threat, and summer rains are as common as are droughts in this coastal dessert-plain turned city.

I am completely and vividly aware that almost everybody who has lost a home, had more to lose that I did. It’s been thirteen years since I bought The Hobo Dojo from a nice family in San Diego, and began the process of down-sizing my life.

There has been a lot of good in living a life not tethered to ground by legal deeds and mortgages, and gardens and patios and cozy rooms that glow from squares of glass when the sun has gone down. All of the heirloom furniture and framed photos atop lustrous wooden mantels, and all of the memories that have been made and contained within walls that promise more protection than can ever be truly guaranteed.

I have indeed been less vulnerable. Less inhabited by the generational sense of place, that’s now turned to heart-rending grief all over this sprawling metropolis.

But surely I have lost gradually, over time, what my neighbors have now lost suddenly. That sense that you yourself are your little town. Committed to stay, and willing to pay the price in steady effort over however many years you are granted.

Instead, I lived a shallower life. Tucked away at the back of a property I didn’t own, keeping quiet - almost furtive - lest I be forced to move on.

I think that - in spite of this long and tragic week, I want a slightly deeper commitment. A slightly stronger attachment.

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Alexia put together a GoFundMe page yesterday, while I was turning that little bit of video footage into a short story of my short visit before the lockout began in earnest.

In the 22 hours that have passed between the GoFundMe going live, and me writing about it now, we have not only met the $10,000 goal but exceeded it. I’m flabbergasted. Humbled. A little bit embarrassed, and tremendously grateful.

The figure of $10,000 was chosen, because that is the exact amount that I spent 13 years ago to buy the original Hobo Dojo. I now have some money in savings, and will combine that with the generous gifts from the friends I’m so lucky to have … and buy myself another movable home.

A trailer this time, rather than an Class-A motorhome with it’s own engine and powertrain to maintain. Something a bit more modern. More tastefully decorated. With a slide-out for a little more space.

And I’ll get back to the business of living, and lending a hand where possible to those for whom that process will be almost infinitely more complicated than my own.

Thanks for reading.

Yours, Dave