Burned homes and rattled nerves: Altadena residents grapple with toll of deadly LA blaze | California wildfires

Ash was falling gently over the Historic Highlands neighborhood of Pasadena, California, on Thursday as residents began to grapple with the toll of the Eaton fire still being fought in the mountains above.

This area was under an evacuation order on Wednesday, and the next day the streets were still littered with fallen branches from Tuesday night’s intense windstorm. The fire broke out early in the evening and spread rapidly amid the powerful gusts, killing at least four people and destroying more than 5,000 structures in the area, which also includes the Altadena and Sierra Madre neighborhoods. As of Thursday afternoon, the blaze had burned 13,690 acres and remained 0% contained.

In Historic Highlands, many of the houses are completely preserved. Others have been reduced to ash and rubble. On a single block, a neighbor told me, five houses were damaged, while the others remain standing.

The intense winds on Tuesday scattered embers from the wildfire raging above the town across a huge swathe of the landscape, sparking fires and destroying homes far beyond the fire line, a resident said. That accounted for the seemingly arbitrary destruction: one house sparked on fire, its neighbor preserved.

“Look at how random it is,” a local resident named Carlos said later. “There’s homes standing right next to each other intact, and other folks have lost everything.”

Across the street, another old house was charred and still smoking, and two neighbors from the block behind said they were worried it might still catch other houses on fire, especially if strong winds picked up again in the evening. Next door, a newly renovated home’s door stood open, a child’s shoe abandoned by the doorstep. Inside, everything was charred.

“You see this stuff on TV, but I’ve never seen anything like this up close,” Alex Neuss, a 36-year-old Pasadena resident, said on Wednesday, after he had returned to his home. “I’m surprised how deep it got into the residential areas.”

Neuss and other Pasadena residents said they had noticed people milling through their neighborhoods on Wednesday and Thursday, some of them taking photographs of destroyed homes, apparently turning the local tragedy into content.

In nearby Altadena, Lake Boulevard runs straight upward into the mountains – and, on Thursday, into heavy clouds of smoke. Small crowds of people gathered on both sides of the street, looking up at the smoking hills and trying to assess the situation.

A group of three friends on the corner said they had been overwhelmed by the number of fires across Los Angeles in the past 24 hours. They lived and worked in different locations across Los Angeles county, including nearby in Pasadena, Koreatown, Santa Monica, Beverly Hills and the San Fernando Valley. All of those different locations had been threatened by wildfires on Tuesday and Wednesday.

“I’ve seen really bad fires, but this is the worst I’ve ever seen,” said Harley, 28, who did not give his last name. “My mom has been here 40 years, and it’s the worst she’s ever seen.”

The experience was terrifying, the friends said – and they thought Los Angeles’ elected officials, especially the mayor, Karen Bass, were to blame.

Harley said he was infuriated that California, one of the largest economies in the world, was “so unprepared” for the crisis. “There’s lack of resources, lack of preparation, lack of coordination. It shouldn’t have gotten to this point.

“Why are we still struggling?” he asked.

Matthew, 32, agreed: “There’s no faith in the government at all.”

On the other hand, he added, they did have a lot of faith in the courage of the first responders. And he said, “I have seen a great sense of community – everyone checking in on each other,” which provided some “faith in humanity restored”.

On Los Robles Avenue, near the border of Altadena and Pasadena, many residents were out in their front yards, clearing away debris.

“I lived through the 1994 earthquake, and this feels just as apocalyptic,” said Sherri Solinger, whose house had made it through Tuesday and Wednesday intact.

Solinger called the neighborhood “the best community in Los Angeles”, a racially diverse group of working-class people and artists, who were relying on each other in the midst of disaster.

She said she had evacuated early on Wednesday morning, then come back later in the day to try to protect her and her neighbor’s homes, taking turns hosing down houses with water to protect them from stray sparks and embers.

By Thursday, their focus had shifted to dealing with fallen trees and branches. Her next-door neighbor, Fidel Rodriguez, appeared with a saw in his hand, ready to help Solinger deal with the branches in her yard.

Rodriguez’s home dated from 1911, and he had devoted the past decade to carefully renovating every part of it: new room, new windows, new floors. The prospect of losing all of that work and money was overwhelming, he said. So far, his house had also made it through.

“I feel sorry for everyone,” he said. “I’ll be helping everyone.”