Six months out from the Eaton fire in Altadena, this is what I remember: My wife and I standing on our driveway as night fell, watching a fire on a ridge, smoke in our nostrils and a question on our mind: How do we leave our home?
I already had driven to where the fire trucks were and saw lots of cars heading the other way, but it wasn’t yet real to me that we were facing evacuation. We would get that order about two hours later.
And then, a kind of chaos. What do we take? What do we leave? Which one toy does each of my children get to pick to keep and hold while our lives are turned upside down?
In minutes, we grabbed documents, clothes and said toys. My wife and kids piled into the car and headed for the home of family friends in Pasadena. Like a few of my neighbors, I stayed behind in the stinging smoke, hose in hand, wetting down our vegetation and roof. We’d lived in this house only three years, in Altadena for 11. My children are ‘Dena born and raised. It was hard to think that all of this, all of what we had so far built together, could very well be lost in a moment to a tiny flying ember.
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Then came the moment that I realized I couldn’t do anything more. I had to leave. My wife kept calling me, telling me to get out of there. Folks worried about me. I took one more look, wondering if it would be my last, and drove away to join my family at our friends’ house.
The TV news binge began, but it wasn’t too long before our friends, too, got an evacuation warning. We were on the move again, the husbands staying behind, the wives and children heading to stay with relatives farther from the fire.
Neither of us left then or in the following days. It was just my friend and me, first watching for the fire, then watching for possible looters as that threat began to loom. I eventually joined my family in the Inland Empire. But I drove back every day, sometimes more than 70 miles each way, to check on our house. We didn’t know it then, but we would be out of that house for more than 100 days because of lead contamination.
In the weeks that followed, I focused on where I could help: my street, my block, my children’s school, my ‘Dena community. And because I work at an organization focused on racial justice, I began to look for where the coalitions were forming, how people were picking up the pieces, how we were all making sense of all of this to move forward.
Half a year after the fire, I can say that we’ve built stronger relationships with each other, focusing always on filling the needs of our neighbors according to our capacity and their requests. We watched our own come together, and then our allies surrounded and protected us in solidarity. The cameras and the reporters eventually moved on to cover other tragedies — including the ongoing ICE siege of Los Angeles — but we continued dealing with the Eaton aftermath.
Born from the ashes was DenaRiseUp, a growing coalition of organizations powering a massive mutual aid effort, in search of a just and equitable recovery. Some of the participating organizations have always done some version of this work, others pivoted to this mission and still others grew directly from the fire.
My plea to the rest of California today is this: Please, don’t forget us. There is still so much to do. I was lucky, but I know so many who lost all they had built. Eighteen of our neighbors lost their lives.
As we rebuild the houses and schools in Altadena, we continue to build on the communal bonds that go beyond structures, and we welcome all those willing to get their hands dirty alongside us. Check us out on the website. Better yet, if you can, join us at a vigil to remember the lives lost to the fire. Because this is how we recover. This is how we make community. This is how we rise.
John Dobard is vice president of policy and programs at Catalyst California. He helps drive the organization’s development and execution of its policy agenda and manages the strategic design of programs. John previously directed the organization’s Political Voice program, which he co-created to advance democracy reforms that empower low-income people of color to participate in policy decision-making.
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