Eric Swenson was in Altadena last week, in the waning days of his time in the Eaton and Palisades burn zones.
As of Monday, six months will have passed since the twin catastrophes exploded into Southern California reality on Jan. 7. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers colonel who led the ash and debris cleanup paused in the sunshine in front of an empty parcel for the melancholy anniversary.
Six months and four millions tons of fire ash and debris later, Swenson sought a silver lining.
“People here have already started to rebuild,” he said, noting that 9,500 properties have been cleared in less than five months between to the two burn zones.
Indeed. The rebuild has begun, however slowly. But it’s happening. The charred remains of residential and commercial parcels along the coast and in the foothills are giving way to acres and acres of blank dirt slates, ready for their owners to come back.
But six months on from the mammoth firestorm, unsettling questions linger about whether many of the displaced will return to communities generations of families called home. Those questions often turn to whether the character of beloved neighborhoods could ever be captured. Is the soil healthy? Is the air clean?
By June, 145 buyers took ownership of more than 220 homesites in the Palisades and Eaton fire zones. Will they be the vanguard of a growing wave of land sales caused by the January firestorms? Time is telling.
School districts, houses of worship and businesses, too, have their own questions, as they find their way back in scorched and emptied neighborhoods.
But one thing is for sure on the six-month anniversary of one of the most destructive natural disasters in the county’s history. In places such as Altadena, Palisades, Malibu, Pasadena, Sierra Madre, the disasters have brought lasting changes, some of which resonate beyond the confines of where the fire burned to much of Southern California.
It’s a picture that only time can bring in such a dramatic year, during which the fires have transitioned to recovery — a complex process underway against the backdrop of national political divisions, unrest and an uncertain economy.
In some cases, that picture is about heightened awareness of the risks facing this region. In others, it’s about bonding, relationships strengthened after tragedy.
Swenson himself was hopeful for the region.
“I personally look forward to coming back … to see my friends that I’ve made here, as they rebuild their homes, their lives and their livelihoods and start the next chapter of their lives,” he said.
Here is a collection of the changes that are evident in the burn zones and beyond as residents continue the journey to recovery at the six-month landmark.
1. Survivors have built community amid collective trauma
In person, online and via text, survivors of the Eaton fire are holding hands through the tough stuff.
Whether it was checking in hours after the fire, and commiserating with their loss and grief, Altadenans are leaning on their communal trauma to process their grief and share the unique challenges of “what’s next?”
The hundreds-strong Eaton Fire Survivors Network will gather in person for the first time on Monday, celebrating what’s come out from the fire: “a community of survivors, standing together, sharing resources, and enabling us all to recover faster and stronger.”
Sharing the post-everything good-and-bad of all things Eaton Fire is helping. One woman asked if anyone else had trouble cooking in the kitchen of her rental. The chore reduced her tears. Another complained about insurance waits and woes as well as a hair-pulling bureaucratic morass, to which many sympathized: we get it.
Others marked common milestones: getting their lot cleared, collecting soil for testing, their first Easter post-fire, first visit to El Patron, or Webster’s Pharmacy, Fair Oaks Burger or 1881 bar.
The members of Altadena Rotary Club, 14 of whom lost their homes, haven’t taken a pause since Jan. 7. Aside from fund-raising and volunteering at distribution events, the group is taking the full-house success of its Concerts in the Park to a newly-created stage at “Lower” Loma Alta Park. It won’t be Farnsworth Park, and they don’t know how many folks will show up. Dealing with uncertainty is par for the course now.
“Granted, it means that there will be those few difficult moments for folks who haven’t seen the latest phases of cleanup and rebuild, but rest assured that you will be greeted at the concerts by folks who are truly glad to see you and who’ve personally gone through what you’ve experienced,” said Altadena Rotary member René Amy.
Six months after disaster upended their lives, Altadenans are finding they still don’t agree with everyone, and their town will never be the same.
The hits will keep coming: will insurance money last? When can I return to my standing home? Survivors are finding what has stayed with them six months after the blaze isn’t the wind or the heat or the panic, it’s re-discovering community and belonging.
Many may find it watching Kenny Metcalf making like a young Elton John on stage at Loma Alta Park. He sounds pretty good.
The kid in front is dancing like a drunken sailor. You look around and realize you’ve seen many of these faces at the library, or Grocery Outlet. For a minute, stuff isn’t so tough. You take it. Bring on summer.
– Anissa Rivera
2. Thousands now have a common bond and identity: fire survivors
On any given street flattened by the Jan. 7 fire in the Pacific Palisades, a microcosmic representation of the choice residents face after the fire can be seen.
At one lot, a yard sign declares “this home will rise again, returning to the place we love.” At a neighboring property, a Realtor’s heavy wooden sign stands, declaring that lot is for sale.
As homeowners weigh the cost, both economic and personal, and time that it will take to rebuild, businesses also must decide if they want to come back.
Many have returned, from a hardware store hoping that the rebuilding could be a boon for them as suppliers of building materials, to restaurants opening their doors so that community members and workers can have somewhere to go.
Palisades real estate developer Rick Caruso promised the reopening of his luxurious retail center Palisades Village in 2026, seemingly looking to lead a comeback for the area’s shopping.
Things take time, and many residents look at a years-long timeline to rebuild, waiting on permits and insurance.
Palisades Charter High School, with the iconic Stadium by the Sea, will not return to their main campus in the fall, but will remain at “Pali South,” Santa Monica’s old Sears building repurposed into a school.
But among these decisions, to stay or go, when to come back, and those that have chosen one way or another or remain on the fence, the community has banded together, sharing in an identity as fire survivors, whether they find a new home or remain in the Palisades for years to come.
“The community members, because everyone now has this shared experience in their life, they’re all fire survivors,” said Col. Eric Swenson of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the federal agency responsible for debris removal after the wildfires. “Whether they lost their home or didn’t, they had to evacuate. I think the community dynamics have gotten stronger, despite people being displaced.
“I think that will be one of the keys to help people rebuild, because it’ll keep their fire in their belly, that they want to get back and be with their former neighbors, they want to be back as a community and not be separated.”
–Sierra van der Brug
3. Awareness of fire dangers have heightened
Throughout Southern California, residents are showing a heightened awareness of the dangers lurking in the wildlands abutting urban neighborhoods.
For some home-hardening companies, business has doubled since the Palisades and Eaton fires. Companies said they’re busy responding to calls for home inspections both in the fire zones and throughout the region.
Lisa and Ken Drew recently recently paid more than $500 to have a home-hardening company evaluate their property in Upland. While their home is 30 miles from Altadena, it’s just two miles from the San Gabriel Mountains. If there’s ever a fire, “we would like to be the ones whose house is still standing,” Lisa Drew said.
Pacific Palisades homeowner Robert Dickey, whose home survived, plans to replace all the attic and crawl-space vents in his house with modern, ember-resistant models. He’s also considering other retrofits, but only up to a point.
“We don’t have unlimited funds to do this,” he said.
Joe Torres, owner of wildfire prevention firm, All Risk Shield, said the recent firestorms gave folks a reality check.
“It doesn’t matter where you are, where you live, here in California there’s high susceptibility to fire risks,” Torres said. “People are realizing, I should do something about this.”
– Jeff Collins
4. Public health has emerged as a major recovery concern
As the Palisades and Eaton fires continued to burn days after first exploding on Jan. 7, the immediate concern of destroyed structures and evacuation zones shifted to a prolonged sense of vigilance over the public health impacts of the fires.
From air to water to soil, that vigilance continues six months later, and in some aspects will be in the minds of locals for years to come.
The housing stock and geographical location of each fire played a part in what health concerns developed.
Altadena’s historic homes, many built prior to 1979, used lead-based paint, which experts said found its way into the air in the early stages of the blaze and into the town and nearby Pasadena’s soil.
A Los Angeles County study found increased lead levels in soil taken from parcels downwind of the Eaton fire burn area. This prompted additional soil testing from local governments such as the Pasadena Unified School District, a self-testing program for residents and university sampling.
“It has given me pause to think, ‘is this a school I actually want my kids to go to?’” PUSD parent Corrine Parker said earlier this year.
The PUSD testing found more than half of district sites had a soil sample containing a concentration of a harmful substance which included lead, arsenic, chromium, Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and dioxins/furans.
The way debris was moved also opened eyes in the region. Many in local cities east of the Eaton fire, and those along the coast, have pushed back at agencies’ plans for staging and processing sites in or around local neighborhoods. Six months after the fire, the fervor over such sites appears to have fizzled, but the moment was eye-opener for local cities.
Unlike some other major wildfires in California, Altadena and the Pacific Palisades’ proximity to so many experts at the likes of JPL, Caltech, USC and UCLA meant more brains thinking through and researching the fires’ impacts and long-term ramifications.
“It is an L.A. thing,” said Fernando Guerra, professor of political science and Chicano-Latino studies at Loyola Marymount University earlier this year. “There are few other places in America or in the world where you have these non-governmental resources.”
-David Wilson
5. When — and if — California gets more federal wildfire aid remains to be seen
Just a few weeks after the fires began — and only days after his second inauguration — President Donald Trump landed at LAX to take in the catastrophic damage.
Even before he landed, California leaders were saying they’d need the federal government’s help in the fires’ aftermath — although, just how big the ask would be wouldn’t come for a few more weeks — and Trump floated setting conditions on aid as a way to curtail certain Democratic policies in the state he loves to criticize.
Trump landed at LAX, shook hands with Gov. Gavin Newsom and vowed to “give you everything you want.”
Nearly six months later — and more than four months after Newsom formally requested nearly $40 billion in wildfire relief — California is still waiting to see if the president will make good on that promise, or how.
Newsom and Trump are in the midst of yet another smoldering kerfuffle, this time over immigration enforcement, and the White House has been in the midst of a tough battle to get the president’s $4.5 trillion tax and spending cuts bill through a divided Congress.
Will Trump eventually OK his political foe’s $40 billion request? Will Newsom, in turn, have to make concessions on a voter ID law or how the state handles its water management or even immigration policies?
Six months out, that still remains to be seen.
– Kaitlyn Schallhorn
6. ‘Altadena Strong’ carries through to governing, politics
There have been attempts to change the governance of Altadena since the fires, but they’ve failed. Instead, the town, population 43,000, has rejected annexation talk from Pasadena, wearing its independence as a badge of honor.
That badge has long defined the unincorporated town’s go-its-own-way character.
Still, six months after the town was pummeled, the community just north of Pasadena has relied even more heavily on Los Angeles County leaders and L.A. County departments for guidance on fire debris clearance, rebuilding, fast-track permitting and economic aid.
First District L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, the unofficial mayor of the unincorporated area, has emerged more powerful, a central figure during the crisis and perhaps for years to come.
“The buck stops with her,” said Michele Zack, the town’s historian and long-time resident who lost her ranch home in the Eaton fire. “We have been relying on the county.”
Connor Cipolla, a member of the advisory Altadena Town Council, said cooperation with county, state and federal resources have taken the top step in recovery.
“We are not working closer with the city of Pasadena,” he said, saying a proposal by Councilmember Tyron Hampton for annexation was rejected. “I have no interest in being a part of the city of Pasadena.”
He said the fires have solidified the unincorporated community’s working relationship with Barger and the county in general. “I am happy with the way the county is responding.”
However, Zack emphasized the community lacks planning authority and the Town Council has no real power.
She is very interested in a Rebuilding Authority plan put forth by Supervisor Lindsey Horvath and approved last week that sets up land-use planning, land banking and financing mechanisms in fire areas, pending buy-in from those cities/communities.
“That kind of action is needed,” Zack said.
-Steve Scauzillo
7. Insurance costs spike statewide
Whether you live in Whittier or Yreka, six month later after the Palisades and Eaton catastrophes, you’re bound to feel the effects of the Los Angeles County wildfires when paying for homeowner insurance.
Premiums already were skyrocketing before January’s firestorms, thanks to a series of deadly conflagrations over the past decade that consumed almost 3 million acres.
Then came the L.A. County fires, which destroyed about 16,000 homes, buildings and other structures.
As of May, home and building owners had filed more than 38,000 insurance claims. And carriers had paid out at least $17.1 billion.
That burden will fall on consumers as well as private carriers. Two key events are spreading those costs statewide.
Five weeks after the fires began, the California FAIR Plan — which provides bare-bones fire coverage to customers who can’t find insurance elsewhere — ran out of money.
That triggered a $1 billion “assessment” — essentially passing the hat among licensed providers to cover the FAIR Plan’s claims. The private companies, in turn, are allowed to pass on half of those costs to their customers — everywhere in the state.
Then, State Farm, the state’s largest insurance company, requested a 22% emergency rate hike to cover wildfire losses and stop its “financial deterioration.”
Ultimately, State Farm won approval for a 17% increase, which will add $468 per year to its typical homeowner premium, one consumer group estimated.
-Jeff Collins
8. The wind and flames were biblical. Houses of worship are responding in kind
Biblical in their flames and fury, the fires inspired faith communities in L.A. and Altadena their paths to respond in kind. Six months later, they’ve held on to that response amid the headwinds of recovery.
Amara Ononiwu, director of fire aid and relief for the 200-member Clergy Community Coalition in Pasadena, said faith leaders were at the Pasadena Convention Center evacuation shelter comforting evacuees within hours of the center opening.
In all in the Eaton footprint, at least 11 churches burned in the blaze and 12 pastors lost their homes. Gone are historic structures such as the Altadena Community Church and St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, as well as Hillside Tabernacle of Faith and thriving Black community and Altadena Baptist Church, a landmark at the corner of El Molino Avenue and Calaveras Street since 1920.
What remained are relics of faith: a painting and a mural discovered after the fire at Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center; a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary standing unscathed in the backyard of George and Jennifer Magallon’s Altadena home.
What has stayed are the people, meeting at borrowed spaces for now. LIFT International and Altadena Community worships at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Pasadena, joining the congregation of LIFT International Church, which moved there from its Altadena building weeks before the fire. Masjid Al-Taqwa, founded by African American Muslims in the late 1970s, celebrated Eid al-Adha at New Horizon School in Pasadena.
It has also been using the Jackie Robinson Community Center and hope to settle into a semi-permanent location soon. The congregations of Lifeline Fellowship Christian Center and St. Mark’s have found host churches, too.
Days after the fire, Pastor Connie DeVaughn of Altadena Baptist Church reminded the faithful that “God doesn’t change when everything around us changes.”
“How you react is fine for you, so there are those who are energized after a crisis passes, and that’s wonderful, and there are people who are so impacted they just have to come and mourn. I say, ‘Be in that space of where they need to be.’”
Pasadena Jewish Temple members meet at First United Methodist Church in Pasadena, and when the new school year begins, its Louis B. Silver Religious School will be based at Frostig School, closer to its old neighborhood.
Its site is cleared now, and church leaders are working on rebuilding plans, leasing a long-term space, surveying its stakeholders, and welcoming its new permanent rabbi in August.
Faith leaders have said all along that their church isn’t a building. Even as they hold on to hope six months after disaster, members of the Clergy Community Coalition are showing up to vigils and rallies to address another crisis: immigration raids around the Valley.
The Rev. Mark Chase of All Saints Church in Pasadena said that is what it means to love your neighbor.
It was true for a literal fire and true six months on: “What we do matters. Keep showing up.”
-Anissa Rivera
9. Rents are surging across L.A. County
The Jan. 7 firestorms created a ripple effect throughout Los Angeles County’s rental market, driving up lease rates by the biggest margin among U.S. cities for two consecutive months.
Perhaps 18,000 households were displaced by the Palisades and Eaton fires. More than 11,000 lost their homes in the conflagrations. Thousands more couldn’t return because smoke damage and toxins left their residences uninhabitable.
The fires triggered a frenzy among fire victims to find alternative housing, generating bidding wars among the newly homeless and opportunistic price gouging among landlords.
By February, rent growth for a Los Angeles County house more than doubled to 7.2% — the biggest increase among U.S. metro areas that month, according to real estate data firm Cotality (formerly CoreLogic).
By comparison, the national average that month was 2.9%.
The increase was most pronounced in high-end rentals, “because of the types of households that were impacted,” said Cotality Chief Economist Selma Hepp. February saw the price of top-tier rentals jump 9.1%, vs. 3.7% nationwide.
The county’s rent growth was the nation’s biggest again in March.
Overall rent growth for a house subsided to 4.7% by April, the most recent figure available, but that was still 1.8 times greater than rent hikes a year earlier.
The increases have also spurred concerns about rent-gouging, and given rise to efforts to quell it.
Users on Reddit and Instagram would search rentals around L.A. and Ventura Counties on Zillow, zeroing in on suspicious listings that seemed to show the illegal amount of increase in rent costs after the fires. They’d then report these listings to crowdsourced spreadsheets like that of the Rent Brigade, a self-described group of Angelenos who are tracking rent cost data to address the housing crisis.
As a supplement to state law, a prohibition against rental price-gouging was extended for 30 days by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors June 24.
The board voted to extend current limits on rent increases for motels, hotels, apartments, condos and single-family houses in the county in order to protect tenants, tens of thousands of whom are still in temporary housing after displacement by the fires.
-Jeff Collins and Gladys B. Vargas
10. Survivors are contemplating a return, while others have left
Where have all the people from Altadena gone?
Some moved to rentals in Pasadena, Alhambra, Glendora or La Verne. And some preferred to get away, farther away, putting distance between them and the ruins of the Eaton fire exactly six months ago. Far from the haunting reminder of a home and a community that once was, but are no more.
Jennifer and George Magallon are renting a house in Palm Springs, about 110 miles from east of Altadena, the place they called home for the past five years before Jan. 7 swept that away.
“It’s hard when you live with that constant reminder,” began George Magallon on Wednesday, July 2. “Here in Palm Springs, it has helped us to reset.
“We moved to get away from it all, to get our minds away from it, to get away from the smell, to get away from all of it,” he said. “For us, we needed this.”
On the TV news, the biggest story is the temperatures of the day. People in town are chatty and the conversations are not about fires or insurance companies. “It’s that friendliness that is very refreshing,” he said, as well as the margaritas at Tommy Bahama on North Palm Canyon Drive.
They’d ask people at eateries where is the nearest Trader Joe’s. They’d get responses, he said, unlike in Los Angeles County where people are “in their own bubble.” To find the nearest grocery store, they’d just get in the car and drive until they found one, skipping the GPS.
A real estate agent told him he had five other customers from Altadena, and two from the Palisades. George, 56, has grown children who live in L.A. County. Jennifer and her husband go back once a week; she to her massage and Botox business in Pasadena, and he to their empty lot to care for their trees.
“I have lemon trees, avocado trees and peach trees. I give them water and they are happy. I feel like that is my obligation,” he said.
Six months later, the Magallons aren’t the only ones.
Thousands are waiting to return and rebuild. And many are contemplating whether to return to the Eaton and the Palisades burn zones.
-Steve Scauzillo
11. Six months later, ‘Denas’ more intertwined than ever
While very different places, Altadena and Pasadena have always been connected both geographically and culturally. Decisions in both communities having ripple effects into the other.
However, they’ve arguably never been more intertwined than in the last six months since the Eaton fire struck both. As many officials and residents have said since the blaze, a fire knows no city boundaries or political differences.
Another refrain from local leaders is the focus on referring to both areas as simply Dena.
In the Pasadena Unified School District, both Denas are represented in the schools and families under its jurisdiction. According to the district, the fire impacted about half of district staff and 10,000 of its 14,000 students.
“In that moment the fragility of what we’ve built together became very clear,” PUSD Board President Jennifer Hall Lee said during the annual State of the Schools address. “Schools, neighborhoods and communities. They are strong but they are not invincible. What keeps them going is our shared care and commitment.”
Five campuses either burned down or suffered severe damage in the Eaton fire. Altadena Arts Magnet survived the fire but its students also needed to be relocated due to the proximity of the destruction to the campus.
Pasadena campuses have become temporary homes for displaced students and questions still remain about the long-term plans for those students whose schools no longer exist in the same way they did prior to Jan. 7.
Decisions made by the district about when to return students, where they returned and how to handle the future that is clouded by financial problems caused strife among families simultaneously grappling with losing everything.
“Just on every level PUSD, we have felt as a family, they’ve shown us that they don’t care about the safety of kids,” parent Alexis Brooks said earlier this year.
In just over a month, students of the Dena school district will return for a school year still swirling with uncertainty and a new understanding of how close Altadena and Pasadena truly are.
-David Wilson
12. Scrutiny on utilities has deepened
Six months later, there’s an acknowledgment among Southern California Edison executives that the Rosemead-based utility’s equipment may have ignited the blaze. That acknowledgement dovetails with broader scrutiny and awareness in Southern California on the role that utilities are playing in giant fires.
In April, Pedro Pizarro, president and CEO of Edison International, the parent company of Southern California Edison, told investors that the utility’s equipment could be what ignited the mammoth Eaton fire, in lieu of other evidence.He added that the company likely would suffer significant financial losses if found liable, given that no other potential cause of the blaze has been identified.
The evidence on that cause has been stacking up over the months, so much so that dozens of plaintiffs have consolidated their claims against the utility into one case alleging that contend that sparks from the lines or current from an exposed grounding wire made contact with the brush. They also criticize SCE for not de-energizing all the power lines in Eaton Canyon after the utility was warned days ahead that powerful winds were coming.
By May, helicopters were assisting SCE workers in the dismantling of an idle transmission tower central to the investigation into the cause.
A leading theory is that a tower that had been dormant for more than 50 years became reenergized in the high winds through a phenomenon called “induction.”
Southern Californians are already feeling the impact of the scrutiny on the utility. For one, the utility pledged to rebuild infrastructure damaged in the devastating fires, including major efforts to underground its lines. And, as the region moves into the heart of summertime, the utility is warning customers that it expects to increase the number of power shutoffs this summer to reduce the risk of wildfires.
-Ryan Carter
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