Local resident hoses Altadena fire in California. January 2025.
Image Credit: Photo courtesy of Ariel Fisher.

“From the ashes, beauty will rise.”

Those were the words of Pastor Kerwin Manning at a meeting of Altadena and Pasadena residents organized by faith-based and social justice groups to demand a just and equitable recovery from the fires that ravaged Southern California in January 2025.

From afar, it’s easy to think that the wildfires that swept our region mostly affected movie stars living their best lives by the ocean. But that’s not true even in the uber-rich Pacific Palisades, which got so much national play. Consider the long-term residents who settled there long before the millionaires bought in, as well as the nannies, gardeners, and house cleaners who made the place run and are now without work.

But the idea that it was only the wealthy singed by these flames is especially false where the other main fire raged: Altadena, a place where Black homeownership is twice the national average, where Latinos were able to move after Black pioneers broke racial barriers, where eventually artists and others were attracted by a working, middle-class community, where “community” had real meaning.

From afar, it’s easy to think that the wildfires that swept our region mostly affected movie stars….But that’s not true.

We got a glimpse of that community on the first day of the fires.

My wife and I live in Pasadena, far enough south to be outside the evacuation zone. But we own a rental property in North Pasadena bordering Altadena—a duplex where our daughter lives in the back casita (which is why we, as dutiful parents, bought it).

She and the front-house tenants were all evacuated on the night of January 7. The next morning, just as embers were leaping into the neighborhoods, Luis from the front house went back. With a usual sense of responsibility, his wife, Jamie, asked him to put out the trash just in case there were pick-ups—and he noticed that there was fire down the street.

A hose-and-bucket brigade of neighbors roamed across multiple properties…putting out flames and saving each other.

The fire marched from several houses away to our yard, where it first took out a storage shed, then three cars, and then the carport and back fences. The melted vehicles and the charred fence give an apocalyptic look.

Luis and his father-in-law, Arturo, jumped in with hoses and water buckets to stop the flames—along with a group of neighbors, one of whom busted his way through our fence to string a hose to us. A special note on Arturo: He had just learned that he had lost his own home when he jumped in to save ours.

They were the heroes. Eventually, my wife, Betsy, drove up to join in, and I followed suit. (I was in downtown LA preparing for a student’s dissertation defense, but this defense was more pressing.) Fire trucks were nearby, but they were tackling the bigger flames just north, unable to help us.

It was a startling display of how you cannot address challenges individually. A hose-and-bucket brigade of neighbors roamed across multiple properties (many of our fences had burned down or were swept away by winds, making access easy), putting out flames and saving each other. We quickly joined that morning to pour what water we could muster on a few minor fires at adjoining properties.

Only four houses away, there was total devastation. Of the 20 to 30 houses in our neighborhood, at least 12 are gone. But our duplex survived, albeit with a scarred back to the lot.

We returned that Wednesday afternoon and once again joined with neighbors, moving from house to house with hoses, doing what we all could. On the morning of January 9, there were still smoldering piles, but the worst was over for the time being.

Still, the winds were threatening to kick up again, a phenomenon that fans the flames and makes aerial water drops difficult. This was especially worrisome since the Eaton Canyon Fire—our fire—was still mostly uncontained, although there was much less fuel to burn given the destruction. The next day, there was a new flare-up in the neighborhood, but it was put down.

Our own experience…revealed an important balance to be struck…between the allure of mutual aid and need for state action.

Our rental property is intact—more or less. Our daughter is living with us temporarily, the front tenants are okay, and while everyone is shaken, we are healthy.

There’s a lot of cleanup to do—like I said, the back is pretty apocalyptic and everyone is rightly worried about toxic debris. Still, we have friends who have lost houses and businesses, and our hearts go out to them.

And so, it was no small comfort to stand with so many at a church in Pasadena and hear Pastor Manning preach that “crisis brings clarity and crisis confirms character.”

Certainly, our own experience confirmed the character of our community—and the importance of mutuality. It also revealed an important balance to be struck between those of us invested in solidarity economies and those interested in governing power, between the allure of mutual aid and the need for state action: Yes, our neighbors stood for each other, but we would never have made it without the firefighters holding the line just north.

Everyone in LA has been touched by this. I pray for our region—and I curse the opportunists who ignore our very real pain and claim that Californians brought it on themselves with bad housing policies or too much DEI when the real culprit seems to be long-term climate denial.

We are entering an era in which disasters will be increasingly common. I fear that this period might also display a shortage of empathy. With so much else filling my hours, I am finally sitting to write this up on January 20, a day when we both celebrate the birth of Martin Luther King Jr. and dread the resurgence of Donald Trump. Staring down that abyss, all I can hang onto is the community care that I saw and felt in both the flames and in the aftermath. From these ashes, we will rise.