After the Eaton Fire, these Altadena residents return with despair and hope to homes in ruins
Wreckage stretches for miles in every direction in this part of middle-class Altadena at the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, where the deadly Eaton Fire ignited January 7 and quickly grew into one of California’s most destructive ever.
AccuWeather’s CNN Correspondent Michael Yoshida reports from Altadena, California, where the Eaton Fire has left behind massive devastation of thousands of structures as of the morning of Jan. 14.
Altadena, California (CNN) — “The Nelsons’ house is gone. Joseph’s house is gone. Luella’s house is gone.”
Crystal Dedeaux and her 81-year-old mother Virginia peer from the car window and watch what is left of their west Altadena neighborhood roll by as if in a film reel. Street after street, they survey which homes are in ruins and which – by some apparent miracle – stand unscathed amid miles of devastation.
“Oh my God, Nina’s house made it, Mom,” Crystal says, leaning forward to catch a glimpse. She speaks softly, almost whispering. “Some of the houses made it.”
Wreckage stretches for miles in every direction in this part of middle-class Altadena at the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, where the deadly Eaton Fire ignited January 7 and quickly grew into one of California’s most destructive ever.
Just four days later, much of the community of about 42,000 known for its eclectic, creative spirit resembles a war zone. Armored vehicles and National Guard personnel block the entrances to still-smoldering neighborhoods, some pioneered decades ago by Black residents redlined out of areas nearby. Charred carcasses of cars flank the sidewalks, their rims melted into pools of silver.
Crystal and Virginia are among a lucky few — along with a cat-loving stage prop designer and a “Forest”-dwelling contractor — who have managed to get back so soon, even as others across Southern California’s evacuation zones may not be allowed to return for weeks, or longer. Each fled in a chaotic scramble last week as the winds and embers picked up. They all now wonder if the Altadena they knew can be restored.
A neighborhood in Altadena is destroyed by the Eaton Fire. (Photo Credits: David Butow/Redux for CNN via CNN Newsource)
From the car, the daughter and mother crane their necks to take in entire streets where not a single home remains standing. Only solitary chimneys and askew mailboxes survive to distinguish one property from another. Authorities estimate the Eaton Fire has damaged or destroyed more than 7,000 homes and businesses, along with three schools attended by Dedeaux children. The Altadena cemetery, where Virginia’s mother is buried, is also partially scorched.
With no apparent rhyme or reason, some things have been spared. A pristine, cherry-red Plymouth Belvedere sits shining on the curb in front of the charred remains of a house. Some brightly colored homes and fruit trees sit untouched like little gems amid a sea of gray ash. A gaggle of peacocks – a familiar sight here – wanders through downed power lines, their magnificent fan tails burned away and jagged feathers sticking out at odd angles.
“That’s our house on the left right here,” Crystal says, leaning forward in the back seat.
For the first time since the fire, Crystal Dedeaux sees the remains of the home where she grew up. (Photo Credits: David Butow/Redux for CNN via CNN Newsource)
Rounding the corner onto their street, it briefly appears as if the homes there may have been spared. Squat blue and white houses sit serenely on either side of the Dedeaux property, windswept but relatively untouched as the evening light washes over them.
A chimney is one of the only structures still standing at Virginia Dedeaux's home. (Photo Credits: David Butow/Redux for CNN via CNN Newsource)
But the space in between looks as if a bomb was dropped from the sky. The one-story home’s canary yellow walls have collapsed inward and blackened. Only the chimney and a patch of the back wall stand, scaffolded by a leaning tower of the washer and dryer.
“That was our house,” Crystal says, her voice trembling as she rushes to unbuckle her seatbelt.
Virginia cannot navigate the rubble in her walker and so surveys the scene from the back seat of the car, calling to her daughter as she takes stock of what is left.
“The garage is there. The stupid trash cans are there,” Virginia says, gesturing out the open car window to two plastic bins tossed by the Santa Ana winds into the driveway. “The dumb mailbox that I was going to replace is still there.”
Oranges remain relatively intact near the rental home of Crystal Dedeaux's brother, Ralph, which survived the fire. (Photo Credits: David Butow/Redux for CNN via CNN Newsource)
Crystal treads up the driveway, tears welling in her eyes as they pass over the dusty mound of rubble. Chunks of debris cover the bedroom where her mother slept for the past 55 years. Since Virginia and her then-husband bought the home in 1969, three generations of Dedeauxs have called this place home.
Crystal had been back here to take care of her mother, who’d had trouble walking on her own in recent months. If she had been somewhere else, Virginia likely would have been resting in her bedroom that night of January 7 when the flames crested the mountain ridge that overlooks their backyard.
Virginia Dedeaux surveys the damage to her home from the back seat of a car. "I could afford a modest house here, and I raised my kids by myself. It took everything to hold on to it," she said. (Photo Credits: David Butow/Redux for CNN via CNN Newsource)
“If my daughter hadn’t been here, I probably would have gotten in the bed, covered up my head and wished for the wind to go away — and burned up in it,” Virginia says.
Like many Altadena residents, they had left their home with only a few important documents and some extra clothes, expecting to return safely the next day, as they had done countless times. As they were leaving, Crystal’s brother had wondered aloud whether they should take some family photos with them.
“No, they’ll be there tomorrow,” Crystal had said.
“They’re gone,” she says now.
Walking around the back of the house, Crystal is surprised to find a green ceramic frog resting on the grass. She picks it up and carries it with her as she looks out over the patio and backyard, patches of it still green after years of Virginia religiously watering it. Pomegranate and avocado trees hang over the edges of the yard, their branches weighed down by fruit. Neighbors used to wait until the fruit was ripe, then come knocking on the front door, practically begging to pick from the trees.
“So many memories, so many parties,” Crystal says wearily. “Our house was the one where we had Christmas and Thanksgiving. … My mother would make these big dinners in the oven, and all the kids would be running around. And then in the summertime, we would have barbecues and parties and quinceañeras and more birthday parties.”
Crystal Dedeaux walks up the driveway of her childhood home for the first time since she and her mother evacuated the fire. She says, "I'm just flabbergasted." (Photo Credits: David Butow/Redux for CNN via CNN Newsource)
Now, so many of the community’s stores, restaurants and homes are lost. As for other families here, the Dedeauxs’ scorched house — bought for $23,000 and worth an estimated $1.1 million before the fire — also spells the loss of generational wealth.
Rebuilding it, Crystal says, would be a gargantuan task her aging mother may not be up to.
“We had never thought in a million years that this house would not be standing right now,” the grown daughter says. “She doesn’t even want to rebuild it. Really, she doesn’t. She says, ‘I’m too old, Crystal. I’m 81.’”
Back at the car, Virginia sits quietly, waiting for Crystal to come back and report the damage.
“I feel lost. I feel like I’m in a dream,” she says. “This didn’t really happen. It was like the fire came straight through, went for my house and left the two people on the side.”
An evening breeze wafts over the mountains and through the car window. Virginia leans forward in her seat.
“I still smell the smoke.”
An artists’ livelihood lost to flames
That same pungent, chemical smell had choked the air just a few miles away as the fire kept racing before dawn on January 8 through west Altadena, sending embers zipping through the air like bullets.
Awakened by powerful winds battering her windows, stage prop designer Heidi Luest had looked out her window and been stunned to see a fire’s amber glow just a few streets away.
Firefighters hose down the smoldering wreckage of a home in Altadena. Emergency crews have been surveying each home for damage and searching for any human remains. (Photo Credits: David Butow/Redux via CNN Newsource)
Frantic, Heidi and her partner had begun rounding up their menagerie of 15 rescue cats, sweeping the house with flashlights since the power had gone out. Heidi ran in and out of the house, tossing cats into her Toyota Tacoma without cages. Laverne, a fluffy black and white tabby, curled up in the center console as chaos reigned around her.
Soon, though, their neighbor’s home was going up in flames. Three cats still were missing. Heidi and her partner had to go. The wayward cats would have to be left behind.
Before getting in the car, Heidi had flung open the front door, hoping the lost cats would find their way out. Riding away, the couple passed historic Craftsman homes, ’50s bungalows and a Victorian house on the corner – all up in flames.
From the road, she frantically called 911.
No one, the operator told her, was coming: Many local fire crews had been sent to help with another wildfire tearing through the Pacific Palisades; the rest were already battling similar fires across Altadena.
“I knew it was a total and complete loss,” she now says of their home, her studio, her artwork.
Heidi Luest, who has worked as a prop designer for movies and stage productions, salvages a tea set brought to the US by her father after his service in the Korean War. (Photo Credits: David Butow/Redux for CNN via CNN Newsource)
Heidi has little hope as she heads back days later. She wants only to salvage two small sculptures — a cat and a limestone abstract — crafted by an artist who recently helped restore the burned cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris.
A long metal fence guards what is left of the home. The only structure still standing is the towering archway that used to serve as her front entryway.
Old cans of movie film belonging to Heidi Luest's partner rest atop a pile of rubble. The couple had a collection of vintage film cameras. (Photo Credits: David Butow/Redux for CNN via CNN Newsource)
Heidi beelines down the driveway where she once hand-painted a massive guitar for Britney Spears, passing the burned frame of her rare 1955 GMC pickup. Debris crunches underfoot as she steps over the stub of a wall and into her living room, where she once pulled an all-nighter decorating a drum set for the heavy metal band Slipknot. It was also in that room where she spent an entire Thanksgiving weekend painting a coffin for Mötley Crüe’s farewell tour.
Among the debris of her home, Heidi Luest discovers a crusted silver spoon given to her as a child by her grandfather. (Photo Credits: David Butow/Redux for CNN via CNN Newsource)
She knows exactly where the sculptures should be — behind the house in the workshop — and begins sifting through powdery ash with her bare hands. Her fingers look like they’ve been dipped in silver as she grips a sculpted cat body. Its head has been knocked off. She keeps digging and finds it fused onto another piece of rubble. Then, the limestone piece surfaces, cracked and missing a few inches off the top.
Heidi stands over another pile of rubble and sees something else: fur and bone. She lets out a sharp cry. Staring down into the remains, she figures they must belong to the cat who hid under furniture as the fire alarms blared.
Heidi Luest stands in the middle of her property and looks out over the ruins of her workshop and studio, where she had stores of mock-up props for Lady Gaga and Katy Perry. “It feels like we're in a war zone," she says, "and we can't fight it because it's Mother Nature." (Photo Credits: David Butow/Redux for CNN via CNN Newsource)
“Those two sculptures, I thought, would be the only things I would find, but I didn’t want to see Morris, my cat, and his whole skeleton,” she says, shaken. “I wanted him out. F**k. I failed him. I wanted to save him.”
Turning around, she catches sight of colorful porcelain plates peeking from under the debris. It was there, in a corner of the garage, she had been storing family heirlooms while they remodeled the kitchen.
Amid piles of flooring and tile, she begins to pull out the remnants of a tea set her father, a German immigrant who got drafted into the US Army, bought as a twentysomething when he returned from the Korean War. Her fingers pick out a teapot etched with a golden dragon and a dainty cup, which she holds up to the afternoon light to reveal the faint outline of a Korean woman’s face.
In the mess she also finds her aunt’s meat grinder and a bent silver spoon given to her by her grandfather. She gently places the sculptures and the tea set pieces into a white garbage bag. They clatter together ungracefully as she lifts the heavy bag to take with her.
On her way out, Heidi bends over the front step and cracks open a few cans of wet cat food and pours water into plastic cups. She hopes a few local animals may have survived.
Heidi was heartened to hear several neighbors and friends plan to rebuild their homes — if insurance payouts come through. She and her partner have already talked with an architect about resurrecting their home.
“It gives me hope. I just want a little bit of hope because it’s starting to get harder, and I know it’s going to get even harder,” she says, adding: “I don’t feel that we have enough time to even stop and cry. I lost my whole life.”
It’s only after Heidi reexamines the limestone sculpture she realizes the porous stone reeks of toxic fire fumes. She has to throw it out.
Searching for the spirit to rebuild
Wisps of smoke rising from amorphous debris piles, contractor and community activist Rene Amy stands at the center of his property just two blocks away. His soft cloth loafers – now the only pair he owns – sink into ash about an inch each time he steps toward another broken tool or disintegrating piece of furniture.
His home, once lovingly nicknamed “The Forest” for its luscious tree canopy, is now a jungle of scorched trunks, chicken wire and tangled sheets of metal and beams. He adjusts his face mask as a gust of wind blows dry flakes of ash through the bright morning sky.
Rene Amy treads through the wreckage of his front yard and wonders how the fire reached so far into Altadena. “The idea that it could get this far in — up until the other day — was totally inconceivable. How in the hell could that happen?” (Photo Credits: David Butow/Redux for CNN via CNN Newsource)
His gravel driveway has been forged into a blanket of smooth, blackened stones. On either side, piles of community organizing supplies are melted, unrecognizable. A stack of metal poles used to be a set of folding tables. A charred metal trunk used to hold seeds and tabling supplies for the Xerces Society, an invertebrate conservation group. The only things salvageable, he thinks, may be a pile of antique cast iron hand drills.
None of Rene’s late wife’s belongings are anywhere to be found. Her classic Audi TT is warped and corroded. He wonders aloud why he didn’t grab the photo of her that hung on the fridge. It was one of the few that showed her glowing and healthy — before the cystic fibrosis diagnosis.
An Audi TT belonging to Rene Amy's late wife was burned in the fire. (Photo Credits: David Butow/Redux for CNN via CNN Newsource)
“If the fire was at the door and I knew I would lose that picture, I would have gotten it. I would have risked it because that was such a picture,” he says, his voice breaking. “It’s how she would have wanted to be remembered.”
Rene’s insurance will cover a lot of what was lost in this house, but he estimates about a half-million-dollars’ worth of uninsured tools, cars and other items are just gone.
“This has changed my outlook on humanity,” he says. “It has definitely given me a lot more empathy for more aspects of human experience.”
Rene sifts through his own losses after a morning at the Pasadena Convention Center, now a shelter for wildfire survivors, unpacking a truckload of blankets and other donations for evacuees.
Volunteers prepare donated food and clothes for victims who lost their homes to wildfires in Altadena.(Photo Credits: David Butow/Redux for CNN via CNN Newsource)
Watching the 64-year-old work, you would never know he had shown up to the center that morning wearing a pair of borrowed women’s pants. Thankfully, someone found him a pair of men’s jeans that fit. He now wears a bright green shirt emblazoned with the logo for ShelterBox, a disaster relief nonprofit for which he has volunteered for more than a decade.
A contractor by trade, community service is what Rene knows best. In his nearly 40 years in the Altadena area, he has been a fierce activist, environmental advocate and volunteer, helping the unhoused and people in crisis. In his time with ShelterBox, Rene has been trained on what it is like to live through a disaster.
Workers repair downed utility lines destroyed by the Eaton Fire. (Photo Credits: David Butow/Redux for CNN via CNN Newsource)
But nothing could have prepared him for this.
Over just 24 hours, the beloved community to which he has dedicated his life was rendered almost unrecognizable. Riding late last week through the evacuation zone, he takes stock of what is gone, groaning at each business or landmark gutted by flames.
As he makes his way out of the evacuation zone, Rene Amy detours to see if the community's beloved "Greetings from Altadena" mural survived. He is relieved to see it was untouched by flames. (Photo Credits: David Butow/Redux for CNN via CNN Newsource)
“F**k, oh, God damn,” he says as he passes the ruins of the beloved Altadena Hardware. “Oh, woah.”
The car rolls past a small community garden where a flag rests at half-staff. Days earlier, Rene had lowered it himself in honor of the late President Jimmy Carter.
“Why would anyone want to live here? That’s the problem,” he says as the car turns onto a street crisscrossed with severed power lines and lined with decimated homes.
Rene is overwhelmed by the recent flood of generosity. At a restaurant with his girlfriend, he got a call letting him know a friend had set up a fundraiser for him. He burst into tears at the table. A restaurant employee, after overhearing his story, comped the whole meal.
Even standing in the wreckage of his home, Rene talks excitedly about getting to work to rebuild Altadena. “The number of organizations and the amount of help coming in is really stunning, and that gives me hope,” he says. “I think the only way it’s gonna happen, literally, is if we do it ourselves.”
“It’s an opportunity to step up and make a difference,” he goes on. “The key thing here is that it ain’t just gonna be me. It needs to be everybody in the community. We need to pull together. We need to stick together. We can’t leave it to the bureaucrats. We can’t leave it to a few committees.”
Despite the area’s overwhelming losses, Rene insists its residents will not write it off.
“I am absolutely resolved that we will not be another Paradise, California. We will not be one of those disaster zones that everybody talks about and does not come back. We will come back. I am absolutely dedicated to that,” he says.
Already, Rene is rallying his community’s spirits, even as he searches for a new place to live. He helped plan the installation of a massive banner next to the city’s iconic “Greetings from Altadena” mural.
The banner, spanning 50 feet, reads: “ALTADENA STRONG — WE WILL REBUILD.”
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