30 Jan LA Fires: Altadena’s Forgotten Black Communities

“Everything you think has value can be gone instantaneously,” says Jahi Vaughn, in remembrance of his childhood home. 

This January, an LA fire decimated Altadena, one of Los Angeles’s most prominent Black communities. 27 people have lost their lives to the fires throughout Los Angeles, with 17 of the deaths being from the Eaton Fire which engulfed Altadena. 

Family members hug with the burnt ruins of their home in the background

“We had been preparing for really bad winds, and we knew that they were probably going to turn our power off. I made my way to the backyard, and the tree in the backyard basically snapped in half. Thankfully, the tree didn’t hit any of the powerlines, but then my cell phone reception started to get really, really bad. I couldn’t get through to anyone,” notes Kayla Felton, Altadena resident and sister of Jahi. 

Soon enough, a fire sparked on the mountain. “We get fires all the time. We weren’t anywhere near an evacuation order. So we didn’t really think much of it. But it became worrisome once the wind started to pick up,” notes Vaughn.

However, this fire wasn’t like the other ones. “The smell started to come into the entire area, and then we got an evacuation order,” says Felton. 

Everything was unexpected for the Feltons. A sudden evacuation order and spotty Wi-fi reception only exacerbated the situation. Her dad called her multiple times but they couldn’t connect.

The clock was ticking, and time was running out. Luckily, Felton packed a to-go bag just in case. Felton and her brother left with minimal belongings. “I was expecting to come back the next morning. I only grabbed my birth certificate and my social security card,” Felton notes. Around 6 am, a neighbor called the Feltons to tell them the fire had broken out on their block. There was no evacuation order. There were no sirens. “When we heard the next morning that the neighbor’s house didn’t make it, we had an idea that ours probably didn’t either,” says Felton. 

No one had ever seen anything similar to this magnitude of destruction. Grieving the home posed an entirely new challenge. 

“This was my childhood home. A place that my family has owned for 25 years. All the memorabilia of my life…the family photos, the stuff from high school was all in a box in the garage.” These are not just material possessions, but they are a lifetime of memories that have been accumulated over a long period of time. “You become attached to those things. Those things have meaning for you, so it’s hard to cope with that. You can’t,” says Vaughn. 

Irreplaceable possessions were lost, such as photos and possessions of her late grandma and her high school prom dress that loved ones had taken her to buy. “We have pictures together doing that, these are the kinds of things that can’t be replaced,” says Felton. 

The streets hold all kinds of memories for the Feltons. “I look at the house. I look at the street, and all those memories come flooding back of my kids riding bikes on the street. My friends used to put cones at the end of the street, so the kids could have half an hour of the afternoon of playing football or basketball on the street,” says Becki Felton, Altadena resident and mother of Kayla, Jahi, and Khari. LA’s historic black and brown communities now face a great loss, especially as black and brown people have inhabited the East Altadena area for 60 years.

The Black community, particularly, is suffering greatly through these catastrophic events. “We all bought our houses around the same age in that neighborhood, so we can all be close to each other. We were young families. All of our kids are about the same age, so we could all be close to each other, depend on each other, and rely on each other, which is exactly what we did,” says Felton.

It’s a devastating personal loss for the Felton-Vaughn family, but the depth of the loss for the community is indescribable. “We’ve gone through ups and downs in life. We kept our homes because we know it’s probably the most valuable thing that we can pass on to our kids. I think that collectively, the depth of that sorrow is really profound,” says Felton. 

The family in the remains of their fire-destroyed home

For decades, Black and brown people have been scuppered from accruing generational wealth due heavily to redlining, a harmful practice prohibiting Black people from accessing homeownership loans in certain communities leaving them on the margins.

The inaction with Altadena’s fires is a prime example of the apathy towards preserving Black wealth, homes, and families. These homes and legacies of Black families were ignored to preserve the wealth of families in primarily white communities. 

It is essential that Altadena receives the assistance the community deserves. There’s a lot of media focus on the Palisades (a wealthy, primarily White community) and even the east side of Altadena. Yet, there is very little focus on the West Side of Altadena – Los Angeles’s predominantly Black and brown communities. “If you look at the damage map, all of the areas that were burnt are west of Lake Avenue. There were no resources. There was no water to put out the fires. There were no personnel rushing to put out any fires in our area.” 

Felton and her kids took a final stroll through the neighborhood, watching homes burn and explode because of the gas. “Firefighters allowed these homes to burn. There were private water companies being brought into the area. We walked a couple of miles up, and we didn’t see one active firefighting venture,” says Felton. Bringing private water companies into the area caused an unequal response to the emergency at hand. West Altadena was neglected, especially as the community faced severe risk in a hazardous situation. 

The weight of this destruction is extreme. It’s going to take years to build the decades of progress, love, and care, that Altadena’s residents have poured into their community. 

Says Vaughn: “What comes with a home is a feeling of safety, a feeling of comfortability, a feeling of familiarity that has always been a constant in your life, right? Now that feeling is gone.”

Written by Alexis Martin

Altadena community and home remains