- Many Altadena residents were allowed to return to their homes Thursday after the flames from the Eaton Canyon blaze tore through the community
- Some residents found their homes survived the firestorm but most came back to find their property reduced to rubble and ash
William Harris left his childhood home in Altadena early Wednesday morning as the Santa Ana winds howled outside and a destructive firestorm headed for his community. Smoke filled his neighborhood, but he was still able to see the road.
The 63-year-old left with his wife and son after receiving an alert shortly before 3:30 a.m.
“FAST MOVING WILDFIRE IN YOUR AREA,” said the text message his son Shaun received. “LEAVE NOW.”
When father and son returned Thursday afternoon they were disheartened to find entire streets leveled by the Eaton fire, downed power lines and a scorched path of destruction leading to their street.
“Someone on one of the neighborhood apps said that there was one house standing on our street,” Shaun Harris said.
As they turned the corner onto Poppyfields Drive, they saw the rubble and chimney of their home, but nothing else. Their house was not one of the structures spared by the fire.
William Harris let out a long sigh and said, “It’s gone.”
Thursday played out much the same way across Altadena, a hillside community where the fire destroyed entire blocks of homes and businesses. Over 4,000 structures have been charred since the fire sparked and nearly 14,000 acres burned since the fire started on Tuesday around 6 p.m. At least five people have died in the Eaton fire alone, Los Angeles County officials confirmed Friday.
For many residents, the return to Altadena meant a heartbreaking discovery of decimated homes and neighborhoods. For a lucky few, it meant the relief of knowing their homes were spared, although their neighborhood now resembles a war zone.
Large swaths of Altadena remained under evacuation orders Friday with most utilities shut off. Still, emergency officials allowed residents to trickle back into their neighborhoods starting Thursday but cautioned them to be careful as hissing gas lines continued to spew fires from leveled properties and a thick layer of smoke hung over the area. The California National Guard was called in to assist local police agencies and a 6 p.m. curfew will be in effect starting Friday.
Shaun Harris held up his phone and showed family members real-time footage of the damage, narrating from behind a cloth mask, pointing out where the various rooms once stood.
With the Eaton fire bearing down on a Altadena home, a brother and sister had to decide what to do. One left the scene. The other stayed behind. What happened next was a family tragedy.
“We’re OK, that’s all that matters right now,” he said. “I’d rather have family than things.”
William Harris, rummaging through the rubble of the completely destroyed home where he had recently installed solar panels, pointed out picture frames that remained on the fireplace mantle. He reminisced about growing up in Altadena and how his family encountered racism being one of the first Black families to move onto the street in the 1960s.
“Some of those families moved out,” he said.
Harris raised his son in the home, just like his parents had raised him there. His mother died in 2022 at 98.
“I’m just glad she’s not here to see this,” he said, as he stood among the rubble. “It would have devastated her.”
When Harris’ neighbor, Ed Skinner, returned to their street on Wednesday around 10 a.m., he found that both of their homes, his and Harris’, were still standing. They were the last two on the block to go up in flames, said Skinner, who tried to stay as long as possible to hose down the shrubs around his and Harris’ homes.
No fire trucks were to be seen. He called 911 several times to say he was watching his neighbor’s homes burn down.
“They wrote this area off,” he said. “I get it. They were stretched thin.”
About half a mile away, Arthur Coleman arrived at his home on Poppyfields Drive straight from Los Angeles International Airport. Coleman learned about the fire while he was out of the country on vacation. He watched news clips of Altadena and could not comprehend how the whole community could be wiped away. His wife, Jacqueline Reed, left their home Tuesday, while the winds were picking up.
Coleman agonized as he drove through the neighborhood on Thursday and passed burned buildings and utility poles singed from the bottom up, suspended by the power lines. Fires continued to burn in the center of the rubble of multiple homes leading up to his street.
Ten confirmed deaths and more than 9,000 structures have been damaged or destroyed and more than 150,000 people remain under mandatory evacuation orders. Law enforcement sources told The Times that it’s likely many of the small fires will turn out to have been the work of arson.
He didn’t know what to expect.
“Oh, wow,” he said. “Ain’t that something?”
His home was left standing, practically untouched by the fire, even though several others along the street were burned to the ground. His detached garage was a total loss and the front of his car was practically melted into a puddle.
“Can you believe I got these shrubs out front trimmed before Christmas and they don’t even look like they were in a fire,” he said, laughing. “A nice welcome back.”
At a time when residents, especially evacuees, are desperate for information, press conferences by Mayor Karen Bass and other L.A. officials have fallen woefully short.
Down the road on Deodara Drive, 84-year-old Frank Brown’s adult children woke him and his wife up around 3 a.m. on Wednesday morning. He could smell smoke in his home of over 40 years and felt like he was waking up to a conversation that he could not follow.
“I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “My children are telling me, ‘We have to leave.’ I did not want to go and only left to satisfy their concerns. But they were right to be so cautious,” he said.
On Thursday morning, he returned to survey the ruins of his home, leveled and still warm on the ground.
“If I would have known that this fire was coming ... well you see, I’m a pastor. If I knew, I would have taken 30 suits,” he said from behind a mask.
His daughter, Ruth Brown, who lives nearby, lost her home to the fire.
On Tuesday evening, she received several notifications from the county. The alerts, sounding off at 8 p.m. and again at 11, advised residents about mandatory evacuations in Altadena, but the location specified in the message was to the east of their homes.
“I was aware of what was happening and called a sheriff’s dispatcher to ask what I should do, but they just didn’t have an answer for me,” she said. “Eventually they told me that I should leave.”
She can’t imagine what would have happened to her parents, who are not tech savvy and don’t know how to follow live alerts on their phones.
With the explosion of fires across the L.A. area, tracking app Watch Duty, which has 7.2 million active users annually, told The Times it counted 600,000 new sign-ups in the last 24 hours.
“It is just so emotional,” Frank Brown said. “It’s not an easy thing to come to terms with.”
But the biggest concern is not knowing what became of Frank Brown’s sister, 87-year-old Miva Frieeli, who lives nearby.
“We found her gate was locked but there was no house,” Ruth Brown said. “It’s just gone.”
The family reported her missing to the police but had not received any updates as of Friday morning.
Exomer Brown, Frank Brown’s son, said relatives have been calling him every day inquiring about Frieeli.
“I just don’t know what to tell them,” he Brown said. “They need to get cadaver dogs out to her home, because nobody knows what happened to her.”
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