- Share via
When Alex Ballantyne was 18, he found himself kicked out of his latest foster family’s home and unsure where to go next.
The next few years would bring a heightened sense of insecurity and displacement as he stumbled through a string of short-term stays — sometimes crashing with friends, other times landing apartments or rooms for foster youths aging out of the state’s social safety net.
But in the summer of 2022, when Ballantyne was 22, everything changed when he reconnected with his biological aunt and uncle, who opened up their Altadena home to him.
“This was the first time it felt like I was at a place where I was wanted and welcomed,” said the former foster youth, now 25. He grew up primarily with his grandmother, but Ballantyne said her longtime partner was abusive, so he ended up in foster care at age 12. Although most of the foster families he lived with were kind, he said part of him always felt like a guest, walking on eggshells or needing to prove his worth.
But with his aunt and uncle in Altadena, Ballantyne — for the first time in his life — said he truly felt at home.
That long-awaited sense of belonging, however, has been upended once again. This month, the fast-moving Eaton fire destroyed his family’s Altadena house along with more than 9,000 other structures.
“This isn’t the first time I’ve had nothing,” Ballantyne said this week as he surveyed what remained of the house. “When I was 18, I was homeless, walking around with a Lowe’s box filled with my stuff. Compared to that, this has felt much easier, really. ... This feels like a softer landing, because at least now I have family.”
In an intimate new documentary, two Los Angeles teens in foster care tackle the typical challenges of adolescence, while addressing childhood trauma, a constant threat of instability and dreams to overcome the odds and finish college.
Though he lost almost all his clothes, possessions and mementos, he is simply glad that his family made it out safe. He and his aunt and uncle are now staying with extended family in Santa Clarita, along with another aunt who also lost her home in the fire. It’s a full house, but he can’t complain, he said.
“I’m just thankful everybody’s alive,” Ballantyne said.
The night the fire ignited in Eaton Canyon about three miles from their west Altadena home, Ballantyne kept tabs on the flames, checking evacuation maps, following local news and looking outside. Initially, he wasn’t worried.
But within a few hours, things quickly started to change.
“Around 9 o’clock, I could start to see the flames now,” Ballantyne said. He knew dangerous winds were expected in their area — their electricity had already been cut off — and he wanted to be extra cautious because both his aunt and uncle have mobility issues. Even though their neighborhood, at this point, hadn’t been warned or ordered to evacuate, he still suggested to his aunt and uncle that they leave, but his uncle was worried about looters.
He “was adamant about not leaving unless we had to,” Ballantyne recalled.
So Ballantyne offered to stay up and monitor the county’s Genasys app, which maps emergency alerts, to make sure they could leave when they were ordered to do so. He readied their pets and prepared to stay up all night.
But for hours, no warnings or evacuation orders came. Around 2:30 a.m., he got up and checked out the front door, greeted by smoke and a wave of panic.
“No longer did you have to look all the way east to see the fire, it was creeping up closer,” Ballantyne said. “I’m scrolling and scrolling, trying to see if we have an evacuation.”
As the Eaton fire spread, many areas were notified of evacuation warnings and orders well in advance. In the heart of Altadena, where all 17 reported deaths occurred, evacuation orders came hours after fire did.
But no alert came, and none would for another hour for his area of western Altadena. The delay has become a major point of concern for area officials.
“It got to a point where the fire looks so close that you couldn’t tell there was a fire, because all the smoke was blocking everything out,” he said. He said his room started filling with smoke, then the whole house. He looked frantically for an update on evacuations so he could convince his uncle they needed to leave, but as of 3:20 a.m., there was still no alert.
Finally, a few minutes later, their neighborhood was ordered to evacuate — hours after neighbors in eastern Altadena got evacuation warnings — so Ballantyne sprang into action: waking his aunt up and helping her into her wheelchair, getting the pets into the car and telling his uncle they were heading out.
Despite the order, his uncle hesitated because he didn’t see police officers or firefighters ordering people to leave. So Ballantyne made the difficult decision to leave him behind, knowing he couldn’t hesitate for the sake of his aunt and himself.
“My eyes are burning at this point,” he said. “There was smoke in my eyes, smoke in my nose, it was everywhere.”
He and his aunt escaped to a Pasadena parking lot, and luckily, a few hours later, his uncle joined them. His car was covered in ash and the paint had melted off. His white hair and clothes were singed. He told them he narrowly escaped as flames swallowed their home, awoken by a neighbor who called his phone because they saw the house on fire.
“It was very close for him,” Ballantyne said. “Had he missed that phone call, had the phone call came any later, he probably wouldn’t be here.”
This week, Ballantyne walked around what remained of the first house that felt truly like his home, pointing to where his room had been, spotting charred pages where he used to have a bookshelf filled with special reads from his grandmother. He noticed remains of his desk, a twisted bed frame.
A massive scorched branch sat atop much of the ashen rubble, crushing a mangled and melted computer monitor.
After authorities reopened parts of Altadena for the first time since the Eaton fire, residents returned to a grim checkerboard of destroyed homes next to others that were largely spared.
“I was thinking maybe I could find some of my parts for my computer,” he said, shaking his head. The chimney is the only part of the house still standing tall.
Along the roadway, Ballantyne pointed out two peach trees, now completely singed. In the backyard, tools in his uncle’s garage are barely recognizable. Metal posts are all that remain of the yard’s fence.
Besides family photos and keepsakes that were lost, Ballantyne continued to remind himself that material items can be replaced with time.
“I think my ability to adapt came from being in foster care so long,” said Ballantyne, who has moved more times in the last two decades than most people do in a lifetime. Good or bad, he said the experience has helped him “adapt or make decisions or not break down in a tough situation.”
He said he can’t let this setback derail his plans to graduate from college, an accomplishment that would put him in the minority of former foster youths.
“I had that moment to grieve and to be sad, but at some point you have to accept it and then just move on,” Ballantyne said. “It’s like, ‘OK, what do I do now? What’s the next step?’”
He’s already purchased new clothes with his savings, but now he’s trying to figure out if he’ll need to rent a room for his last semester at Pasadena City College. Commuting from Santa Clarita every day during rush hour doesn’t seem feasible, he said. A friend set up a GoFundMe to help him get back on his feet and prepare for another possible move as he plans to transfer to a four-year university in the fall to study business.
A lot about his family’s home remains up in the air — his aunt said she’s sorting through some insurance issues and they need several accommodations to make any interim housing accessible — but no matter what, they plan to always have space for their nephew in their home, if he wants it, said Alice Grevillius, Ballantyne’s aunt.
Living together worked out for all of them, she said. Ballantyne helps pitch in around the house and care for them when needed, and they’ve provided him support and encouragement — and a stable home. Grevillius said she didn’t realize how tough it had gotten for him after high school, but she is glad he ended up back in school and is continuing to advocate for foster youths through several local nonprofits.
“I think he’s really chosen a direction that will work for him,” said Grevillius, 63. “I’m really proud of him in the way he’s grown, and I’d like to think that we’ve helped facilitate that, maybe given him some guidance and insight. ... Al is very bright and very talented, and I’d just like to see him succeed in life.”
Sign up for Essential California
The most important California stories and recommendations in your inbox every morning.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
