As the fire risk fluctuates, Los Angeles remains busy piecing lives back together

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At the Pasadena City College disaster resource center, the long, methodical work of putting lives back together is underway.

Residents who have lost everything — most in the Eaton fire that burned neighborhoods just a mile or so from the center — come in glassy-eyed, smelling of smoke, some in cars packed with belongings, others on foot.

There’s a group of tables in the center of the room, and others along the edges. Shellshocked arrivals walk around this ring of services, considering what each has to offer. 

On a recent morning, the center was busy but not frantic. Fire victims staggered in and explained their needs to a greeter in a mask who then directed them accordingly. Some lacked even identification, so they stopped first at the California Department of Motor Vehicles desk to sign up for a new license. An eye chart was tacked up behind the desk.

Other stations offered advice on insurance and helped people sign up for disaster relief. Others provided guidance for people seeking contractors. One helped people whose workplaces had been destroyed. A table staffed by the county’s animal control agency gave suggestions on how to find lost pets, while the county assessor counseled visitors on how this affected their property taxes. 

Assessments are based on the land and improvements, the official at the desk explained, so if a house has been destroyed, then the property needs to be reassessed. Residents may file for a “misfortune and calamity” reassessment. 

There seems little doubt about that.

On this morning, several residents were dismayed to learn that their applications for FEMA assistance had been denied. Turns out it was a glitch in the FEMA system. Officials heard the complaints and rushed to fix it. Anyone receiving a denial should press ahead, they said. The application may just need more information.

This center, and another across town at the old Westfield Shopping Center and operated by UCLA (soon to become UCLA’s Research Park), are fielding thousands of questions from thousands of tragedies. They are resetting the foundations for individuals and families that seemed solid just two weeks ago and now seem terribly, unfathomably tenuous.

And yet, there are reasons to be hopeful. In Pasadena, for instance, the “medical assistance” table had no takers on Friday. And the center was steadily, cheerfully processing people as quickly as they arrived. 

There is a point in any disaster where rescue shifts to recovery, where the rush of adrenaline is replaced by the steady commitment to work. Less remarked on is that there is a brief moment in between those, one of stabilization, where lives have to be calmed before the work ahead can really begin. In that pause, the medical crises have largely abated, and the future seems still too much to fully consider.

That is the moment that Los Angeles is experiencing today.

Those who arrive at the center come with harrowing stories of escape and loss — and often not much else. On this morning, Jackie and David Jacobs were among the visitors. They’ve lived in Altadena for more than 30 years, only to see their house vaporized two weeks ago. They arrived at the center with just the clothes they were wearing — and those had come from a donation. 

Still, they remained focused and positive. “In life,” David Jacobs reflected, “you have tribulations.”

The fires in Altadena and Pacific Palisades share some characteristics and diverge on others. They both erupted on Jan. 7, the Palisades in the morning and Eaton later that evening. Both rampaged through neighborhoods with similar ferocity, overwhelming firefighters with winds that reached 100 miles per hour, hurling embers down darkened streets and across vast distances.

Their devastation and the inability of fire crews to tame them should remind critics that these fires were not local failures. These two fires erupted in different jurisdictions with different fire departments and yet suffered similar fates. 

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has taken plenty of criticism for her response, and some may prove deserved. But the Altadena fires were outside the city of Los Angeles, so the fact that low water pressure also foiled firefighters in Altadena is evidence that it was not a Los Angeles failure but a systemic weakness: Fire hydrants are meant for fighting house fires, not wildfires, and cannot handle the strain of fast-moving blazes at this scale. 

These fires were simply too big, the winds too strong, the landscape too dry. Climate change has made those problems worse and will continue to do so. The devastation is not the fault of Delta smelt or a repair to the Santa Ynez reservoir or misleading claims of cuts to the Los Angeles Fire Department budget (the budget was ultimately increased, not cut).

As stability resumes, one can only hope that reason comes with it.

If Altadena and the Palisade ignited under similar circumstances, they’ve been fought under different ones, including their surrounding politics.

In Bass’ case, the profile of her job and the backbench of critics shoved politics to the fore. Defeated mayoral candidate Rick Caruso went on Bill Maher’s show to pronounce that he would have “fully funded’ the fire department, a statement that is as meaningless as it is self-serving. What is full funding? And how would it have stopped these fires?

Neither question was asked, much less answered.

Sadly, that’s a reminder that catastrophe is no barrier to grandstanding, but the different political temperature around these two communities also demonstrates that it does not have to be that way. While the Palisades fire attracted politics at every level, even making an appearance in President Trump’s dark and whiny inaugural address, the leadership around Altadena — an unincorporated community without its own city government — agreed to set politics aside. 

There is, for instance, the longstanding question of whether Altadena might be better served by being annexed into neighboring Pasadena, an idea that floated up briefly in discussions about the fire response. Rather than squabble over whether that would have alleviated the catastrophe or somehow tamped down the wind, leaders of both areas deliberately set it aside.

Addressing reporters at the FEMA center, one Altadena town council member insisted that talk of annexation needed to be shelved for now. Pasadena Mayor Victor Gordo agreed. 

“This is not the time to have political discussions,” he insisted.

Behind him, the real work of recovery continued, one step at a time. As of Tuesday afternoon, the Pasadena City College Disaster Resource Center had served roughly 2,500 families.

The Jacobs were among them. They found a temporary place to live and considered the work ahead. Faith, they said, will get them through.