Trespassing for Closure
Loots, Boots, and The National Guard
We haven’t been back to see the pile of debris that used to be our home. No one knows when we’ll be allowed to go up there. Yesterday - to prepare for the announcement - we went to Home Depot; one of dozens of trips in the past month to stock up for our ill-fated home renovation. This time, instead of screws and paintbrushes, we bought P100 respirator masks, nitrile gloves, asbestos-proof suits, disposable clothes and rubber boots.
Altadena is impenetrable. The National Guard was deployed to keep non-essential traffic out of the area and prevent looting. Even those with identification are being turned away. This is obviously for everyone’s safety, but based on Facebook posts, people are upset and anxious to determine the fate of their houses. Some don’t know if their homes burned down. Others have confirmation from neighbors that structures are intact, but there is no telling what ash and smoke have done to the interiors.
Photos on social media show desperate neighbors who bypassed National Guard blockades on foot, weaving through yards that once had fences. I read about a woman who walked an hour and a half from the Rose Bowl to Altadena Drive to determine the status of her home. I pray those determined enough to find answers are wearing respirators, but many local stores are sold out. To the looters sneaking into the area for nefarious reasons: I hope you step on a live wire.
Residents are speculating that it could be weeks before we’re allowed back to our homes. In addition to downed power lines, there are active search and rescue missions, gas lines spewing freely into the air, and fine particulates of lead, asbestos and arsenic embedded in the ash covering Altadena. During Sunday’s (1/12) Eaton Fire Community Meeting, officials also described an underground lithium battery storage center that burned.
While others desperately long to find out what happened to their homes, we are grateful to have definitive answers. At 1am on the night of the fire, way before a disaster was declared, our friend drove up and took a video showing our entire neighborhood aglow. At first, he couldn’t even locate our house because all the neighborhood landmarks had already burned down. Given the proximity to the mountainside, our street (Loma Alta, or “High Hill” in Spanish) was absolutely one of the first to evaporate.
Though devastating, his footage gave us the closure that so many crave, but may not have for weeks to come. We knew what happened to our home just hours after the fire started, while others were still being woken up in the middle of the night to evacuation alerts. This indicates just how fast-moving and all-consuming the Eaton Fire was.
Six days later, as drones scan overhead and city officials work tirelessly to map fire damage, it seems like no one has made it up to assess our block. LA County Recovers has no information for the lots near ours. I have seen zero news coverage in that remote part of town where we lived 1,600 feet above sea level. The only thing that comes close is a video from @lahikerdude the night of the fire showing our beautiful vista awash in an otherworldly inferno of embers traveling 80mph.