One Year After the Eaton Fire, Altadena Is Still Rebuilding—and Still Believing

By: Dr. Steve Gibson

Last January, my wife and I lived through a terrifying event. In the early hours of the morning of January 7th, we were awakened to a phone alert to evacuate our home immediately.

We evacuated in the dark. Opening the door in the dark we were surrounded by smoke and flying embers.

We checked with our neighbors, grabbed our insurance papers and our little dog, Continflaas, and drove out through the dark smoke for the last time from our home of 24 years.

Later that day we learned that everything we owned had became ash. Decades of family photographs. books, records, painting, The place where we'd imagined growing old together. Gone in hours.

We lost more than our home. We lost community. Our neighborhood was a rich gumbo of races and people. Altadena is a special place. During Redlining, Altadena was a place Black folks could buy homes. We had memories we had families and we had friendships. Nearly 50 percent of the Black home owners in the fire zone lost their homes.  

Altadena was never just where we lived. It was a place to grow and share together. A place where neighbors actually knew each other. Where Black families had built generational wealth against every odd this country threw at them. Where artists and teachers and firefighters and dreamers all managed to live on the same block. My wife and I would walk those streets with our little dog, Cantinflas, and we felt like we'd finally found the community we'd spent our whole lives looking for.

What followed was the hardest year of my life. Hotels, one after another. Insurance battles that felt designed to break you. The exhaustion of rebuilding a life while grieving the one you lost.

So yes, this year brought pain. It brought disappointments that made me question everything I thought I knew about how systems are supposed to work. It brought moments of despair I'm not ashamed to admit.

But here's what else it brought.

It brought the neighbor I'd never properly met who showed up with clothes and didn't ask for thanks. It brought support from friends I hadn’t seen in years. It brought strangers across this country who sent what they could because they understood that community doesn't stop at city lines.

It brought all of you.

This year tested all my trust and beliefs. I talked to insurance adjusters who stonewalled me. I talked to bureaucrats who couldn't find my file. I talked to contractors who quoted me numbers that seemed designed for a different planet.

But I also talked to fellow survivors who shared their strategies. To organizers building networks so no one fights alone. To young people who reminded me that this disaster exposed inequities we cannot ignore—that the communities hit hardest were the ones that already had the least, and that rebuilding must mean something more than putting up the same houses on the same lots.

Today, I'm almost ready to move back into a rebuilt home. I am one of the fortunate ones. Eight in ten Eaton Fire families remain displaced, many running out of insurance coverage right now. Only about twelve percent of destroyed homes had been permitted for rebuilding by late last year. We have so much further to go.

So as we mark this anniversary, I want to leave you with this: The fire took our houses, but it revealed our community. It showed us who shows up. It showed us what neighbors really means.

Altadena is not just a place that burned down. Altadena is the people who refuse to let each other be forgotten.

In Altadena we have a community to rebuild. For everyone who's still displaced, for the community that carried us through this year, and for the Altadena that could be. We won't be limited by our past, we will make our future. more resilient, more just, and more united than before.

In truth, love, and solidarity,

Dr. Steve Gibson

BEO VP of Membership

Altadena Eaton Fire Survivor