Outside a hall where Southern California Edison was celebrating Black History Month on Friday, a group of Altadena residents stood on the sidewalk, waving signs and talking of the homes and family members they lost in last year’s Eaton fire.
“They’re in there celebrating Black history and they’ve destroyed a Black town,” said Nicole Vasquez of My Tribe Rise, which helped organize the protest.
The Jan. 7, 2025 fire destroyed thousands of homes, including the majority of homes in west Altadena, a historically Black community. All but one of the 19 people who died were in west Altadena.
“If Edison’s tower did not ignite the fire, Altadena would still be there,” said Trevor Howard Kelley, who lost his 83-year-old mother, Erliene, in the fire.
Kelley, his daughter and two granddaughters had been living with his mother before her home was destroyed, he said.
The Black Altadena residents are part of a larger coalition that is asking Edison to advance each family who lost their home $200,000 in emergency housing assistance. They say that more than a year after the blaze many wildfire survivors are running out of the funds they had received from insurers.
The group protesting Friday also called for transparency from Edison. The company has said it believes it is likely its equipment caused the fire but has continued to deny it did anything wrong.
“We just want the truth,” said Felicia Ford, who lost her house in the fire. “What’s wrong with saying, ‘We got this wrong.’”
Scott Johnson, an Edison spokesperson, said Friday that the company continued to believe its voluntary compensation program was the best way to help victims of the fire. Edison has promised to quickly review each victim’s claim and pay it swiftly if approved.
Families who lost their homes can receive hundreds of thousands of dollars under the program, while those with damaged homes receive lesser amounts.
But many survivors say they don’t believe the offered amounts fully compensate their losses. And to receive the money, victims must agree not to sue — which many are not willing to do.
“We recognize the incredible struggles the community has faced,” Johnson said. “The intent of the program is to reach final settlements to allow the community to rebuild and move on.”
The investigation into the cause of the fire has not yet been released. Edison has said a leading theory is that its century-old transmission line in Eaton Canyon, which had not carried electricity for 50 years, somehow became reenergized and sparked the fire.
Company executives said they did not remove the old line because they believed it would be used in the future.
Tru Williams said he just wants to get his parents back home.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
In December, state regulators ordered Edison to identify fire risks on its 355 miles of out-of service transmission lines located in areas of high fire risk and tell regulators how executives planned to use the lines in the future.
I’ve never lived in Pasadena, but the city that sits below the San Gabriel Mountains in northeast L.A. has always felt like home. As a kid, I’d run into my aunt’s neighbors and coworkers while shopping with my mom on Lake Avenue. I knew to expect a wait at now-closed Roscoe’s Chicken ’n Waffles after my cousin’s Sunday dance recitals. Years later, when I worked at an office off Fair Oaks Avenue, I’d pass my lunch breaks by walking around the neighborhood and admiring the Craftsman homes.
It turns out, many Black Southern Californians have a similar relationship to Pasadena and Altadena, its neighboring hillside community that suffered tremendous losses in the Eaton fire. After the fire, restaurateur Greg Dulan of Dulan’s on Crenshaw spent months offering free meals to residents in collaboration with World Central Kitchen. Like me, he had fond childhood memories of traveling there from his South L.A. neighborhood to visit relatives.
A year later, the Pasadena-Altadena area is still recovering, with grassroots efforts led by longtime locals and business owners, including restaurateurs and chefs who opened their dining rooms to provide a safe space for community members to gather and grieve, organized donation drives and provided free meals and resources to those in need.
At Deluxe 1717 on the border of Pasadena and Altadena, chef-owner Onil Chibas extended the bistro’s hours to remain open continuously from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.
“That way, if it’s four o’clock and you’ve just finished with your contractor and you’re hungry or you want a glass of wine or a cup of coffee, we’re open,” he said.
The Eaton fire destroyed long-standing Black-owned restaurants in Altadena, including Little Red Hen Coffee Shop which first opened in 1972 and was once frequented by comedian Richard Pryor, and Pizza of Venice, a popular pizzeria on Fair Oaks Avenue.
That makes it all the more important to support the Black-owned restaurants in the area that are still standing, with several located just blocks from the burn sites. Almost all are now concentrated in Pasadena, a reminder of how deeply affected Altadena itself remains a year after the blaze. From two new bakeries to a sandwich shop and a fish market that doubles as a Jamaican restaurant, here are 10 Black-owned spots to put on your radar.
Connor Cipolla, an Eaton wildfire survivor, last year praised Southern California Edison’s plan of burying more than 60 miles of electric lines in Altadena as it rebuilds to reduce the risk of fire.
Then he learned he would have to pay $20,000 to $40,000 to connect his home, which was damaged by smoke and ash, to Edison’s new underground line. A nearby neighbor received an estimate for $30,000, he said.
“Residents are so angry,” Cipolla said. “We were completely blindsided.”
Other residents have tracked the wooden stakes Edison workers put up, showing where crews will dig. They’ve found dozens of places where deep trenches are planned under oak and pine trees that survived the fire. In addition to the added costs they face, they fear many trees will die as crews cut their roots.
“The damage is being done now and it’s irreversible,” homeowner Robert Steller said, pointing Maiden Lane to where an Edison crew was working.
For a week, Steller, who lost his home in the fire, parked his Toyota 4Runner over a recently dug trench. He said he was trying to block Edison’s crew from burying a large transformer between two towering deodar cedar trees. The work would “be downright fatal” to the decades-old trees, he said.
Altadena resident Robert Steller stands in front of his Toyota 4Runner that he parked strategically to prevent a Southern California Edison crew from digging too close to two towering cedar trees.
(Ronaldo Bolaños / Los Angeles Times)
The buried lines are an upgrade that will make Altadena’s electrical grid safer and more reliable, Edison says, and it also will lower the risk that the company would have to black out Altadena neighborhoods during dangerous Santa Ana winds to prevent fires.
Brandon Tolentino, an Edison vice president, said the company was trying to find government or charity funding to help homeowners pay to connect to the buried lines. In the meantime, he said, Edison decided to allow owners of homes that survived the fire to keep their overhead connections until financial help was available.
Tolentino added that the company planned meetings to listen to residents’ concerns, including about the trees. He said crews were trained to stop work when they find tree roots and switch from using a backhoe to digging by hand to protect them.
“We’re minimizing the impact on the trees as we [put lines] underground or do any work in Altadena,” he said.
Although placing cables underground is a fire prevention measure, consumer advocates point out it’s not the most cost-effective step Edison can take to reduce the risk.
Undergrounding electric wires can cost more than $6 million per mile, according to the state Public Utilities Commission, far more than building overhead wires.
Because utility shareholders put up part of the money needed to pay for burying the lines, the expensive work means they will earn more profit. Last year, the commission agreed Edison investors could earn an annual return of 10.03% on that money.
Edison said in April it would spend as much as $925 million to underground and rebuild its grid in Altadena and Malibu, where the Palisades fire caused devastation. That amount of construction spending will earn Edison and its shareholders more than $70 million in profit before taxes — an amount billed to electric customers — in the first year, according to calculations by Mark Ellis, the former chief economist for Sempra, the parent company of Southern California Gas and San Diego Gas & Electric.
That annual return will continue over the decades while slowly decreasing each year as the assets are depreciated, Ellis said.
“They’re making a nice profit on this,” he said.
Tolentino said the company wasn’t doing the work to profit.
“The primary reason for undergrounding is the wildfire mitigation,” he said. “Our focus is supporting the community as they rebuild.”
It’s unclear if the Eaton fire would have been less disastrous if Altadena’s neighborhood power lines had been buried. The blaze ignited under Edison’s towering transmission lines that run down the mountainside in Eaton Canyon. Those lines carry bulk power through Edison’s territory. The power lines being put underground are the smaller distribution lines, which carry power to homes.
A power line outside the home of Altadena resident Connor Cipolla.
(Ronaldo Bolanos/Los Angeles Times)
The investigation into the fire’s cause has not yet been released. Edison says a leading theory is that one of the Eaton Canyon transmission lines, which hadn’t carried power for 50 years, might have briefly reenergized, sparking the blaze. The fire killed 19 people and destroyed more than 9,000 homes, businesses and other structures.
Edison said it has no plans to bury those transmission lines.
The high cost of undergrounding has become a contentious issue in Sacramento because, under state rules, most or all of it is billed to all customers of the utility.
Before the Eaton fire, Edison won praise from consumer advocates by installing insulated overhead wires that sharply cut the risk of the lines sparking a fire for a fraction of the cost. Since 2019, the company has installed more than 6,800 miles of the insulated wires.
“A dollar spent reconductoring with covered conductor provides … over four times as much value in wildfire risk mitigation as a dollar spent on underground conversion,” Edison said in testimony before the utilities commission in 2018.
By comparison, Pacific Gas & Electric has relied more on undergrounding its lines to reduce the risk of fire, pushing up customer utility bills. Now Edison has shifted to follow PG&E’s example.
Mark Toney, executive director of the the Utility Reform Network, a consumer group in San Francisco, said his staff estimates Edison spends $4 million per mile to underground wires compared with $800,000 per mile for installing insulated lines.
By burying more lines, customer bills and Edison’s profits could soar, Toney said.
“Five times the cost is equal to five times the profit,” he said.
Last spring, Pedro Pizarro, chief executive of Edison International, told Gov. Gavin Newsom about the company’s undergrounding plans in a letter. Pizarro wrote that rules at the utility commission would require Altadena and Malibu homeowners to pay to underground the electric wire from their property line to the panel on their house. He estimated it would cost $8,000 to $10,000 for each home.
Residents who need to dig long trenches may pay far more than that, said Cipolla, who is a member of the Altadena Town Council.
An oak tree stands tall in an area impacted by the Eaton fires. Homeowners worry such trees could be at risk in the undergrounding work.
(Ronaldo Bolanos/Los Angeles Times)
Last week, Cipolla showed a reporter the electrical panel on the back of his house, which is many yards away from where he needs to connect to Edison’s line. The company also initially wanted him to dig up the driveway he poured seven years ago, he said. Edison later agreed to a location that avoids the driveway.
Tolentino said Edison’s crews were working with homeowners concerned about the company’s planned locations for the buried lines.
“We understand it is a big cost and we’re looking at different sources to help them,” he said.
At the same time, some residents are fuming that, despite the undergrounding work, most of the town’s neighborhoods still will have overhead telecommunications lines. In other areas of the state, the telecommunications companies have worked with the electric utilities to bury all the lines, eliminating the visual clutter.
So far, the telecom companies have agreed to underground only a fraction of their lines in Altadena, Tolentino said.
Cipolla said Edison executives told him they eventually plan to chop off the top of new utility poles the company installed after the fire, leaving the lower portion that holds the telecom lines.
“There is no beautification aspect to it whatsoever,” Cipolla said.
As for the trees, Steller and other residents are asking Edison to adjust its construction map to avoid digging near those that remain after the fire. Altadena lost more than half of its tree cover in the blaze and as crews cleared lots of debris.
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1.A pedestrian walks past Christmas Tree lane in Altadena. Christmas Tree Lane was officially listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1990.2.A “We Love Altadena” sign hangs from a shrub on Christmas Tree Lane.3.Parts of a chopped down tree rest on a street curb in Altadena.
Wynne Wilson, a fire survivor and co-founder of Altadena Green, pointed out that the lot across the street from the giant cedar trees on Maiden Lane has no vegetation, making it a better place for Edison’s transformer.
“This is needless,” Wilson said. “People are dealing with so much. Is Edison thinking we won’t fight over this?”
Carolyn Hove, raising her voice to be heard over the crew operating a jackhammer in front of her home, asked: “How much more are we supposed to go through?”
Hove said she doesn’t blame the crews of subcontractors the utility hired, but Edison’s management.
“It’s bad enough our community was decimated by a fire Edison started,” she said. “We’re still very traumatized, and then to have this happen.”
Altadena has never organized itself around a traditional civic center, like a city hall plaza or downtown square. Instead, this decidedly informal community has relied on an informal constellation of shared spaces — parks and playgrounds tucked into the foothills, popular mid-century libraries, an amphitheater carved into a slope, a handful of living room-like bars and cafés.
After last year’s Eaton Fire tore through town, incinerating community infrastructure and scattering residents across the region, the importance of such places has grown dramatically — not only as centers of gathering, but as sites of refuge, planning and healing. Thanks to a determined commitment from residents and officials, these communal sites are starting to return — in many cases better than before — revealing innovative thinking about the ways we can create and use community spaces.
Earlier this month, L.A.-based aid organization Community Organized Relief Effort, or CORE, founded by Sean Penn and Ann Lee, broke ground on one of the hamlet’s newest local gathering spots: the Altadena Center for Community. Designed by acclaimed Japanese architect Shigeru Ban (who will be receiving the 2026 American Institute of Architects Gold Medal Award later this year), the 1,600-square-foot building, located on a county-owned lot on Lincoln Avenue, adapts a prototype that Ban — who has been designing lightweight structures for disaster victims for more than thirty years — first employed in Onagawa, Japan, following the 2011 Tōhuku earthquake and tsunami.
The vaulted, wood-beamed space, supported on its flanks by shipping containers, is designed to be put up quickly, affordably and with minimal waste, said Ban, who estimates construction will cost about $300,000 and be completed in two to three months once permits are approved.
“Every move we make has to be very cost effective,” noted Ben Albertson, the local project manager for Ban’s firm.
The center can host workspaces, meeting rooms, mental health facilities and community events, but programming is still pending, based on an assessment of community needs, noted CORE co-founder Lee.
An architectural rendering of Shigeru Ban’s design for the 1,600-square-foot Altadena Center for Community, located at 2231 Lincoln Avenue. Construction began in January and is set for completion this summer.
(Shigeru Ban Architects / CORE)
“What are the gaps? What do they want to name it?” said Lee. The center’s open, flexible design, she added, will allow programs to evolve over time — inside and out — with the goal of accommodating markets, religious services, yoga classes and other types of support.
Local officials, particularly L.A. County Parks and Recreation, immediately started to address the dearth of places to congregate after the fires. While parts of Eaton Canyon still burned, parks staff organized sheriff-escorted site visits to assess damage and determine which spaces could safely reopen first, said Chester Kano, deputy director of the planning and development agency at L.A. County Parks.
In May, Loma Alta Park was the first major spot to reemerge with significant upgrades, funded in part by an outpouring of donations from local residents and businesses as well as philanthropic sources like FireAid, the L.A. Clippers Foundation and the L.A. Dodgers Foundation.
“There’s been so much trauma. I think just building back the way things were would be insufficient,” says Kano.
County crews first addressed widespread damage, then installed new play facilities — including Landscape Structures’ towering “Volo Aire” jungle gym, featuring three tunnel slides — as well as two refurbished baseball fields, a new computer lab and a renovated pool and gymnasium. Several local artists, including Victor Ving, Eric Junker and Katie Chrishanthi Sunderalingam, have painted colorful murals.
Four-year-old twins Noah and Luke Stafford, who had to evacuate during the Eaton Fire, play on new equipment at Loma Alta Park in Altadena.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
The park addresses the need for communal gathering via a new cluster of colorful outdoor furniture known as the Alta Chat Space.
“People didn’t have anywhere to go,” says Kano. “They were meeting on their driveways, literally on top of ash and debris, bringing folding chairs.”
Perhaps the most significant transformation will be to Charles White Park, located a short drive from CORE’s future facility and named for the famed Altadena artist. Long a community focal point, the five-acre park is set to undergo a redesign thanks to a $5-million donation from the Walt Disney Company, and a $5.5-million outlay from California State Parks.
County Parks and Salt Landscape Architects are set to take the lead on the work. New facilities will include a play area and splash pad designed by Disney Imagineers, a community center (with meeting spaces and interpretive exhibits about White), pathways, bathrooms, a small amphitheater, a bronze of White and public art by White’s son, Ian White.
Ian White said his designs are still being finalized, but could include poetry, sculpture, landscape art, and information and quotes relating to notable Altadena residents, including artists, scientists and indigenous tribes.
“It will be a dramatic shift,” noted White. “I must admit every time we have a meeting about it, I’m excited about the potential.”
White is complimentary of Disney’s willingness to take input from the community, despite a flurry of concerns that arose last fall around the release of an early design sketch of the play area, depicting somewhat cartoonish, pinecone-shaped play structures that some locals felt didn’t reflect local identity.
“Disney’s been doing the work, trying to understand the legacy and history of Altadena,” said White, who recently hosted 17 Imagineers at his house. “I think there’s going to be an evolution of their design,” added Kano.
Challenges remain
Despite early victories, there are more than a few remaining “heavy lifts,” as Kano put it. The county has brought in about $60 million to restore parks damaged in the Eaton and Hughes Fires, but about $190 million is still needed.
Arguably no lift is bigger than Farnsworth Park, the beloved recreation space along Altadena’s northeast side. That facility, now largely overgrown and covered with opaque fencing, still needs electricity after the destruction of its power lines and an on-site utility building. Its centerpiece, the lodge-like Davies Building, was all but obliterated by the fire, and its amphitheater, while still intact, suffered notable damage.
A view of the closed and heavily damaged Farnsworth Park in Altadena, which needs about $69 million in repairs.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
Thus far, the park — which needs about $69 million in repairs, said Kano — has only received $5 million from the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy to build a healing and reflection garden along its west flank; and $3 million from the Rivers and Mountains Conservancy to rebuild a restroom and restore some landscaping and other related work.
Liz MacLean, a principal at Architectural Resources Group, a preservation-focused firm that has been advising L.A. County Parks about repairs to Farnsworth’s amphitheater, lived less than half a mile from the park. She and her family are still undecided on whether they will return to the area, making her memories of the park particularly poignant.
“It was a real destination for the community, tucked up in the hills,” noted MacLean. “They’d have a musical in the summer, and people would picnic outside of the amphitheater on the lawn. And every type of sport you wanted to do, there seemed to be a field for it. My daughters have had a bunch of events for their schools up there. Graduations, performances, meetups. The community would vote there. Boys and Girl Scout troops would have events in the banquet hall.”
Altadena’s two libraries, both spared from destruction, have borne outsized responsibility for picking up the slack from these losses, and have hosted community events and workshops for those hoping to rebuild. But starting Feb. 1, the skylit, greenery-filled Main Library will undergo a long-planned renovation and expansion that will put it out of commission for about the next 18 months, officials said. Updates will include access improvements, new mechanical and electric systems, a seismic retrofit, and space reconfigurations.
“There have been people who have said, ‘Please don’t close. What are we going to do?’” said Nikki Winslow, director of the Altadena Library District. “But this has been a long time coming. Our Main Library really needs a renovation.”
As a result, the smaller, recently renovated Bob Lucas Memorial Library and Literacy Center will host far more activity. The district has also installed a temporary satellite library inside a multipurpose room at Loma Alta Park. Stewart noted that the district is looking for more spaces — including the Altadena Community Center — to host events.
Ian White, standing by the sign for Charles White Park, is the son of the park’s namesake and is working on creating public art for the project.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
“We’ve become so dependent on all things virtual, but nothing can really replace the human connection, especially coming out of a disaster,” said Carolina Romo, director of the Construction and Asset Management Division of the Los Angeles County Development Authority, which is coordinating with CORE on its new center. “You can’t really address the psychological toll in a virtual environment.”
CORE’s Lee says that such spaces are particularly important in areas where digital expertise is less common. “There’s just so much bad information out there. You don’t know who to trust. So going to a physical space and seeing people that you know you can talk to can make all the difference.”
Rebuilding will take years, and many decisions remain unresolved. But the community, said Architectural Resources Group’s MacLean, needs something solid sooner: “There are things that were lost that were special to everyone. At the end of the day people just want their community back. They want to gather again.”
President Donald Trump has announced an executive order to allow victims of the Los Angeles wildfires to rebuild without dealing with “unnecessary, dupicative, or obstructive” permitting requirements.
The order, which is likely to be challenged by the city and state, claimed that local governments have failed to adequately process permits and were slowing down residents who are desperate to rebuild in the Palisades and Altadena.
“American families and small businesses affected by the wildfires have been forced to continue living in a nightmare of delay, uncertainty, and bureaucratic malaise as they remain displaced from their homes, often without a source of income, while state and local governments delay or prevent reconstruction by approving only a fraction of the permits needed to rebuild,” Trump wrote in the executive order, which he signed Friday.
The order called on the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to “preempt” state and local permitting authorities.
Instead of going through the usual approval process, residents using federal emergency funds to rebuild would need to self-certify to federal authorities that they have complied with local health and safety standards.
The order comes as the city and county approach 3,000 permits issued for rebuilding. A December review by The Times found that the permitting process in Altadena and Pacific Palisades was moving at a moderate rate compared to other major fires in California. As of Dec. 14, the county had issued rebuilding permits for about 16% of the homes destroyed in the Eaton fire and the city had issued just under 14% for those destroyed in the Palisades fire.
While Mayor Karen Bass did not immediately provide comment, the executive order drew intense pushback from Gov. Gavin Newsom.
A spokesperson for Newsom, Tara Gallegos, called Trump a “clueless idiot” for believing the federal government could issue local rebuilding permits.
“With 1625+ home permits issued, hundreds of homes under construction, and permitting timelines at least 2x faster than before the fires, an executive order to rebuild Mars would do just as useful,” Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote in a post on X, citing the number of permits issued solely by the city of Los Angeles.
Newsom said that the federal government needed to release funding, not take over control of the permitting process. The governor said that what communities really lack is money, not permits.
“Please actually help us. We are begging you,” Newsom wrote.
Instead of descending into the permitting process, Newsom called on the president to send a recovery package to congress to help families rebuild, citing a letter from a bipartisan delegation of California legislators that called for federal funding.
“As the recovery process continues, additional federal support is needed, and our entire delegation looks forward to working cooperatively with your administration to ensure the communities of Southern California receive their fair share of federal disaster assistance,” wrote the California legislators on Jan 7.
Some in the Palisades agreed that money was a bigger issue than permitting.
“When I talk to people it seems to have more to do with their insurance payout or whether they have enough money to complete construction,” said Maryam Zar, a Palisades resident who runs the Palisades Recovery Coalition.
Zar called the executive order “interesting” and said that it was fair of the president to call the recovery pace slow and unacceptable.
