eaton fire

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.

In Trevor Noah’s final opening monologue at the Grammys, the joke that got the loudest laugh in the room was directed at Nicki Minaj’s MAGA alliance.

After six consecutive years of hosting the Grammys, the comedian is stepping down from the emcee role. Last year, Noah’s monologue was focused on the resilience of Los Angeles and paid tribute to the victims of the Palisades and Eaton fires. This year, he poked fun at attending celebrities and commented on the country’s political climate.

When he addressed the fact that Nicki Minaj was not in attendance, the audience applauded in response. He joked that “she is still at the White House with Donald Trump discussing very important issues: ‘Actually, Nicki, I have the biggest ass, I have it. Everybody’s saying it, Nicki, I know they say it’s you, but it’s me. WAP, WAP, WAP. Look at it, baby,’” Noah said in his best Trump impression.

Last week, Minaj appeared at a U.S. Treasury event, where she stood on stage with President Trump and said, “I am probably the president’s No. 1 fan, and that’s not going to change.”

While detailing what the night ahead entails, Noah compared this year’s Grammys to the 1999 ceremony.

“The last time Lauryn Hill performed at the Grammys was in 1999,” said Noah. “Back in 1999 the president had a sex scandal, people thought computers were about to destroy the world and Diddy was arrested. Boy, how times have changed.”

Noah also poked fun at Jelly Roll, asking if he was able to unlock fellow face-tatted singer Teddy Swims’ phone. He also mentioned that the arena stuffed with A-listers felt somewhat like billionaire Jeff Bezos’ wedding, “but with way more Black people.”

In addition to it being Noah’s final hosting gig, this year’s ceremony is also the last to air on CBS, its home network since 1973. After tonight, it kicks off a 10-year run with Disney. The Grammys will air on ABC, Hulu and Disney+ beginning in 2027.

The Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center filed a lawsuit against Southern California Edison Tuesday, claiming the electric company was to blame for igniting last year’s Eaton fire, which destroyed the congregation’s historic sanctuary, preschool and other buildings.

“Our congregation has been without a physical home for more than a year, at a time when our members had the deepest need for refuge and healing,” Senior Rabbi Joshua Ratner said in a statement. “While we’ve continued to gather and support one another, the loss is deeply felt.”

David Eisenhauer, an Edison spokesman, said the company would respond to the complaint through the court process.

“Our hearts remain with the people affected by the Eaton fire,” Eisenhauer said. “We remain committed to wildfire mitigation through grid hardening, situational awareness and enhanced operational practices.”

The temple had served hundreds of Jewish families since 1941. Congregation members were able to save little more than its sacred Torah scrolls.

The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, claims Edison failed to follow its own safety protocols despite advance warnings of extremely dangerous red flag conditions in an area known to be at high threat of wildfires.

The complaint points to the utility’s failure to de-energize its transmission lines that night, as well as its decision to leave up a decommissioned line that hadn’t carried electricity for decades.

It also cites a Times investigation that found that Edison fell behind in doing maintenance that it told state regulators was needed and began billing customers for.

“SCE’s maintenance backlog and unutilized maintenance funds show that it was highly likely that the subject electrical infrastructure that ignited the Eaton Fire was improperly inspected, maintained, repaired, and otherwise operated, which foreseeably led to the Eaton Fire’s ignition,” the complaint states.

The lawsuit seeks financial compensation for destruction of the campus, as well as injunctive relief aimed at preventing Edison from causing more wildfires in the future.

The government investigation into the cause of the fire has not yet been released.

Pedro Pizarro, chief executive of Edison International, the utility’s parent company, has said that a leading theory is that a century-old, dormant transmission line in Eaton Canyon briefly became energized that night, causing sparks that ignited the fire.

Edison is already facing hundreds of lawsuits from fire victims, as well as one by the U.S. Department of Justice. The utility is offering compensation to victims who agree to give up their right to sue the company for the blaze.

Under California law, most of those payments, as well as the lawsuit settlements, are expected to be covered by a state wildfire fund that lawmakers created to shield the three biggest for-profit utilities from bankruptcy if their equipment ignites a catastrophic fire. Some wildfire victims say the law has gone too far and doesn’t keep the utilities accountable for their mistakes.

The temple’s lawsuit details how investigators have found Edison’s equipment to have caused multiple wildfires in the last 10 years, including the the Round Fire in 2015, the Rey Fire in 2016, the Thomas, Creek, and Rye fires in 2017,and the Woolsey Fire in 2018.

Investigators also found that Edison’s power lines sparked the Fairview fire in 2022, which killed two people.