Family retells their narrow escape from the Eaton Trail as they start to rebuild after losing their home in the Los Angeles fires.
Today started off better than many in the last few months for Shayna Reed and her parents. They had just received word that the Army Corps of Engineers were assessing the plot of land where the Reed’s LA County home once stood.
In the first two months of the year, the engineering branch of the U.S. Army was conducting debris removal in Phase 2 of recovery efforts for the unprecedented west-coast fires. “We got some good news this morning,” Reed, who is a nurse, said with hints of joy on the phone in February. “The Army Corps of Engineers are at our house, so we’re rushing over there to see what’s being done.”
The mood in her delivery was much different than when she spoke with Ark Republic the month prior. At that time, her timbre vibrated with the fresh shock at the loss of her beloved Altadena community. The latter, a modest-sized district at the foothills of San Gabriel mountains. When the fires died down, most of Altadena was singed to the studs.
“While I know the fires happened, I still am wrapping my head around how my community is gone,” lamented Reed.
The younger Reed has been through a range of daily emotions in the aftermath of the environmental disaster. She said she felt like she has lived multiple lives since the day her family rushed out of a home they had lived in for more than 40 years.
With the weight of days where she must navigate between insurance providers and basic needs for her senior parents, it seems longer than a couple of months ago that a rolling inferno engulfed parts of the county’s northern section. Yet, the replay of what happened remains a palpable memory.
On that day in January, Reed remembers exceptionally high Santa Ana winds whipping through the hilly landscape. “[There was a] bad wind storm we were monitoring because we heard that there was a fire on the Eaton Trail,” recounted Reed. The trail is a route that dips through Eaton Canyon Natural Park, a 190-acre nature preserve that leads to Altadena, which is situated at the base of San Gabriel’s climb. The footpath is also laced with Reed’s recollections of skating and riding bikes.
In a phone call with her cousin, she learned that officials ordered residents in her neighborhood to leave. With retired parents who lounged at home most days, the only child jumped in her car and sped to the family abode.
“I was actually racing home from work to evacuate and I saw the whole entire mountain ablaze.So, when I came into the house, I just started throwing whatever I could into my car,” recalled Reed, who said her family were one of the last to run from the hills, so their dash was expedient.
Quickly packing toiletries, electronics and medicine, the dutiful daughter asked her parents if they prepared for the departure. Since fire evacuations have become the norm in Altadena, they thought the leave would be temporary, overnight or a couple of days at most. So, the elders stuffed a few days worth of clothes in a small bag. Shortly after settling into a nearby hotel, they realized that it would be much longer.
What they left behind were valuables, clothes and, most of all, a collection of memories such as photos, awards and family heirlooms. Everything was left in rubble and ash.
To add to the devastating news, while the blazes scorched parts of Palisades, Pasadena and Malibu, most of Altadena burnt down.
Altadena is not for sale
“Altadena was so beautiful…and just so diverse…you know you see so many different people from so many different walks of life,” gushed Reed. She continued to explain that there was a visual presence of multigenerational households along with the racial and ethnic expanse.
Noted as one of the most diverse enclaves in an affluent section of L.A. County, Altadena was predominantly Black for decades. In the 1970s, Blackness pierced Los Angeles in both cultural and political presence. Its blooming resettlement of Black migrants, mostly from the South, earned the area the nickname Afrodena by local residents.
The district sat surrounded by white communities, a result of Black urban sprawl and white flights in the 1950s and 1960s, explained a 1970s study conducted by Harold Connolly.
“Afrodena was a small pocket of Blackness when I was growing up,” reminisced former resident Heru Montu Hotep, who was born and reared in Altadena in the 1970s. For Hotep, the district was a perfect blend of suburban and countryside. “You’d see Black people riding horses on one block, then a few blocks down [there] was downtown Pasadena …which is all not far from [the City of] LA,” he described.
What completed the provinçial cove were small businesses that were heavily supported by natives. “You [could] go to the local Rite Aid, the local coffee shops or grocery stores, and you [would] see the same faces time and time again because, you know, we’re up in the foothills…,” laid out Reed. “[S]o, it was truly the Altadena community that kept the businesses alive.”
However, Altadena did not always offer the idyllic life that Hotep and Reed came to know. At the turn of the 1970s, when white flight was in full effect and Jim Crow became illegal, a local gang called the “Spook Hunters” targeted Black residents. According to **, “[l]ocal [Black] gangs were created to protect,” the newly arrived. The larger response was a tight-knit community that would soon be a coveted area in the real estate market.
Hotep left Altadena several years after his mother died and the cost of living escalated as the value of homes skyrocketed. Now a resident of Atlanta, he said he would have been “homeless” if he stayed. “While I miss Afrodena some days, I know that it became harder to live there.”
On the other hand, Reed’s family, who moved to Altadena in roughly 1984, made a life for themselves and retired. Today, they must start from scratch, but are determined to remain.
“I saw this social media post circulating that urged Altadena residents to not [sell] their homes to these investors,” reported Reed. “Altadena is not for sale.”
Altadena’s history and devastation received much needed coverage during the fire. Hotep said that both his elementary and secondary schools burned in the fire. In early February, the then-U.S. Vice President Harris made a stop in Altadena to thank emergency workers and distribute food.
Reed expressed gratitude for the abundance of support from community members in her family’s long-term efforts to return home.
Editor’s Note: “When the Fire Came” series follows the January 2025 fires in Los Angeles County. We will focus on communities who received limited coverage, and communities of color. Our focus will be Altadena and Pasadena, from the fires to working on recovery. Ark Republic in collaboration with Black Farmers Index and IGH Gardens raised money to donate to the Reed’s. They are almost at their $16K goal. If you’d like to donate, click on this link.
