Joe Ford stood in the ruins of his home in Altadena, recounting how much his life had changed in less than 24 hours.

Like many of his West Mariposa Street neighbors, Ford’s chimney – although scorched – stood tall in the midst of the rubble. On the opposite side across the caved-in living room floor in what used to be his kitchen laid a charred Samsung fridge – one with a built-in tablet – and stove with a double oven that his wife loved. “She’s an awesome cook,” Ford said.

Left: Joe Ford holds his great-grandfather’s sword from the Civil War, a family keepsake he found in the rubble of his home. Right: Framed photo of Joe Ford’s great-grandfather, who was a runaway slave, in Washington D.C., and his discharge papers from the Civil War. (Photos courtesy of Joe Ford)

Also buried in the rubble was his great-grandfather’s sword from the Civil War – a family keepsake remembering his history as a runaway slave.

Parked next to his house sat the rusted remains of a 2008 Suzuki Burgman 650, a motorcycle scooter Ford bought himself that debut year – the year he was also diagnosed with leukemia. “The doctors told me [to] get my things in order and gave me about six months [to live], but see, that didn’t work,” he said, laughing. “So that’s why I kept it.”

In what used to be his backyard, a melted basketball hoop had toppled onto the cement. “The court was actually way back here on the end,” he explained while pointing to the back of the yard. “It blew this way and then fell over and burned.” He’ll never forget teaching his 5-year-old grandson how to dribble through the cones he set up on the court.

The backyard, which was decorated with all new furniture, a gazebo-covered jacuzzi, a homemade fire pit, music and a TV, also made for a comfortable gathering place for his family and friends. Stored in his garage were two electric bikes Ford and his wife enjoyed riding on the weekends. The only part of their backyard to survive, however, was the fire pit.

“It’s just… it’s all gone,” Ford said, heavily. “We had got everything set up [and] ready for retirement… never thought I would see this.”

Ford and his wife are among the hundreds of residents whose homes were devastated and thousands more who were displaced by the Eaton Canyon wildfire that ravaged Altadena at the beginning of the year.

For many, including Ford, rebuilding is expensive. As a retired basketball coach, he now makes his living as a chief program officer of the Sycamores – fostering hope and resilience through temporary housing for young people who need it most.

According to Ford, his insurance only covers two years of out-of-home expenses and yet, based on other communities’ experiences, he predicts a full recovery might take five years. Meanwhile, he’s taking inventory of his loss from memory and negotiating his home’s value with his insurance company, all while paying mortgage and rent for his newfound long-term rental – leaning on his GoFundMe for support.

Other Altadena residents who fell victim to the fire’s destruction share a similar reality.

Households west of Lake Avenue received delayed evacuation orders, leaving high concentrations of predominantly Black residents directly in the fire’s path – killing at least 17 people, all reportedly over the age of 50. Category 2 hurricane-level winds combined with the drought conditions to create a perfect storm of devastation unparalleled to those households on the east – the first to receive evacuation orders.

In addition to the incurred financial burdens and disproportionate destruction rates, the uncertainty surrounding government aid could make rebuilding even more difficult.

Despite these challenges, Altadena remains dedicated to preserving their community and forging a new way forward.

The disproportionate fire impact on Black households in Altadena

Left: Mapped distribution of Altadena’s Black population in 2020. Right: Map of Altadena’s Black population in-line with the Eaton fire perimeter. (Maps courtesy of UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge and the UCLA Bunche Center)

According to a recent study by the UCLA Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies, the mandatory evacuation order for all of Altadena made within a day of the fire’s outbreak included nearly 3,000 Black households. Of those Black households, more than 60 percent were located directly within the fire perimeter and nearly half were demolished or sustained significant damage. Comparatively, only 50 percent of non-Black households were located in the fire perimeter and less than 40 percent were destroyed.

Lorrie Frasure, a political science and African American studies professor and director of the Bunche Center at UCLA, acknowledged the fire’s disproportionate impact in the university’s media release.

“Altadena’s Black community has long served as a symbol of resilience and opportunity in the Los Angeles region, but the Eaton Fire exposes how decades of segregation and the legacy of redlining practices have left Black households more vulnerable,” Frasure said.

As detailed in the study, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC’s) 1939 Residential Security Maps ranked Altadena neighborhoods by their comparative risk to lenders, largely designating areas west of Lake Avenue as “definitely declining” – the second poorest ranking in terms of desirability.

These rankings had a profound impact on home prices in Altadena, and those deemed “less desirable” in the west were largely left unbought, creating new opportunities for Black homeowners to claim space even with the systemic barriers in place.

Joe Ford's family investment

Home prices in 1964 and their 2025 equivalents. Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (Graphic by Sheridan Hunter)

Ford’s father was one of those new homeowners. In 1964, he bought the house for $15,500 and paid a $95 monthly mortgage, working three jobs to sustain his family. When he was eventually overextended from refinancing, Ford and his wife moved in and took it over nearly 20 years later.

“He always helped other people, even though we didn’t hardly have anything,” Ford remembered. “So I just kept that tradition. My wife comes from the same type of family.”

Joe Ford's Altadena house in 2020, before the Eaton Canyon wildfire. (Photo courtesy of Joe Ford)

One way the Ford’s kept the family tradition alive was with their house. For 16 years, Ford coached the Pasadena Boys and Girls Basketball Club, housing players when they didn’t have a place to stay. When the fire broke out and their house burned down, Ford’s nephew was also staying with them during his college visit from La Verne.

“Our house has always been a place for folks to stay,” Ford said. “It’s always been a headquarters in the community.”

For Ford, rebuilding his home isn’t just about restoring a communal space – it’s also about being able to pass on generational wealth to his family.

“We’re definitely going to rebuild because that’s my family’s way of passing on generational wealth. We don’t have that, so our property is what we’re able to pass on,” he said. “I want my boys and my grandson and grandsons to have that… to keep them going and keep it in the family, and keep it a house that’s there to help people.”

Click the lower left box to see a satellite photo that shows Joe Ford's neighborhood after the destructive Eaton Canyon wildfire. (Map by Sheridan Hunter)

According to the UCLA study, younger Black generations are likely to confront added challenges when it comes to owning a house in Altadena today. In addition to increasing home prices and a dwindling of new Black homeownership even before the fire, any intergenerational wealth or home assets younger generations may have otherwise inherited have now been interrupted by the fire – factors that will likely contribute to a further decrease in Altadena’s Black community.

In fact, if these trends continue – even without taking the lasting effects caused by the Eaton fire into consideration – Altadena’s Black population risks returning to its 1960 measure by 2040, eradicating Altadena’s Black community entirely.

“It is critical to place the consequences of the Eaton Fire in a broader historical and societal context,” stated Paul Ong, a research professor and director of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge at UCLA. “Doing so highlights the numerous challenges and inequalities African Americans face in the United States today.”

Maintaining family legacy

Keith Gibbs is a retired military professional who served for 22 years as a Marine Corps Drill Instructor. He and his wife called their place home for nearly a quarter of a century before it was devastated by the Eaton fire.

Rubble from Keith Gibbs’ devastated house in Altadena. (Photo courtesy of Keith Gibbs)

“I’m moving forward. I’m not looking back. I’m not worried about what I lost or what I should have done when I didn’t do it,” Gibbs said. “I’m just looking forward to the silver lining that’s in all of this devastation, in this carnage, and so I’m blessed in so many ways.”

Although it wasn’t easy, Gibbs credits his ability to push forward to his military training. After running out of tears from crying for three days straight, he found it easier to shift his mindset to view the situation as a mission: he had a direction, a sense of purpose, an accomplishment and an end goal, ultimately helping him to visualize his next steps. In his eyes, moving forward means leaving the past behind.

Paramount to moving forward is rebuilding – which isn’t something Gibbs “wants” to do – “that’s something that I’m going to do,” he asserted, confidently. But instead of just rebuilding one house, he plans on building two: one for him and his wife, and the other for his son, daughter-in-law and three grandchildren, all together on the same lot.

“My grandkids are three, two and newborn, and my son is 34 – same age as my daughter-in-law,” he said. “When my time comes and I close my eyes, I want to leave something for them.”

For Gibbs, the importance of maintaining a family house is generational. Coming from a big family – where his grandmother had 17 daughters – he was the first to go to college and earn a master’s degree. But, as he describes it, there was nothing left from his grandmother or parents to pass down. He wants to change that.

“The family will be together and my legacy will be right there on that property, on that land,” he said. “So when they have kids, they can say, ‘your great grandfather, this was burnt to the ground, but your great grandfather rebuilt this for us.’”

Joe Ford and Keith Gibbs describe the night the fire swept through.

Both Ford and Gibbs’ homes were located west of Lake Avenue. According to a recent investigation conducted by the Washington Post, households located on the east received evacuation orders one hour after the fire’s initial outbreak, while those on the west received none. In fact, it was reported that officials knew of the fire’s westward expansion for more than four hours before sending those residents evacuation orders. All 17 people that died in the fire resided west of Lake Avenue.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, whose Fifth District includes Altadena, said she was "not going to place blame" for the delayed evacuation orders sent to western Altadena residents, citing that it was “too early to… [shed] any disgrace… on any entity that tried to do their best to save lives and property.”

Barger did not respond to a request for an interview.

In response to the Los Angeles fires, California Gov. Gavin Newsom requested close to $40 billion in federal funding for fire aid and relief. According to his letter sent to Congress, nearly half would be allocated to public assistance such as debris removal and repairing damaged infrastructure. However, it remains unclear how much of that funding will go directly towards Altadena or those affected by the Eaton fire, and President Donald Trump’s recently introduced tariffs could prove costly in rebuilding efforts.

Rep. Judy Chu, whose district spans the Altadena-Pasadena area, invited Trump, along with Speaker Mike Johnson, to visit Altadena following the Eaton fire. Trump, however, only visited the Pacific Palisades.

“He didn’t have the decency to come and see how we was doing, but… he wanted to see those people [in the Palisades] and forget about us,” said Gibbs. “That in itself was a slap in the face… that we wasn’t worthy of him coming to see our devastation and what we’re going through.”

Forging a new way forward

Two blocks shy of Altadena, just into Pasadena, lives Dave Stone. An entertainment professional and outdoor enthusiast, Stone’s affection for Altadena deepened during the pandemic. With the idle streets, he went on runs and took walks with his dog, admiring the mountains, big trees – including those “great orange trees” – and old homes, building rapport with their residents.

Dave Stone, documentarian behind the "Not_EV_Altadena” Instagram account. (Photo courtesy of Dave Stone)

“I just loved the freedom of the neighborhood here,” Stone remembered. “I have this nostalgia for this neighborhood, I always have… and so when it was all gone… in a matter of 12 hours, eight hours… it broke my heart.”

For Stone, the government’s response was a propelling factor in his own desire to help those affected by the Eaton fire – that, and his survivor’s guilt.

“People knew right off the bat in Altadena that [the fire aid] money was never going to make it to them,” he said. “And so I knew, I was like, ‘well, you can’t wait for anybody to help you. You have to be the one to be the helper.’ And so I was like, let me see what I can do.”

Screenshot of Dave Stone's "Not_EV_Altadena” Instagram page. (Photo courtesy of Dave Stone)

Drawing on his love of cars and background in photography – when his younger self experimented with his father’s film camera and took pictures for his school’s newspaper and yearbook – the 51-year-old took to the streets to document “the great people of Altadena, CA through the cars we love and lost in the Eaton fire.”

And thus, Stone’s “Not_EV_Altadena” Instagram account was born.

Since Feb. 9, Stone has made it a point to talk to everyone he encounters on the streets of Altadena, capturing the stories of people whose gas-powered vehicles were burned in the fire to share on Instagram. Since then, he’s hardly missed a day of posting.

Altadena Cars & Coffee. (Photo courtesy of Dave Stone)

“My North Star is Altadena,” he said. “If it’s not for Altadena, it’s not going up.”

As a longtime customer, Stone proposed the idea to start Altadena Cars & Coffee to the owners of Unincorporated Coffee Roasters, where every Saturday at 8 a.m. Altadena residents would gather to enjoy each other’s company with a car show. The owners said yes.

“[Altadena] Cars & Coffee is a celebration of the diversity of Altadena and the diversity of cars, and people taking ownership of the fire,” Stone said.

A place of shared history

A business owner and friend of Stone’s is Randy Clement. As an Altadena resident, Clement co-owns and operates two public-facing, community-driven bars in the area with his wife: West Altadena Wine and Spirits, and Good Neighbor Bar. When the fire broke out and people were evacuated, Clement and his wife knew they had to do something.

Randy Clement, co-owner of West Altadena Wine and Spirits and Good Neighbor Bar. (Photo courtesy of Randy Clement)

“We have a saying in our family, which is, ‘help the people,’” Clement said in an interview with KCRW. “And I think that with Good Neighbor Bar, it’s essentially just, ‘how can we help you?’”

As Clement explained in the interview, when a friend called, frustrated that he was unable to get back to his house after being evacuated, Clement and his wife took back roads to see whether his house survived the fire. After relaying the information of his friend’s loss, Clement took to Instagram to see if anyone else was in a similar position, needing to know the status of their home.

According to the interview, Clement received an overwhelming amount of requests from other Altadena residents seeking the same update, propelling him and his wife right into action. Utilizing the same software for their wine deliveries, they drove to each requested location, took a picture and clicked “finish delivery,” automatically sharing the information with someone at their other business location, Silver Lake Wine. Once confirmed, one of two messages were sent to the resident: "It's here" or "I'm so sorry."

“That was a very big part of the first few days [after the fire] because we had the ability to sneak in and check on peoples’ homes,” Clement said.

Randy Clement and his wife’s Good Neighbor Bar in Altadena. (Photo courtesy of Randy Clement)

His bars were some of the only businesses to survive the fire and, as he remembers it, reopening was an oddity.

“It was extremely heavy, and it continues to be extremely heavy everyday,” Clement said. “Tragedy has an aura around it – it has a feeling.”

He also noticed a shift in subject matter and his interactions with customers, which now, understandably, focused on the Eaton fire. What was once an otherwise everyday bar turned into a place of solitude – a communal space where people could go to grieve in a place of shared history.

In Clement’s eyes, community is the idea that “I’ll put my one foot in front of your other… all in lock step.”

He continued: “The people up here and the people affected by this fire… we all have a long road ahead of us… it’s important to be out there and… do for one person what you wish you could do for everyone.”

Families preserving their Altadena community

Both Gibbs and Ford are leaders in their communities. For over 15 years, Gibbs worked with at-risk youth, helping to provide them with a better life and future. As the former Director of Safety and Security for John Wesley Community Health, he’s also worked closely with the unhoused, championing de-escalation techniques and building genuine relationships with the community.

Now, Gibbs has to start over. From losing everything in the fire, he’s been forced out of retirement to try and save additional income, leaning on his GoFundMe for support and staying with family in Tarzana in the meantime. And yet, he remains hopeful.

“We’re here… three blocks from my son and five blocks from my new job, so everything here in Tarzana… it’s a blessing,” Gibbs said. “Out of that rubbish came a silver lining.”

Ford is in a similar position. Even after losing almost everything in the fire – although, “not everything because my wife and I, we have each other,” he said – the Ford’s are back to square one. And yet, in moving forward, they still put their community first.

“The next day she was out at New Revelation Church, handing out supplies to people that lost everything. Folks didn’t even know,” Ford said about his wife. “But that’s how she is. Both of us – we haven’t missed a day of work since this.”

Even when the Ford’s initially evacuated to Corona – 46 miles away from their jobs in Altadena – they still went to work, showing up for those who they believed needed it most.

Tierra Thompson describes the impact Joe Ford has had on her life through basketball. (Photo courtesy of Tierra Thompson)

For decades, the Fords have shown up for their community, never asking for anything in return. Now it’s their turn to accept help, and it’s not been easy. In fact, it was Tierra Thompson, a former basketball player on Ford’s team, who created their GoFundMe.

For Ford, the outpouring of communal support has been overwhelming. From people opening their doors to provide a place to stay, donating clothes and shoes, and contributing to their GoFundMe, the power of community has kept Ford afloat.

“It’s not words to express how good it feels to feel the love of folks come in to help you get back on your feet,” he said. “Things like this bring out the best and the worst in people, and we’re seeing a whole lot more of the best.”

Both Gibbs and Ford have fire insurance, although they’re still working on getting things settled. Gibbs receives USAA from his former military service, which he claims to be taking great care of him, seamlessly arranging his post-evacuation plans at every step of the way. Ford, on the other hand, claims that State Farm has been nothing but an insensitive hassle from the beginning.

And he’s not alone. State Farm has recently been under fire for its alleged mishandling of claims, leaving victims of the Eaton fire in precarious financial situations and unable to return to tarnished homes.

“I’m committed to rebuilding, but insurance is making it really hard,” Ford said.

According to Ford, his house is listed at $1.2 million on Zillow, although his insurance is only offering to pay $670,000 towards rebuilding. After suffering from a heart attack last September, Ford has opted to hire a public adjuster to renegotiate his home’s value to avoid additional stress caused by the situation.

Wolf statue standing behind a sign that reads “Altadena not for sale!” (Photo by Sheridan Hunter)

To this day, both families also receive calls from developers trying to buy their properties – a practice that displaces communities at an accelerated rate after natural disasters, leaving them more vulnerable to what some researchers call "climate gentrification."

However, despite the challenges they’ve faced since the fire, both Gibbs and Ford believe one thing’s for certain: “Altadena is not for sale.”

“Altadena as a whole… is a beautiful community,” Gibbs said. “I’m going to rebuild, regardless of what’s built around me. I’m going to have my land, my property and my family with me.”

Ford concurs.

“The community is the people, and the people are still here,” he said. “So the houses may not be here, or some of them may not be here, but the people are still here. And everybody I talked to is committed to rebuilding.”

The GoFundMe pages of some of the families in this story affected by the Eaton fire

Joe Ford

Keith Gibbs