The Los Angeles firestorm of January 2025 was a double disaster, burning thousands of homes and claiming many lives throughout Pacific Palisades and Altadena.
But over the past year, much of the national conversation has shifted toward Pacific Palisades and away from Altadena — despite the glaring flaws in both fires that deserve scrutiny and accountability.
Concern and anger over news from the Palisades fire has been fueled by celebrity victims and well-connected critics of Los Angeles City Hall, whose grief has spilled over into the country’s deeply divided politics. In the fall, Republican members of Congress began an investigation into the LA fires, but the investigation so far has only focused on the Palisades fire. Recently, as the Trump administration sought to rebuild quickly, officials met only with victims from the Palisades.
Many in west Altadena were left with a frustrating — but familiar — feeling: that they were being ignored.
“If you just landed on another planet and you didn’t know and you started looking at the wildfires in LA … you would think that the only place that was hit was the Pacific Palisades,” said Earl Ofari Hutchinson, president of the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable. “West Altadena is lost in this tension.”
The historically Black community, made up mostly of working-class families, did not receive warnings to evacuate until the fire had already descended on their properties. Many affluent areas received warnings and orders immediately. A Times investigation found a failure of vigilance in January of last year, and later found that almost no fire trucks were on that side of the community as the fire raged. Almost all of the 19 people who died in the Eaton fire – all within two square miles of each other – lived in this western part of the city. It also suffered extensive fire damage.
Yet officials in charge of the fire response have failed to provide a detailed explanation of what led to the failure, let alone take responsibility.
This month, however, seems to indicate a major shift in public discourse and demands for Altadena’s accountability since the fire. California Atty. General. Rob Bonta announced this month that his office has opened a human rights investigation into how LA County prepared and responded to the Eaton fire, especially looking at the disparity that occurred in the historically Black west Altadena due to delayed evacuation warnings.
It’s a win west of Altadena celebrated — though it came after months of activist and strategic pressure from a group of citizens who pushed to ensure their community and the tragedies it faced would not be ignored.
“Communities that have historically been overlooked have had to fight for their issues to be seen and recognized,” said Shimica Gaskins, an Eaton fire survivor and member of Altadena for Accountability. The grassroots group had asked for such an investigation to be conducted in Bonta.
LA County officials said they would fully cooperate with the attorney general’s investigation, but stressed that none of the reviews so far “found any discrimination or structural bias in the county’s response.”
“We believe the Attorney General will find that emergency responders did the best they could under unprecedented and dire circumstances,” county officials said in a joint statement.
In the Palisades, residents have made fire-related mistakes a powerful issue in LA politics, helping to fire the Los Angeles fire chief and now the uncertain future of Mayor Karen Bass. A Times investigation found violations in how the Los Angeles Fire Department used resources for the fire and how crews failed to monitor remnants of a previous fire that would burn in the neighborhood. Reality TV star Spencer Pratt, who lost his house and became a vocal critic of the city’s handling of the fire, is now running with Bass.
The atmosphere in Altadena has been somewhat politically charged, but local activists say that’s by design.
The community is equally frustrated with elected leaders and emergency officials — there have been calls for LA County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone to step down — but Altadena activists wanted to keep their message united and focused, hoping to have a bigger impact.
“We really wanted a systematic approach,” said Gina Clayton-Johnson, group leader for Altadena for Accountability and a victim of the Eaton fire. “That doesn’t require maybe a knee jerk game but something different.”
Altadena’s status as an unincorporated city can make it more difficult to focus on the highly fragmented county government, but the group said it wants to make sure any political changes are appropriate.
“It’s not the absence of anger,” said Sylvie Andrews, a member of Altadena for Accountability and a survivor of the Eaton fire. “It’s a laser-focused approach to anger.”
The community is managed by the five members of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, with Kathryn Barger’s district including Altadena. The Los Angeles County Fire Department oversaw the response to the Eaton fire, and has been widely criticized for failed warnings and limited firefighting resources on the city’s west side.
The county commissioned a review of its fire evacuation plan, but was widely criticized for not revealing what or who caused the failure. Officials later criticized the report, admitting that it did not answer important questions.
After the fire and the mistakes of the district, many citizens of Altadena were forced to discuss more about the state of unincorporated society, some want to be a city and more independent of their services and facilities. But this is still a divisive issue. Many have historically loved the freedom of its unincorporated governance and, in the past, have fought the idea of being swallowed up by a surrounding city like Pasadena.
In the meantime, however, the issue of infrastructure remains a hot topic given all that the community is already dealing with: the herculean task of rebuilding and rehabilitating and fighting for justice in the aftermath of the fire.
A coalition of community leaders and concerned citizens seeking accountability have settled on one goal: an independent investigation by the state’s attorney general. They hoped that the inquiry would not only allow a thorough investigation into the power of the subpoena – which is ultimately key to providing answers and accountability in the failure of the fire – but would also avoid the hidden political motives that have united on the national stage and could provide a road map for other communities of color after the disaster, said Clayton-Johnson.
They realized that the odds were stacked against them, like many Black and black communities seeking justice after a disaster, from the Lower 9th Ward in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina to Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria.
But Clayton-Johnson also said her community has a history and spirit that is “uniquely powerful,” with members who include descendants of civil rights leaders, families who started unprecedented cycles of black wealth and neighbors who lead important nonprofits.
West Altadena is made up of people who “want to dedicate their lives and their work to justice, equality, welfare, health, nature,” Clayton-Johnson said.
Their efforts eventually led to a meeting with Bonta last month, where their team presented a brief, lengthy legal and personal testimony, which seemed to sway the attorney general.
Bonta specifically referred to the advocacy and dedication of “members of the western Altadena community” in his announcement of the investigation, saying the group “had a huge impact on me.”
Although he said that his office has been working on the matter for months, his announcement of the investigation came more than a year after he called for an independent investigation.
“We have a lot to do to get attention on this issue,” Gaskins said. “We didn’t want to do that, but we did it because we know that’s what’s important to our community and moving forward.”
Shawna Dawson Beer, a member of Altadena for Accountability and a survivor of the fire, agreed that the attorney’s plea took too long. But he also pointed out that the investigation is just one part of the citizens who want to be held accountable. They’re still fighting for insurance compensation, an admission of wrongdoing from Southern California Edison — whose equipment may have started the Eaton fire — and a thorough, environmentally friendly cleanup, to name a few.
“From Day 1 … the Palisades fire sucked the oxygen out of the room, and this was the second fire,” Dawson Beer said.
But some activists point out that this is not a competition: There should be a place for victims of both burns to see their concerns addressed and find accountability.
“It’s not a zero sum game,” Andrews said. “I think if we get answers or attention to issues in any community, it will ultimately benefit the other community and benefit all of LA County.”
