Maya Richard-Craven describes herself as “five generations Pasadena” because her family planted roots in the area roughly a century ago and has lived there ever since. Her relatives are involved to such an extent in local organizations, social clubs and volunteer groups, that, she said, taking a walk in nearby Altadena often means being waved down by someone who recognizes her mom.
But the Eaton Fire upended those customs, and potentially put their future in jeopardy, when it erupted in Altadena on Jan. 7. Fueled by an extreme windstorm that sparked several wildfires at once in different parts of Los Angeles and its adjacent counties, the deadly blaze spread quickly over some 14,000 acres and left a trail of charred debris in its wake.
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Vast swaths of Altadena, a historically Black enclave, were ravaged, scorching the region’s infrastructure along with its rich cultural record.
“Altadena represented prosperity. It represented joy. It represented unity and Black excellence. And for that to all burn to pieces, it’s just absolutely devastating,” said Richard-Craven. “It’s like, if a history book just lit on fire. This is a history that is deep.”
Situated just north of Pasadena in the San Gabriel foothills, Altadena was long considered a haven for Black families who began settling there at the turn of the 20th century and continued trickling in as the years ensued. Some had escaped segregation in the South and took refuge in a place that did not subscribe to the racist criteria of the era for land ownership, an anomaly even in California.
“They were allowed to purchase property,” said Richard-Craven. “And that was rare, you know, in the early 1900s.”
It established a foundation for entrepreneurship and generational wealth that, eventually, underpinned the development of Altadena into a diverse and vibrant suburb filled with close-knit companies. Richard-Craven told CBS News she is among the legacy residents who’ve come to call its iconic Old Town district by the nickname “DNA.”
More than two dozen of those displaced by the Eaton Fire are people Richard-Craven knows personally. Her cousin’s house was burned, as was her great-aunt’s — where Richard-Craven herself also lived until recently.
When she spoke to CBS News on Thursday, her first morning back in Los Angeles after evacuating to a family friend’s home in Nevada, Richard-Craven had not yet been able to visit Altadena since the fire. But she feared the neighborhood centers where Altadena’s Black community thrived for decades could now be gone.
Authorities estimated more than 7,000 structures were damaged or destroyed in the Eaton Fire alone. Apocalyptic images and video from the area show full residential blocks reduced to ash and parked vehicles melted almost to their frames. At least five schools were severely impacted.
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Richard-Craven said she never imagined witnessing such devastation in her lifetime. In the week after the fire broke out, she heard that mainstays in Altadena’s network of Black-owned businesses — a barber shop, a book store, a nail salon — may have been burned, too.
“A bunch of Black-owned businesses burned, and those people are relying on that income,” she said. “They’re relying on making money through other Black people, through customers.”
Los Angeles officials introduced a number of legislative proposals this week aimed at rebuilding areas that suffered profound losses in the wildfires, like Altadena, Malibu and Pacific Palisades. Tina McKinnor, a California State Assembly member, cited Altadena specifically at a news conference where she pledged to focus on policies that preserve the county’s cultural cornerstones, in part by protecting residents from predators looking to take advantage of them in an emergency.
“I have spoken with many families, including a number of impacted families from the historically Black neighborhoods of Altadena. These Black families have been an important part of the history of L.A. County for generations,” McKinnor said. “This history is vital — a vital part of Los Angeles County’s dynamic culture, and it’s under attack by unscrupulous speculative land investors trying to take advantage of this natural disaster and its associated trauma for their own financial gain.”
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Richard-Craven worries not everyone in Altadena will be able to fully recover, physically or financially, from the Eaton Fire, and those that do will continue to carry emotional scars. But the community’s origin story and spirit give her hope that there is a path forward.
“African Americans have survived 400 years of enslavement. We have survived mass incarceration. We have survived losing our loved ones to HIV. We have survived crack being planted in our communities,” she said. “Even though this wildfire was devastating, and Black-owned businesses burned, and homes burned, and people burned, we will persevere.”
CBS News Los Angeles contributed reporting.
