‘Did we just lose everything we’ve invested all our lives into?’: Occidental community grapples with Eaton Fire

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Wiley Calkins (junior) walking up a driveway shared by his neighbors in Altadena, CA. Jan. 25, 2025. James Miller/The Occidental

“I can’t leave my dad” — student Wiley Calkins

In Birkenstocks and sweatpants at his home in Altadena, Wiley Calkins (junior) turns up a long driveway between four homes, three of which were turned to rubble when the Eaton Fire ravaged his neighborhood on the night of Jan. 7. He could be navigating the remains of a prefab neighborhood staged at a nuclear test site, if it weren’t for suburban accouterments dotting the hellscape: charred citrus trees, garden furniture sets, hammock stands and umbrella bases. A wooden chicken coop stands intact on an adjacent property, serving as a refuge for a half dozen chickens since the fire. Calkins has walked this path to feed them every day.

“They’re mad cute, and they give us eggs,” Calkins said nonchalantly.

He said he has no clue why the coop didn’t burn.

“A lot of it’s pure luck,” Calkins said. “Some of it’s just human intervention, like our house, with my dad and I.”

Debris in Wiley Calkins’ (junior) backyard in Altadena, CA. Jan. 25, 2025. James Miller/The Occidental

While Calkins’ house emerged from the Eaton Fire mostly unscathed — but with a plethora of safety hazards and health risks — at least a dozen current or former Occidental employees and multiple students lost their homes to the Eaton Fire.

Calkins was working his usual kitchen shift at Chick-fil-A around 7 p.m. Jan. 7 when his manager told him that parts of Altadena east of Lake Street, where he lives, were under an evacuation order. Calkins rushed home and added his Playstation and clothes to a car his parents were packing full of their art and valuables. He left to help his aunt and grandmother evacuate their home, which burned down that night. Around 9 p.m., Calkins’ mom, Guadalupe, evacuated with the family’s cats and dogs — Chapo, Pablo, Whopper and Indy — to a relative’s home in Chino Hills, outside of LA County. But Calkins’ dad, John, wanted to stay. Calkins joined him.

“I can’t leave my dad, you know,” Calkins said.

They cracked open beers and watched TV together for about an hour, before his dad went to bed. At midnight, Calkins woke his dad up and they went for a drive to check out the fires. Calkins’ said his dad wasn’t too worried since the fire was still fairly high up the foothills.

Calkins, who has wanted to become a firefighter since high school, stayed up watching the news and constantly checking the progress of the fire. He woke his dad up at 3 a.m. for a second time.

“You could tell he was a little nervous, which I don’t see,” Calkins said. “Ever.”

Wiley Calkins (junior) at his home in Altadena, CA. Jan. 25, 2025. James Miller/The Occidental

They began hosing down the outside of their house. The fire was everywhere.

“The sky was orange and black, and I was coughing and my eyes are burning,” Calkins said. “I could barely see too […] I’m covered in water and my burns.”

To protect himself from embers, Calkins put on a jacket, but he still burned his hands. At one point during the night, his dad was standing on a sandbag trying to water something down and fell onto a pole, likely cracking one of his ribs. Water pressure began to decrease after about an hour, and the pair began filling five-gallon buckets with water from their pool. Calkins kept the sides and roof of his house, the pool house and the backyard damp while his dad watered the front of the property.

“I did the backyard, clearly didn’t do a good enough job since it all burnt down,” Calkins said jokingly.

While running down his driveway during the firestorm, a 40-foot branch from an oak tree fell near Calkins.

“It almost fell on top of me. I was running through with the hose and it fell and I literally looked behind and it just missed me. It was nuts,” Calkins said.

Calkins said that around 6 a.m. the fires seemed to intensify, and he and his dad left in separate cars, driving towards Chino Hills to meet his mom. On the freeway, Calkins got a call from his dad, who had decided to turn around because he believed the fire would be easier to fight after daybreak. Calkins stayed the course, sleeping four hours in Chino Hills before promptly driving back to Altadena to help extinguish the remaining fire on his property.

“The second I woke up, I got in my car and whipped it back here,” Calkins said.

While his family’s home remained mostly intact, Calkins found the pool house and backyard significantly damaged when he returned. Among other health hazards, the family does not have potable water and needs to replace their ventilation system.

“We can shower, but not for more than like five minutes because it’s bad for your skin supposedly, because the flame retardant got into the water and that causes cancer,” Calkins said. “Granted, I’ve been showering, so we’re just going to have to wait and see what happens.”

They are considering leasing a home, though Calkins said his dad, a set designer, is less enthusiastic about doing so because he built much of theirs.

Calkins said he received an emergency relief check and free food from work, a $1,000 relief check from Occidental and free meals from local restaurants. While he feels comfortable sharing his experiences from the fire, Calkins said others in Altadena might be more reluctant, not because they do not want to talk, but because they physically cannot.

“I’ve seen a lot of adults who I’ve barely talked to who live nearby cry in front of me because their houses are gone,” Calkins said.

“I’m not in this hell by myself” — Arthur G. Coons Professor in the History of Ideas Amy Lyford

In her 25 years of living in Altadena, Amy Lyford said she had never experienced winds stronger than those blowing Jan. 7. At around 3:30 a.m., Lyford woke up to the sounds of the strong wind and trees scratching her windows.

“The wind was so loud that I got up to get yard furniture out into the house so it wouldn’t blow and break windows,” Lyford said. “I’m in my bare feet by myself with this long chair, like holy shit, it’s blowing around, but I got everything inside.”

That afternoon, Lyford went to her car to pack a blanket, sleeping bag, some dog food and her computers. At around 6:20 p.m., Lyford said she went to add dog treats to the back of her car — but when she went outside, Lyford could see the Eaton Fire about half a mile away. An evacuation order would not come through until about an hour later, according to Lyford.

The moment she saw the flames, Lyford said she knew that she had to leave immediately.

“I think I was in denial that it was really going to happen because I ended up grabbing really random things, like what was in the laundry basket that I hadn’t put away yet,” Lyford said.

Even though there was not enough space in Lyford’s car to put boxes of belongings, there was still some room for regret.

“I wish I’d saved some photos, even just grabbed a handful […] or my mother’s jewelry, or jewelry I really treasured that’s small,” Lyford said.

Lyford locked the door, drove to the top of the driveway and turned around to say goodbye to her home.

“I wasn’t sure if it would be there when I came back,” Lyford said. “And it wasn’t.”

Lyford has returned to her property three times since the night she evacuated. The day after, Lyford said it was still smoking, with mini fires still ablaze on the property. Since visiting again Jan. 23, Lyford said it looks “like bombs were dropped” on the neighborhood.

Remains of a home on Wiley Calkins’ (junior) block in Altadena, CA. Jan. 25, 2025. James Miller/The Occidental

“My house is gone, my neighbors are gone, my community is gone,” Lyford said. “There’s this feeling of being adrift and alone.”

Since evacuating, Lyford has stayed in three different places — a hotel in Burbank, President Tom Stritikus’ house for four days and now a place in Silver Lake she rented for herself and her two dogs. As the fire forces people to find shelter elsewhere, Lyford said her friends are scattered everywhere. Despite the efforts of Altadena residents to keep in touch over social media groups or Zoom calls, Lyford noted the difficulty of losing the physical proximity of Altadena’s community.

“We didn’t just lose our house — we lost our community,” Lyford said. “Somebody’s in Berkeley and somebody’s [with] family in South [Pasadena] and somebody else is in Joshua Tree. I haven’t seen my friends.”

In light of this, Lyford said the Altadena town council has been an amazing hub of information and that community leaders have been instrumental in helping people get through the initial process of losing their homes.

The communication, or lack thereof, from Lyford’s friends has helped her learn about her relationships and the people close to her. Lyford said she appreciates those who have reached out, and it has been amazing to realize how many people care for her.

“Even just saying, like, ‘I’m thinking about you’ […] That has been helpful to me, just realizing I’m not in this hell by myself,” Lyford said. “That somebody [is] thinking of me and they want to help me and they don’t necessarily know how, but just knowing that they’re there and that I can reply to them or not — it’s helpful.”

Lyford expressed uncertainty about the rebuilding process, as she is currently preoccupied with the immediate future.

“I don’t know what percentage of people are going to rebuild, who knows,” Lyford said. “Because first you have to figure out where you’re gonna stay, and you need clothes. So it’s sort of like the rebuild is maybe down the road, at least in my mind.”

Slowly but unwaveringly, Lyford said that her past has prepared her for this current situation; the destruction of her home is not the first time Lyford has had to face a devastating loss. In 2017, Lyford’s husband was killed in a motorcycle crash.

“That was terrible,” Lyford said. “Sudden death of your partner — I mean, it was bad.”

The trauma of this fire, although different, reminds her of that experience eight years ago.

“In a way, the house that I lost was also his house,” Lyford said. “I guess I’ve learned in this situation, ‘I could survive that, so I’m probably gonna survive this.’ Whereas that first time, I was not sure I would make it.”

“I couldn’t even find our house at first” — Associate Professor of Music Shanna Lorenz

When Shanna Lorenz stepped outside of her home the evening of Jan. 7, the palm trees were practically horizontal. As she stood there, Lorenz could see a giant wall of flames in the distance: the Eaton Fire, quickly being pushed by the wind. She was shocked by its sheer size.

“You really had the sense that you were in the presence of something unknowable,” Lorenz said. “Something really big, something really powerful.”

After Lorenz and her mother evacuated to a friend’s house in South Pasadena that night, Lorenz said she wanted to stop by the house the next day to grab a few things. When she woke up the morning of Jan. 8, Lorenz was unsuspecting of the events to follow.

“I really did not think our house would have burned down,” Lorenz said.

At noon, Lorenz left her friend’s house and drove back. Driving through her neighborhood, about four blocks from her house, Lorenz could see that houses were actively on fire, and flames were shooting up on both sides of the street. At that point, Lorez realized this was a bigger problem than she had expected. Then, she arrived at her block.

Ruins of Wiley Calkins’ (junior) neighbor’s backyard in Altadena, CA. Jan. 25, 2025. James Miller/The Occidental

“We drove past our house and the whole street was just gone,” Lorenz said. “I couldn’t even find our house at first. The piles of ash just all [looked] the same.”

According to Lorenz, differences in class, gender and race shape how people emerge from this disaster and come together as a community.

“On one hand, I’m overwhelmed by the generosity of strangers during this period, but I just have this slight worry sometimes that that generosity is available to me because I’m white,” Lorenz said.

In the aftermath of the fire, Lorenz said she is focusing her efforts less on herself but aiming to direct support to members of her community. For Lorenz, she said it has been important to feel like she is contributing to rebuilding.

“Altadena itself was and is such an incredible community,” Lorenz said. “It’s a place where, really since the great migration, it was one of the few areas where there wasn’t red lining, and so there was sort of a pocket of Black community established and that grew after World War II.”

While Lorenz has been looking out for others, one person has made significant efforts to look out for her — Lorenz’s son, Remy Julian-Lorenz. A student at UC Santa Cruz, Remy has been coming down to visit his mother and grandmother every weekend to help out.

Remy started a GoFundMe for his family, which Lorenz said she initially felt “borderline mortified” about. Asking, in comparison to giving, is something that Lorenz said she is not always comfortable with.

“I’m a private person, and I feel like he’s shared a pretty intimate view of our lives that I don’t know if I would have shared on my own,” Lorenz said. “But in the end, it’s been lovely. We’ve connected with friends and family and strangers — I’m probably more connected with people I’ve known in my life at this moment than I have been at any other point in my adult life.”

Even if one has not been directly affected by the fires, Lorenz said that climate change will eventually impact everyone.

“When you talk about students who maybe can’t empathize or haven’t gone through this, I think that you will be able to, because as time moves forward, we’re all [going to] be increasingly living these effects,” Lorenz said.

“Everybody broke down crying” — Senior Director of Administration for the Mary Norton Clapp Library Brian Chambers

Around 7:15 p.m. Jan. 7, Brian Chambers got an LA County alert on his phone, urging him to be prepared to evacuate. The notification prompted Chambers and one of his daughters to step outside their home, west of Lake Street in Altadena and roughly 2 miles from Eaton Canyon.

“We could see smoke coming through the trees, almost like fog coming through, with a red glow behind it,” Chambers said. “And at that point, I looked at that notification again, it said be prepared to leave, and I said, ‘No, we’re going now.'”

To avoid smoke inhalation, Chambers and his family went to stay at his parent’s home in Burbank for the night, expecting to return the following morning. At 9 a.m. Jan. 8, Chambers got a call from his next-door neighbor, Chris Mangandi, whose daughter is best friends with Chambers’ daughter. Mangandi let Chambers know that his home had burned down. Chambers’ family overheard him on the phone and knew something was wrong.

“I simply said, ‘Our house is gone,’ and everybody broke down crying,” Chambers said. “We all had different thoughts and concerns. The girls were devastated that they weren’t going to be living next door to their best friend, and they were worried about her.”

Chambers said that he and his wife were talking about things they had lost in the fire, and about what happens next.

“Did we just lose everything we’ve invested all our lives into? Are we going to be able to rebuild it? And those questions still remain, but we have a better idea of how things are going to work now,” Chambers said.

After staying with his parents for two weeks, Chambers and his family secured a rental home in Burbank, which he expects they will live in for at least two years.

“It’s going to be crazy to get contractors, to get labor, and it’s going to be really expensive because there’s going to be a shortage of everything,” Chambers said.

According to Chambers, he is waiting on government and insurance agencies before taking steps to rebuild, but that recovery began with getting basic necessities such as clothes and school supplies for his daughters, as well as items to make his new home livable.

“You take a shower and you’re like, ‘Oh, we need a shower mat,'” Chambers said. “We had the forethought to grab towels, but […] you kind of forget how many little things you have.”

He said that his experience with the community’s relief efforts has been amazing.

“I will come out of this a much better person because of the love, support [and] generosity that we have experienced from our friends, our family, our colleagues, our community and strangers,” Chambers said.

Chambers said that his family moved to Altadena in 2022 from Eagle Rock. Among other reasons, they were drawn to Altadena for its proximity to nature and its music community.

“I love jazz, and there’s a strong history of jazz in that area,” Chambers said. “There are a lot of well-known musicians in the jazz community that live up there.”

Chambers, a record collector, had made his most recent addition to his collection of close to 900 records a few days before the fire. He keeps about a third of his collection in his office, the Bill Henry room in the library.

Brian Chambers in his office with the surviving portion of his record collection in the Mary Norton Clapp Library at Occidental College in Los Angeles. Jan. 29, 2025. James Miller/The Occidental

“The ones that we had at home are the ones that, for the most part, both my wife [and I] would enjoy,” Chambers said. “These are the ones she doesn’t mind being away from the house.”

Chambers said he is open to talking about the fire and that having folks he has not heard from in a long time reach out to him has been incredibly meaningful.

“It’s just heartwarming to know that these people are in my life,” Chambers said.

“I thought I was going to work the next day” — Senior Director for Advancement Services in the Office of Institutional Advancement Natalie Greenhouse ’10

When Natalie Greenhouse and her husband left their western Altadena home with their young kids, Eliza and Aaron, they each brought a suitcase and a box of dirty laundry.

“I thought I was going to work the next day, I thought I was coming to campus,” Greenhouse said. “I had clothes for work — I say it laughing because what else can I do? Why did I think that? But also, this is crazy that it turned that quickly.”

Natalie Greenhouse outside her office at Occidental College in Los Angeles, CA. Jan. 28, 2025. James Miller/The Occidental

When they arrived at her parents’ home in Eagle Rock, Greenhouse said the neighborhood had no power.

“LA City turned the power off because of high winds,” Greenhouse said. “SoCal Edison in Altadena did not. There are lawsuits pending about that — the role that SCE had in any of this — their tower exploded in all of this.”

Since losing their home, Greenhouse said she is feeling grief, gratitude and guilt. Greenhouse said that properties in western Altadena, a historically Black neighborhood, were typically large with multiple homes.

“I was in line for a donation, and the woman behind me was describing how her brother lost his home,” Greenhouse said. “And his home had two other units that his two adult children and their families were living in. So there’s this multi-generational impact of the fire on so many people who are from the Altadena community and northern Pasadena community, where they had nowhere else to go.”

In addition to the homes destroyed by the Eaton fire, people lost work. Greenhouse’s landscaper, who had just done a big project for them, was the one who told them their house was gone, and the fire wiped out his clientele.

“People are pouring out support to me and to my family, and I have all of these resources available,” Greenhouse said. “But did those individuals have the same access to resources? And the answer is definitely not. And yet their lives are completely upended by this as well.”

Courtesy of Natalie Greenhouse

Greenhouse said it is important to remember that the rebuilding process will take years. She said she hopes the outpouring of support and publicity the community is receiving will still be available years from now when people are still homeless and financial assistance from FEMA and insurance policy payments dwindles.

According to Jonathan Ahrens, Greenhouse’s colleague and a Sierra Madre resident who lives blocks from now-burnt homes, the fire left him in a state of shock that reminds him of losing a loved one.

“Only after six or eight months do you realize they’re gone,” he said.

Greenhouse, the daughter of Occidental alums and an Eagle Rock native, said that part of her family’s decision to buy a home in Altadena was to be close to the Occidental community. Greenhouse cherished Altadena’s down-to-earth atmosphere, especially the farmer’s market in Loma Alta Park.

“You just let [the] kids run around and be free, and there’s a horse ring and horses walk by,” Greenhouse said. “You just hang out for hours on end, and there’s food stalls and organic produce, and you’re just like, ‘This is a really great little place to be.'”

“There’s no record of a fire inside of 150 years” — retired Environmental Health and Safety Monitor Bruce Steele ’71

Bruce Steele, the FEAST Garden’s official namesake, said that he and his wife are staying with his daughter in Highland Park after losing their home on Alzada Road in western Altadena.

An avid beekeeper, Steele lost all of his 185 bee hives but one, on Mount Fiji.

“They had personalities,” Steele said. “I knew which colonies were pissy and I would work those at the end of the day so they wouldn’t get the alarm pheromones up in the air for the rest of the group.”

Steele kept shipping containers on his property, one of which had lines with drywall on the inside for fire resistance. Inside, he stacked five-gallon buckets with his avocado, orange blossom and wildflower honey from Chantry Flats in the San Gabriels, thousands of pounds all together. He said the radiant heat from the fire inside the container was so intense that it ruined the honey.

“The honey that leaked out of my containers onto the ground, and then the water evaporated out of it — incredibly sticky,” Steele said. “So the roof rats that survived, they were a pain in the ass in the attic every once in a while, got stuck to that.”

According to Steele, the Altadena chaparral soil is now hydrophobic, meaning it repels the first rains that hit it. Underground root stalks survived the fire, and the seeds of ‘fire followers‘ in the topsoil are ready to sprout, Steele said.

“Where we were, there’s no record of a fire inside of 150 years,” Steele said. “So there should be a good seed bank there if it doesn’t wash away.”

“We looked after others, they looked after us” — Book Arts Program Coordinator and The Lowercase Printshop charge-de-affairs Jocelyn Pedersen

Jocelyn Pedersen lives in northern Pasadena and said via email that her family was evacuated for two weeks before her home was remediated. According to Pedersen, her family’s bonds with neighbors have strengthened during the recovery efforts.

“We were already fortunate to have good relations with our neighbors up and down our street — our dog, Scout, is a great ambassador and conversation starter and friendship maker — but this trust was deepened as we relied on each other and helped each other,” Pedersen said via email.

Pedersen’s husband, Erik, asked their kids to prepare a backpack early in the day on Jan. 7, but never thought they would have to evacuate.

“We watched as the flames were visible from our backyard and decided to leave before an evacuation order. But our first intended place to go in Sierra Madre lost power and then came under its own distress, so we ended up at the home of a relative in Pasadena near Highland Park,” Pedersen said via email. “We got our family out, our pets out.”

According to Pedersen, neighbor-to-neighbor aid has been powerful in the aftermath of the fire.

“Hope” sign outside of a home on Wiley Calkins’ (junior) block in Altadena, CA. Jan. 25, 2025. James Miller/The Occidental

“We looked after others, they looked after us,” Pedersen said via email. “Though we often hear and focus on the negative, it’s important to remember: People are good. (Mostly, anyway.)”

Contact James Miller and Emma Cho at jmiller4@oxy.edu and echo2@oxy.edu

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1 COMMENT

  1. This is a beautiful testament to these brother and sisters at a tragic moment for all of Occidental. Strong work by these young journalists. Powerful photos too.

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