The Eaton Fire Ravaged Black Altadena. A Journalist Documents Its Resilience

Sometimes, when disaster strikes, talk radio can be a lifeline for communities–sharing critical information, providing resources, and a place for victims to share their stories.

In March of last year, just weeks after the Eaton Fire tore through Altadena, reporter James Farr launched his weekly call-in show Conversations Live: Altadena Rising on KBLA 1580 AM in Los Angeles.

The show focuses on covering Altadena’s historic Black neighborhoods, which the fire disproportionately ravaged. According to a study from UCLA, nearly half of Black homes were completely destroyed or sustained major damage, compared to 37% homes belonging to all other racial or ethnic groups’ homes.

“And I think it was at that point, hearing the testimonies of some of the survivors, that we realized that there’s a much longer story in this, and being the only Black-owned talk radio station west of the Mississippi, it was a natural fit,” Farr said.

Farr’s debut show was pretty nerve-wracking. KBLA owner and broadcast veteran Tavis Smiley was on hand overseeing production that morning, then the station suffered a temporary blackout just before airtime. But the show went on and Altadena Rising went on the air.

“We’re going to be documenting the roots, the resilience, the recovery, the rebuilding, the reunion,” Farr told the audience at the show’s start. “We got a whole lot to cover in the [coming] weeks, and I’m so happy that you’ve allowed me into your homes.”

Altadena is Farr’s home, too. He and his family moved to Altadena nearly 20 years ago, eventually settling in North Pasadena, just below Eaton Canyon, where the deadly fire began.

Dozens of lawsuits, including two filed by the U.S. Department of Justice, have blamed SoCal Edison’s faulty power infrastructure, including the 100-foot powerlines that snake into the foothills, for igniting the Eaton Fire.

Nineteen people died, 18 of them on the Westside, the heart of Black Altadena. Farr likens pre-fire West Altadena to Wakanda, the fictional African nation depicted in the Black Panther film franchise.

“It is a Black utopia. Working class, all the way up to the uber [wealthy]. Eighty percent of the Black folks that live there were homeowners,” Farr said.

“So, that’s the conversation about generational wealth, and heritage and being able to pass on a place of belonging and safety, which is so important to many Black communities because [historically], we just don’t have it like that,” he said.

Ever since that first broadcast – and as the community has moved from processing the immediate shock and destruction of the fire, to navigating displacement, and grappling with painful decisions around whether to rebuild —Altadena Rising has been a place to have those conversations.

Over the past year, Farr has grilled local and county leaders, firefighting and insurance experts and non-profits assisting displaced residents. He had a contentious interview with a Federal Emergency Management Agency representative just a few weeks after the fire tore through Altadena.

“My question to you is, when is FEMA going to step up, sit down and hear the people?” Farr asked spokesperson La-Tanga Hopes. “Stop dodging the community and listen to people.”

Hopes explained that the agency had recently opened a temporary recovery center on the Westside to serve the large number of displaced residents.

But Farr’s aim is to hand the mic over to the regular folks in the community, like Jarvis Emerson. He lost his house way up in the northwest corner of Altadena. When Emerson was on the show, he and his wife had just begun to rebuild.

“Obviously, now we’re seven months since the fire, but y’all broke ground, how does that feel?” Farr asked Emerson. “It was a real good feeling, real emotional to be able to take that shovel in my hand and dig that dirt, it did give me hope that I’m ready for this new journey,” Emerson said.

Farr recently visited Emerson at his property, which has a breathtaking view of the San Gabriel Mountains and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory perched up in the foothills. Standing inside the framed-up house that’s still awaiting walls, flooring and a roof, Emerson was clearly pleased with the progress.

“The neighbors came out, they were real supportive,” Emerson told him. “My pastor came out, and they blessed the ground, blessed the neighborhood so that no one would get hurt while the construction was going on and that it would just be a smooth process,” he said.

Farr asked Emerson: How’d he manage to start rebuilding so fast? “And is ‘fast’ a fair assessment?” asked Farr.

“Some people would say fast. For me, it was like working two full-time jobs,” said Emerson, the director of Skid Row Strategies for the L.A. Mayor’s office.

“I had to do a lot of walk-in visits and a whole lot of praying. I just need strength because I got to make this phone call, I need the strength to tame my tongue if I don’t get the answer that I want to hear,” Emerson said.

As they spoke, four other nearby properties were buzzing with the sound of cement mixers, power saws and hammers. They’re all familiar faces, said Emerson, neighbors coming back home to rebuild.

“I say, don’t give up, don’t give in,” Emerson said.

“It may be hard. It may look like you just can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, but if you stay in there, trust and believe that this storm will end and watch what comes of it.”

The Emersons are among the hopeful stories of resilience in the aftermath of the disaster. But the fire created a demographic earthquake that will shake up Altadena’s racial and class complexion for the foreseeable future. Just how much is still unknown.

There’s been this tendency among those who lived through the fire —and it’s not wrong —to put on a strong public face, even though just about everyone has struggled with trauma, depression, anxiety or anger. Farr agreed that a lot of anguish still persists beneath hopeful yard signs with slogans like “Altadena Not For Sale.”

“We’re building back, we’re stronger than ever, we will get through this, that kind of messaging,” Farr said.

“But there’s also those quiet conversations where there’s hopelessness, there’s despair, there’s a sense of not belonging, there’s displacement. So, you hear all the other things show up in conversation.”

That was evident at a packed Eaton Fire town hall event hosted by KBLA a few months ago, focusing on Southern California Edison’s Wildfire Recovery Compensation Fund.

One of Farr’s guests that night was Toni Bailey-Raines. Sixty years ago, her parents became one of the few Black families that bought “East of Lake.” Meaning, east of Lake Boulevard, the main thoroughfare that cleaves Altadena into two very distinctive halves. The fire took the house.

Raines said the monetary settlements that SoCal Edison was offering homeowners through the compensation plan felt like an insult given the humiliation that her accomplished parents, whose home was filled with treasures collected during their world travels, experienced during those early days on the Eastside.

“What my parents had to go through to buy east of Lake in 1968, to have white neighbors move away, because they moved in,” Raines said tearfully.

Farr later told me he’s had his own struggles since the fire. He’d been suffering from debilitating insomnia that he ties to the stress and anxiety of covering the aftermath of the fire. He reached out to Eshele Williams, a mental health therapist and long-time friend.

“People call it secondary trauma, it is the trauma of the listener, the trauma of the seer,” explained Williams. “You don’t have to be in the situation for your body to feel that, and much as James [Farr] talks, you must be able to process this out. I mean, there are people that are still crying, and they didn’t lose a home, but it’s not about that.”

Williams, her mother, two sisters also lost their homes — all in the same neighborhood. Williams said she lived elsewhere for a time while finishing college and starting her career. But living anywhere else but Altadena was never really a question for anyone in the family.

“We’re all just very close-knit and we kind of joke and say, ‘if somebody was brave enough to move away, then maybe we’d have a place to stay now,’” laughed Williams. “But because everybody stayed, we’re all in the same situation.”

In a sense, all of those who lived through the fire are in the same situation. Each is trying to hang onto and defend the people and the places that are still standing, and feeling a little wary of the changes that are sure to come.

Being a reporter, Farr said, offers some advantages because of how well he knows the community. But that objective line between “journalist” and “friend,” or “journalist” and “neighbor,” gets blurry fast.

“I know over 200 families that lost everything,” Farr said. “While we want to maintain objectivity, we’re in it. This is trauma journalism full du jour. We can’t rationalize the survivor’s guilt that we may experience.”

Farr’s show will soon begin its second year covering the aftermath of the Eaton Fire.

“We can’t find the silver lining sometimes for our friends who have lost everything,” he said, “but I spend a lot of my days, for hours, just listening to people.”