Then the Eaton fire started just east of LA, near Pasadena in middle-class Altadena. By the time I got there, the chaos looked like a war zone. The v
Then the Eaton fire started just east of LA, near Pasadena in middle-class Altadena. By the time I got there, the chaos looked like a war zone. The visibility was maybe 25 feet. There were spot fires and embers in a park, which people were trying to put out themselves. Large branches had come down everywhere. I had to push open my truck door with both arms, because there was so much wind pressure keeping it shut. There were fire engines everywhere, people walking down the street with bags, loads of cars backed up. I knew that a lot of people, including people I knew and cared about, might be losing their homes that night.
Two people embrace in a hug as crews from the California Conservation Corps install “water bars” in their neighborhood in Altadena where the Eaton Fireburned. The barriers are designed to prevent hazardous runoff from burned cars and homes from entering the water supply.By Stuart Palley.
I drove by a senior care home that had just been evacuated. They got nearly 200 people onto city bus- es and were gone by the time I got there, but I saw empty hospital gurneys and beds just rolling down the road in the wind. The mattresses were blowing off and getting wrapped around palm trees, which were igniting on top, throwing embers off, and start- ing more spot fires downwind. I saw the crew of one Los Angeles County fire engine trying to put water on a home that was ablaze. It was already a total loss, but they were trying to stop it from igniting neighboring homes. Even a fire engine with its high-pressure deck gun shooting a torrent of water was like pissing in the wind at that point.
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