As night fell on Friday, Juan King walked down the middle of a deserted Altadena street deep within the Eaton fire evacuation zone. The street had been spared, but around it, on block after block, were the charred remains of the suburban neighborhood where Mr. King had grown up and lived much of his life.
“Seeing a lot of the places burned down,” he said, “it’s personal.”
The fire, among the most destructive ever to hit the city, isn’t Mr. King’s first brush with Los Angeles history. Nearly 33 years ago, the acquittals of four white Los Angeles police officers who had brutally beaten his brother Rodney King, who was Black, set off the Los Angeles riots and a racial reckoning that changed the city.
The devastation wrought by the fire reminded Mr. King of the riots. “That’s what it looked like,” he said, gesturing around him.
Mr. King said he remembered Altadena being an ethnically diverse neighborhood at a time when other areas of the city were not. His neighbors, he said, “became like family.”
“At the end of the day, everybody’s comfortable with everybody,” he said. “Even though we may never have met before, it’s like we have Altadena chemistry.”
He had been living with his cousin since splitting up with his wife. When the Eaton fire broke out on Tuesday, he decided not to leave, hoping to protect the house.
“This is all my cousin really has, and she worked hard all her life,” he said. “And so I said, you know what? She gave me a place to stay. I’m going to go ahead and sacrifice.”
On Friday night, a few lights had come back on, but the neighborhood remained deserted, with the National Guard keeping nearly everyone out. The pitch darkness and total silence of the last few nights had made the city quieter than he had ever heard. He hardly slept, fearing that with the winds and open gas lines a single ember could light his home, too.
Still, he didn’t leave. He hoped that when the fire passed, rebuilding would bring the community even closer. Sifting through the rubble in recent days, he said, he’d made up with a neighbor he had not spoken to for years.
“It brings us together,” he said. “But it also teaches us what it is like to be at a loss.”
