Before anyone received an official alert about the Eaton fire, a message lit up a pickleball group chat.
“Everyone look up, there’s a vegetation fire on Canyon Close,” the message read. “If you’re anywhere near Eaton Canyon, I’d evacuate.”
Over the next several days, the chat of about 50 people who met regularly at the Altadena Country Club pinged with updates about where the fire was headed, pleas to evacuate, offerings of safe-havens and status updates on what was lost.
In the nearly 10 months since the fire, that group has morphed into a community of more than 8,500 people, which includes more than 3,000 who regularly communicate in a Discord group and vent their frustrations. The network, a majority from Altadena, has seen the adrenaline that pushed people at the beginning of the year wear off as a sense of dismay set in. Momentum has slowed as residents sink into a waiting game while they vie for permit approval, decide whether to return or grapple with new and ongoing unknowns.
Resident Ursula Hyman calls this timeframe the “period of great disillusionment.”
A recent AI analysis of the Discord chat found that distressed messages about financial pressures have increased. Joy Chen, the executive director of the network, said that sentiment has shifted from defiance to despair.
“I’m in the [chat] every single day. I was blown away by the amount of grief and trauma that came pouring out of people,” Chen said. “It’s definitely on a different level now than it was in the early days after the fire.”
“The perception of having nowhere to turn… makes people feel REALLY ignored,” one message read.
“No law firm is going to be able to compensate a long‑term renter like me,” read another.
Similar to Slack, the chat comprises several channels centered on topics including remediation, rebuilding, health and safety, mental health and legal support. Neighborhood captains help answer questions and field answers. Chen points out that the messaging application isn’t driven by external factors or algorithms like on social media.
“We really are just survivors speaking with one another. We are a fundamentally different beast than a social media account.”
The Eaton Fire Survivors Network has led calls for fair compensation from insurance carriers and have been vocal critics of Edison’s settlement offers, recently pressing the company to front $2.4 billion in urgent housing relief. The network also regularly turns to each other with questions and answers about rebuilding efforts, toxins and the insurmountable work it takes to find normalcy in the aftermath of disaster.
Erin Rank, the CEO of Habitat for Humanity for the Greater Los Angeles area, said that her group saw the growing community within the network and encouraged the group to file for nonprofit status. In the interim, Habitat agreed to be the network’s fiscal sponsor so they could start accepting donations. The California Community Foundation has also provided funding.
Chen, a former deputy mayor of Los Angeles under Mayor Jim Hahn, was the administrator for the Whatsapp group that became the Eaton Fire Survivors Network. The message group moved over from Whatsapp to Discord to allow for more people to join and for newcomers to catch up on older information.
Chen has lived in Altadena for over a decade and counts herself fortunate. Though her home was filled with ash and required remediation, she was able to move back.
Others in the grassroots network saw their homes burned down or suffer extensive damage.
Andrew Wessels’ family has moved a dozen times this past year after their home in West Altadena experienced significant smoke damage. Floor boards, walls and the living room ceiling will need to be torn up and replaced.
While they fight for approvals from insurance, the Wessels finally found some stability in a long-term rental. But questions loom about when they’ll be able to get back to their place on Glen Avenue.
“I have a 6- and 2-year-old,” Wessels, 41, said. “What do we need to do to remediate this home where we can imagine safely putting these kids back in there?”
Wessels had lived in Altadena for less than two years when the fire hit. A new resident compared to others, he’s thrown himself into advocating for the community, and was a lead author on the network’s recent response to Edison’s draft settlement offer, which the group said severely overlooked affected properties and offered inadequate payments.
He believes that the state of reality is tougher now than it was months ago when recovery was fueled by a push to clean up.
Now, residents, initially ready to move back swiftly, contend with ongoing questions about lingering toxicity levels and face obstacles from insurance carriers over remediation costs and property estimates that fall below actual rebuilding costs.
“More and more people are hitting the wall. There’s less and less help now,” he said, adding that challenges continue to stack up. “How many hurdles can you jump over?”
A recent UCLA report found that roughly 70% of severely fire-damaged homes in Altadena have not filed permits to rebuild or have been sold. The report attributed the limbo to a variety of possible factors including indecision over whether to stay or go, holdups with insurance and financial instability.
Hyman lives below the burn zone. Her house on Avocado Terrace was spared; her daughter’s house was not, nor was a rental property Hyman owned. The retired attorney considers herself fortunate — she has a house to live in, after all.
“I’m not ever going to be homeless,” Hyman, 74, said. But she knows first-hand others are facing a different reality. “I’m dealing with hundreds of people every day where that’s not the case.”
Hyman personally knows nearly 80 people who lost their homes in the fire and agrees that for many, the post-fire reality is getting tougher to handle. She has been involved in various fire recovery efforts, including the Eaton Fire Survivors Network. She consulted Chen on the response to the Edison draft and helped write a proposal for emergency funding in the area.
“We’ve got people sleeping in the streets, we’ve got people still who are couch-surfing. We need emergency funding,” she said. “The overwhelming feeling of despair is palpable.”
Hyman said that as time passes and as the disaster becomes “old news,” people feel like they’re being abandoned as help winds down.
“That sense of urgency isn’t there anymore and yet the urgency is even more real because people are at the tipping point on deciding whether to build or rebuild — they’re at a critical decision-making point.”
A recent report from the Department of Angels, a fire recovery program launched after the fires, surveyed more than 2,300 residents across L.A. County and found that 8 in 10 Altadena residents and 9 in 10 Pacific Palisades residents have not returned home. The toll is especially high for households who make less than $100,000. The report found that many such households have had to cut back on food or skip medical care.
This isn’t Hyman’s first fire in Altadena. Her home was the only one standing on her street after a fire in 1993 ripped through her old neighborhood. She moved to her current residence soon after, unsure of what toxins remained in the area.
Her daughter was a child then; Hyman didn’t imagine that nearly 30 years later, she would go through this type of experience as an adult with her own child, forcing the family to relocate.
“Emotionally, it’s ripping my family apart and it’s also killing me financially,” Hyman said.
“It’s been a period of trauma — no doubt about it.”
On a recent sunny afternoon, Chen drives through Altadena. Her kids’ old preschool and elementary school are gone and multiple friends’ homes are empty lots now, including several members of the original Whatsapp group. But at the Altadena Country Club, the pickleball courts somehow remain. The fire that destroyed the clubhouse and much of the surrounding homes jumped over this area, even leaving the nets untouched.
Chen didn’t imagine that in her 30-year career in global business, public policy and media that she would head a disaster recovery group that stemmed from a sports chat.
She also didn’t imagine that from this place where neighbors gathered to play, an even larger community would emerge where people could lean on one another to navigate unknowns and where their struggles — and their persistence — were seen and heard, and not forgotten.
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