The big gray bus carried a diverse mix of people for a unique field trip: teenagers, seniors, business owners, homeowners and renters, of all ages and ethnicities, but Eaton fire survivors all, left the Pasadena Community Job Center for Sacramento on Monday morning with a three-pronged agenda: to personally ask state leaders for immediate and long-term housing help, fair insurance protections and environmental remediation.
The advocacy bus tour will complete the overnight, six-hour, 385-mile drive to demonstrate the urgency facing fire survivors in Altadena and Pasadena more than 15 months after the fire that decimated a town, killed at least 19 people and destroyed 9,000 structures.
“We are here to say to Gov. Newsom, First Partner Jennifer Newsom, to the representatives of our area who we elected, SOS,” said Heavenly Hughes, executive director of My Tribe Rise, a mutual aid nonprofit. “We feel like we have been left here, wondering, are we gonna be able to resettle in the Altadena we love.”
Hughes counts herself and her 78-year-old mother as among the two in three still-displaced Altadenans surveyed by the fire recovery nonprofit Department of Angels in its report released early this month.
That report also found widening gaps among survivors, depending on their income and ethnicity, tied to their ability to stay housed and rebuild.
“We ask you today to hear our plea, hear our SOS for support today,” Hughes added.
The coalition called Dena Rise Up is made up of local groups, including the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON); My Tribe Rise; Altadena Rising; POP! or Pasadenans Organizing for Progress; the NAACP; and CHIRLA, Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights. Another group, Catalyst California, a racial justice nonprofit, will meet the bus at the state capital.
Vlad Carrasco, director of climate justice for CHIRLA, said the bus will arrive in Sacramento with solutions to the community’s needs.
“This is where the rubber meets the road in terms of advocacy,” he said. “These are community members going to their elected officials to let them know directly what the needs are for recovery. What else could a legislator ask for than their constituents coming to them with community-approved solutions that are actually going to be effective?”
The Dena Rise Up group will push lawmakers to support pending or proposed legislation, including AB 1642, which sets standards for post-fire remediation; the CARE Fund which they said would help survivors meet a rebuild gap, boost community land acquisition and affordable housing construction subsidies.
The Eaton Fire Survivors Network-backed Urgent Housing Relief proposes $200,000 advance in urgent housing to every fire-impacted household, and SB 878 and SB 1301 would ensure timely insurance payouts and protection from being dropped by insurance, advocates said.
“We want environmental testing. We want remediation now. We want protection from non-renewals from insurance,” Carrasco, from CHIRLA, said. “We want the passage of the CARE fund, the community aid for rebuilding and equity fund. Folks are coming displaced by climate but bringing solutions to the disaster, and we hope that the governor and the legislature listens.”
CHIRLA, on the ground in Altadena since the fire erupted, offers mutual aid and most recently, disaster case management to survivors.
“Our goal is to make disaster recovery as equitable as possible and as accessible as possible,” Carrasco said.
Maria Bruno, 65, said she is going to Sacramento to ask for justice.
On the night the Eaton fire exploded, she only had time to gather her children, grab her grandchildren and get in the car to flee. The family lived in their car parked near Huntington Hospital before finding temporary housing in San Gabriel.
Through an interpreter, Bruno said her family doesn’t have the money to bridge the gap between what their insurance paid and what it costs to rebuild.
“I am asking the governor to look into his heart and do what’s right, to let him know we are still trying to rebuild our community and they need to do what they promised.”
Retired couple Mario and Rosalia Caceres, at 71 and 68, didn’t imagine themselves captains of recovery for their cul-de-sac on El Sereno Avenue in Altadena. But that’s why they said they’re making the trip to Sacramento, to fight so the 10 or so families on their street can return.
Bolstered by help from businesses in their part of their town, including Altadena Ale House, Fair Oaks Burger and 1881 bar, Mario, a retired Cadillac auto mechanic, said he gets his energy from helping others.
Others on the bus trip include Shelene Hearring, 69, owner of Two Dragons Martial Arts studio on Lake Avenue, who said she represents Altadena’s still-struggling small businesses.
“We are all in the trauma, don’t forget about us and don’t leave us out because we’re coming back,” Hearring said.
New high school graduate Kailen Timbadia, 18, said his family, which includes his handicapped mother and sister with special needs, are still mourning the loss of their home on Holliston Avenue while grappling with “very little help we seem to be getting without mortgages, our gap payments from insurance.”
Longtime Altadenans Damon Blount and Esther Lopez worry the promise of generational wealth that lay in their homes is fading for their children and grandchildren.
Jose Madera, director of the Pasadena Community Job Center, said the bus trip will take their Altadena show of love and solidarity on the road “for legislators to move and to not just make promises and not bring false hope” to fire survivors.
“The governor promised funding and support after the fires, but many of the families have not seen that.”
Organizers said the $100 million Newsom promised in the state budget, pledging mortgage and rebuilding assistance to fire survivors, will go to lenders and will lead to more debt for survivors. Supporting Sen. Sasha Renee Perez’s CARE Fund is a better answer.
“We’re telling the governor we don’t want any more loans,” Carrasco said. “What we want is no strings attached community aid.”
The Altadenans on the bus will hold a rally and meet with legislators on Tuesday and plan to return on the evening of May 19.