Writer and historian Michele Zack, 73, is the first to admit: “This is not our dream for our golden years.”
But six weeks after the Eaton Fire, she and her husband Mark are taping up structures in their burned 100-year-old home, one way to indicate to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers what not to level in its debris cleanup.
“We’re choosing not to say we’re too old to rebuild,” Zack said. “We have other options, but none of them as much meaning as staying here, trying to help Altadena rebuild and seeing what happens next.”
Older Altadenans — or residents “of a certain vintage,” as one puts it — are facing a choice dictated by numbers: first, their age, and then, the economics of their life post-Eaton fire.
And even as most say their love for their Altadena community can’t factor into the reality of their choices, the town’s “live free or die” spirit dictates respecting each other’s course. What those paths are cut straight for some and are uncertain for others.
On Feb. 11, Altadenans discussed the issue of age and starting over on the Facebook page “What’s Up in Altadena.” Commenting on the first lot in Altadena that sold after the fire ($100,000 above its asking price) Darcy Duran, 66, said she couldn’t imagine going home in five-plus years, an estimate on how long rebuilding would take.
“I’ll probably sell, too,” she wrote. “But I’d like a fair offer from someone who wants a home built.”
Others chimed in agreement: “I’m almost 67 and struggling with the same decision,” and “I hear you. 69 here and tired.”
There are approximately 6,064 people aged 65 or older in Altadena, making up around 21% of the total population of 42,846, according to data from the 2020 U.S. Census Bureau.
Pastors Robert and Micheline McFarland, founders of LIFT International Church in Altadena, lost their home of 32 years in the Eaton Fire. Their church is safe, sharing the campus of Westminster Presbyterian Church on Lake Avenue and Woodbury.
In that time, Micheline McFarland, 69, has loved raising two daughters, and pastoring a community where “everybody had love.” She used to own a salon on Lake and Mariposa, frequented the now-lost Fox’s Restaurant in town as well as the jewel that was Altadena Hardware.
“We just had a new Thai place open we hadn’t tried yet,” she said.
Since the fire, the couple have been busy going the hard way with their congregation, leaving little time to dwell on their losses. McFarland said their car almost caught fire in their desperation to save Ziggy, their four-year-old white poodle, and their cat Sophie, both of whom were lost to the fire.
“Yes, we plan to rebuild,” Robert McFarland said, adding the message, “Altadena is not for sale.”
Most people he’s spoken with want to rebuild.
“But the reality is there are those who are under-insured who will definitely need financial assistance or grant money if they are going to rebuild. Amid rent gouging, land speculators and insurance woes, the cost of rebuilding may exceed working people’s means.”
A lot of the “older elders” he’s spoken with who are over 80 years old are torn whether or not they will live to even see a rebuild of Altadena.
What’s at stake is Altadena losing that strong representation of Black and Brown people and it will no longer be the community it’s historically known to be, McFarland said.
In the town’s Black community, he said, the elders have represented generational wealth and family legacy.
“And that’s in jeopardy,” McFarland said.
His wife said during the immediate aftermath of the fire, she was paralyzed, thinking none of it was real.
“Now I’m angry,” Micheline McFarland said. “How did this happen? It’s like a death and we’re in mourning. It’s the death of a community.”
McFarland said while the Black community’s treasure of elders remain an inspiration, she understands if they see time as a limitation.
“One of our ladies had just built an ADU on her property for her daughter,” she said. “All that is gone now and she told me, ‘I don’t know if I can do this again.’”
Valerie Elachi, 76, and her husband Charles, 77, lived in what she laughingly called Altadena’s Bermuda Triangle. Their Crescent Drive home sat at one point, with another stretching seven miles to Caltech one way and seven miles to JPL in another.
Elachi remains spirited and gracious as she walks around the ruins of her two-story, pueblo-style home, built in 1923 for Mildred Smith, literary secretary and mistress to the writer Zane Grey from 1916 to 1930.
“First I was shocked, then I was super sad. Now I’m just royally pissed off. Can I say that? It didn’t need to happen,” she said. “It’s like a death, but a hit-by-a-bus kind of death. It’s like a war happened in Altadena.”
The Elachis’ Hunt and Grey home is one of several historic homes lost in the area, and the owners of those neighboring homes are planning on rebuilding.
“We’re going to try,” she says carefully. Scuttled plans for a renovation can be reused.
Age is an issue, true, but “with enough perseverance and enough energy, I suppose one could still preserve the neighborhood.”
There’s no question which side of the question René Amy, 64, stands. After all, the longtime Altadena community activist had a giant banner reading, “Altadena Strong: We Will Rebuild!” a week after the fire, emphasis on the “will.”
Amy, who lost his home on Calaveras Street, said he’s seen Altadena struggle with many issues, from public education to gentrification to a brouhaha about the height of hedges. Even as he celebrated the reopening of the neighborhood’s Grocery Outlet this week, he said the path ahead will be long and slow.
“It’s not all going to be easy,” Amy said. “But let me be very clear. Altadena will rise from the ashes because of our incredible sense of community. So many of the things we love about Altadena goes back to the people, and a lot of them will come back and stay. The thing that matters is the sense of community and the big hearts trying to hold it together.”
For Victoria Knapp, chair of the Altadena Town Council, the question of older Altadenans rebuilding is specific to a number of dynamics.
“What is the insurance situation; are there additional funds to bridge any gap without having to spend one’s retirement; is the senior alone our coupled; are there adult children who would inherit the rebuilt home and would they want to; are there any outstanding health conditions that would be exacerbated by the potential stress of rebuilding; are the adult children nearby, in another state, and is moving closer to them an option and/or preferred,” Knapp said. “These are questions that need to be answered by older Altadenans facing a rebuild.”
For Hans Allhoff, chair of Altadena Heritage, the many aspects of Altadena underlines the freedom every resident has to chart their next steps.
“We all love Altadena in our own way,” he said. “It’s very easy to say we’re going to rebuild, but you have to do it right. At the end of the day, we need to respect that it’s everyone’s call.”
The McFarlands want to impress upon their neighbors that they don’t have to leave.
“It’s their home,” Robert McFarland said. “It’s their place, that people you know years ago set down the stakes and paid the price for them to be here, and that they should stay, that they should rebuild. And if they decide not to rebuild, they should sell to a young family that looks like them for a reasonable price who could not otherwise afford to live here.”
Groups such as Green Housing Foundation can help, he added.
Elachi sits in what used to be the outdoor patio of her home of 40 years and with a sad smile relates the loss of her extensive, museum-quality collection of Native American pottery, listing tribal names like a gentle chant: “Inuit, Acoma Pueblo, Navajo, Jemez.” She catalogs other losses: her husband’s archives from a lifetime with JPL and Caltech, baby photos of their daughter Lauren, how they had just gotten their home “almost to the point of perfect.”
“I danced down the staircase at the open house when we found this house,” Elachi said, remembering. “We starved for three years after so we could afford it, but it was fabulous.”
She stops at the door of the flat-roofed guesthouse, one thing that was saved from the fire.
“Oh look, the camellias are blooming,” she said, gazing at a pale pink bloom.