Bryan Davila stood in the kitchen of a Monterey Park Airbnb on Thursday, Jan. 9, his family’s rented refuge, and flicked on the stove. The flame lit and he flinched.
Davila’s wife, Dani, sees flames whenever she closes her eyes.
Dani’s father, Rene Stone, has returned to Altadena every day for the last week, trying to get past barricades to see for himself what the fire has wrought.
And Dani’s grandmother, Helen Montanez – who is nearing 90 – keeps asking to go home. To a home that’s no longer there.
Three generations of the same family. Three homes. Countless, invaluable memories.
All lost.
And so much more.
This family, with more than 60 years of history in Altadena, is among the victims of the Eaton fire, a capricious, unrelenting inferno that, as of Wednesday afternoon, had burned more than 14,000 acres in this working-class neighborhood north of Pasadena. Thousands of structures have been lost. At least 16 people have died. Myriad families have been displaced by the carnage.
And in this one clan – the Davila, Stone and Montanez family – the story of Altadena, the story of a community beloved by its residents, the story of hard-working immigrants striving to build generational wealth and realize the American dream, is cast in relief against the devastation of the Eaton wildfire.
“We have so much history in this city,” Dani Davila, 37, said. “We’re getting updates about friends and families who have lost homes. I could name at least a dozen.”
They waited too long to leave, Dani Davila said. They were smoked out. But they eventually fled, arriving safely, at first, to the Hacienda Heights home of Bryan Davila’s big sister, Shiara Davila-Morales, and then to Monterey Park.
In the days since, they have cried. They have laughed about the absurdity of it all. They have mourned, for themselves and their community. And now, slowly, they have begun to think about rebuilding. They will not give up on Altadena.
“That’s what we love about Altadena,” Dani Davila said. “Our neighbors have become our family.”
This is a story about three generations of the same family that each lost their homes in the Eaton fire. But it’s also about Altadena itself – and its resilience.
Bryan and Dani Davila had decided to take a break from house hunting.
It was the summer of 2022 and the couple, now in their mid-30s, had been looking to buy a house in Altadena.
They put forward offer after offer on prospective homes, only to be outbid.
So they decided to take a pause.
They were used to circumstances outside their control derailing their plans.
Bryan’s parents, after all, were well-educated Nicaraguans who pulled themselves out of poverty only to upend their lives because of a civil war in their native country. His parents, with Bryan’s elder sister in tow, fled Nicaragua for the United States, rebuilding their lives as working-class immigrants.
Bryan Davila, now 35, was not yet born.
He arrived about a decade after his sister, and grew up a “city boy,” as he described it, living in apartments in Alhambra.
Dani Davila, meanwhile, is a daughter of Altadena.
Her grandmother, Helen Montanez, bought a two-bedroom home in Altadena and raised her six kids there – with the children sharing one room. Dani Davila’s mother and father, Rene and Dana Stone, moved the family from a Pasadena apartment to a 1920s, Spanish-style Altadena home when she was 5.
Her family was, as she described them, grinders – the sort of people who set goals and diligently worked toward fulfilling them. Her job growing up was to pull weeds.
“I’m a city boy,” Bryan Davila said. “She’s the one who knows how to do yard work.”
Bryan and Dani Davila, whose parents both valued education, each have college degrees. Bryan left home at 18 to attend the University of Michigan. Dani went to the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising, in downtown Los Angeles.
Shortly after graduation, Bryan Davila moved back home.
The couple met in 2012 at a marketing agency they worked at. Dani was a graphic designer and Bryan was a project manager.
They bonded over their shared love of music – their romance blossoming over Spotify playlists.
Bryan proposed to Dani on New Year’s Eve 2018 at 71Above, a restaurant with panoramic scenes, making sure that they were seated with a view of Pasadena. They planned to marry in May 2020.
But their wedding was postponed by the coronavirus pandemic. The couple then moved into Dani’s parents’ home in March 2021 to save up money to buy a house.
After multiple failed attempts to buy a house in Altadena, they decided to take a break.
But the weekend after, they saw an open house for a place on Wapello Street.
The property was about 1,300 square feet and had been owned by an engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Bryan Davila said. It had two handmade decks, separated by a bridge – all up to code. But the plant life was overgrown.
Still, it was the place they wanted.
“Dani was like, ‘Let’s just go check it out,’” Bryan Davila said. “I was an apartment kid. I remember walking in and saying, ‘I want this house.’”
The couple put an initial offer on the house – and waited.
A few days later, on Sept. 27, 2022, the couple was at a Pitbull concert at the Hollywood Bowl, when their Realtor called.
Bryan Davila, standing by the bathroom, had his phone to one ear and his finger in the other.
They had made the shortlist and needed to submit another offer.
“That was a fun night,” Dani Davila said.
Less than a month later, the couple had their dream house, in their dream town – Altadena.
They married on April 8, 2023. Three months later, their daughter, Melina, was born.
Melina, or Meli, as they call her, was supposed to grow up in that home on Wapello Street.
But the fire had different ideas.
“I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to stay and help.”
— Dani Davila
It was time to leave.
For Dani Davila, Jan. 7 had begun normally enough. It was a Tuesday and she headed to work at AXS Experience, a concert ticketing company. Her mom, Dana Stone, cared for Meli. She had a dentist appointment in the afternoon and left work early.
After getting her teeth cleaned, Dani Davila headed home. But first, she called her mother and asked if she needed anything from the store.
She pulled into Super King Market in the afternoon. A gale was already tossing the trees every which way, so she parked where nothing would land on her car.
It was busy in the supermarket, and she was nervous.
So Dani Davila bought only what she could carry: Milk, rice, eggs.
And she left.
As Dani Davila headed to her mother’s house, on Terrace Street, the wind pushed her car from side to side.
“I was stressed,” she said.
But she didn’t panic – yet.
After picking up Meli, she headed home – telling her daughter to listen to the wind lash against the car – and then finished up work, having left her job early to get her teeth cleaned.
In the early evening, her boss sent her a message that there was a fire in her area.
The fire soon hit the mountains above their home.
“We could see the flames from the deck,” Dani Davila said.
“I called my dad,” she added, “and told him to come assess the situation,”
As they waited, Dani and Bryan Davila folded clothes. It was a distraction. But the concern on each other’s faces belied the prosaic chore.
“I could see (the worry) on her face,” Bryan Davila said.
Rene Stone arrived and saw the flames.
He is the steadfast patriarch of the family, an unruffled go-getter. But when he saw the flames, his daughter said, he looked nervous.
That’s when Bryan and Dani Davila knew the danger was real.
Around 7 p.m., the power went out. Dani, with Meli in her arms, packed her infant’s things and clothes for herself, essentially in the dark.
Her husband and father set about trying to safeguard the house, watering the deck and turning off the gas, among other measures.
All the while, Bryan Davila said, he could see a fireball inching toward them.
Finally, around 10 p.m., Bryan Davila and Stone told Dani that she had to go.
The smoke wasn’t safe for young Meli.
“I didn’t want to leave,” Dani Davila said. “I wanted to stay and help.”
But she had to think about her daughter. So she left.
“I said goodbye to the house before I left.” Dani Davila said, fighting back tears while sitting on her sister-in-law’s sofa in Hacienda Heights, on Wednesday, Jan. 15. “I had a feeling I was saying goodbye to the house.”
Altadena was Dani Davila’s playground.
She would walk around the neighborhood barefoot. She’d walk into her neighbors’ houses and ask if their kids – her friends – could play. She’d eat their food. She’d hike the nearby trails.
“Altadena is a small town in a big city.” Dani Davila said. “You’d see regulars around town, you’d become friends with the business owners.”
That familiarity was her family’s legacy.
Her great-grandmother came to the Pasadena area in the early 1900s. Her grandparents bought a house on North Glenrose Avenue in 1962. Her grandmother, who had gotten divorced in her 30s, ultimately transformed that house into a home – one for the entire neighborhood.
“It was magical,” her son Danny Montanez said in a Wednesday phone interview. “It was a two-bedroom house but everyone (from the neighborhood) came over for Thanksgiving.”
Danny Montanez and his siblings would ride bikes down to Lincoln Avenue. They would go to the nearby mountains and catch snakes, selling them to a pet store owner. They played baseball on a Little League field – that the Eaton fire destroyed.
His mother’s house, meanwhile, was the gathering place for his friends.
“If you sat in her yard, with all her plants, it was special,” the younger Montanez said. “Altadena was special.”
Dani Davila’s parents initially raised her in a Pasadena apartment. But when she was 5 years old, they moved to the house on Terrace Street, in Altadena, not far from her grandmother’s.
“I would walk around her yard barefoot,” Dani Davila said about her grandmother’s place. “I would eat the fruits and vegetables out of her garden. I hiked all the trails. (Altadena) has become part of who we are.”
For her family, she added, Altadena represented opportunity.
Until the fires came.
Dani and Meli fled to her parents’ house. It was their safe house – or so they thought.
Dani, with Meli in her arms, sat with her mother in her parents home while her husband and father worked to protect their home.
“We felt helpless,” Dani Davila said.
Late into the evening, Bryan Davila saw embers flittering about his yard and decided it was time to leave.
“I wasn’t going to die to protect the house,” he said on Monday. “I needed to live for my daughter.”
So he and his father-in-law fled to the latter’s house.
But soon, the fire followed.
Rene Stone had gone to Helen Montanez’s house to check on her. She didn’t want to leave. She had, after all, grown old in that home.
But back at the Stone house, Dani Davila, who had laid down in her parents’ bedroom with Meli, began smelling and seeing smoke, which was filling the property.
“That’s when I got really nervous,” she said. “I said, ‘We have to go now.”
But Montanez didn’t want to leave her home. Dana Stone wouldn’t leave without her mother. And Dani Davila wouldn’t leave without her mother.
Thankfully, around 3 a.m., a Los Angeles County sheriff’s vehicle rolled past her grandmother’s house and announced an evacuation order.
Helen Montanez begrudgingly left.
In a caravan of five cars, the family avoided fallen trees, fought against swirling winds and navigated through thick smoke – and left Altadena.
They arrived at Davila-Morales’ house around 5:30 a.m. Then, the waiting began.
“I just started screaming. I don’t even know if it was a scream. It came from a different part of my diaphragm.”
— Alexandria Stone
Alexandria Stone watched the news as the fires tore through Altadena – while she was 100 miles away.
She’s the baby of the family, 14 years younger than her sister, Dani Davila, and is in her last year at UC Santa Barbara, majoring in psychological and brain sciences.
The week the Eaton fire began, she had started the winter quarter.
When the power went out in Altadena, Stone became the main point of communication for her family. But beyond that, there wasn’t much she could do.
She wanted to come home, but her parents, always trying to protect, told her to stay where she was.
So the television and texts from her friends were her only source of information.
“It was stressful,” she said in a Wednesday phone interview from Santa Barbara. “I felt helpless.”
Stone went to sleep – or at least tried to – around 1 a.m. on Jan. 8, but was awoken at 4 a.m. by a text from her friend. Her friend’s yard was on fire.
Stone called her friend, and listened to her scream.
“I was devastated for my friend,” Stone said, adding that she still didn’t think the fire would reach her family’s homes.
She called her mom to tell her the news.
“How did you find out,” her mother told her.
“What do you mean?” she replied.
Dana Stone thought her youngest daughter knew that the house she had grown up in had also been destroyed.
“I just started screaming,” the younger Stone said. “I don’t even know if it was a scream. It came from a different part of my diaphragm.”
A few days later, the younger Stone got the OK to come home. She threw everything she had in her closet into a suitcase and rushed back to Los Angeles County.
When she entered the Monterey Park home her family was staying at, she “melted” into her mother’s arms, Stone said.
Then she hugged her father. And then her big sister.
Stone eventually returned to Santa Barbara. But she’s not sure how she’s managing to get through school or her job at a behavioral clinic, where she works with people on the autism spectrum.
But she knows one thing for sure – her family is resilient.
“They say home is where the heart is and for me, that’s true,” she said. “We could be in a single room with a box of pizza, and I’d be happy.”
But she’s still grieving for her family and community – from afar.
It was Thanksgiving 2022 and Bryan and Dani Davila were in their new home.
There wasn’t much in the house yet, and he and Dani were still living at the Stone family’s house.
“I was making apple pie,” Bryan Davila said, while sitting on his sister’s sofa on Wednesday afternoon.
“And I wasn’t feeling well,” Dani Davila said.
So Bryan Davila went to a drugstore and, like a bashful teen with his hoodie pulled over his head, bought a pregnancy test.
It was positive.
A new light fixture paid the price: Bryan Davila shouted in joy and punched his fist into the air, smashing it against the fixture.
Dani Davila, overjoyed, rushed to tell her mom.
Their house, which they had diligently saved up to buy, was supposed to be where Meli grew up.
She had her first birthday party there. She took her first steps there. She was supposed to have so many other memories there.
“I showed her the rose garden and said, ‘These are your roses,’” Dani Davila said. “I walked her around the neighborhood and said, “This is yours.’”
Altadena was supposed to be Meli’s – a legacy continued.
But last week, that legacy became rubble.
On the morning of Jan. 8, the family, exhausted and overwhelmed, waited in Hacienda Heights as Dani’s father, as well as Danny Montanez, drove to Altadena to determine the fate of their homes.
The Stone house was the first confirmed victim.
Then, Rene Stone called his son-in-law.
“It’s gone, mijo,” he told Bryan Davila.
Finally, in the afternoon, they learned that the family matriarch had lost the home she had lived in for more than six decades.
“We didn’t want to tell her,” Dani Davila said about her grandmother. “She kept saying she wanted to go home.”
But none of them – Helen Montanez, Rene and Dana Stone, Bryan and Dani Davila, and young Meli – had a home left to return to.
The Davilas had created a few happy memories in their home. But in the fire’s wake, they have many more memories that should have been – but will never be. At least not in the home they loved.
On Wednesday morning, Jan. 15, Dani and Bryan Davila sat on Davila-Morales’ sofa. Davila-Morales held Meli in her arms and then sat her on the floor and played with the toddler.
Dani and Bryan took turns holding back tears. Dani slowly slouched on the couch, starting upright and ending up lounging.
“I’ll end up on the floor,” she joked.
Two months earlier, the Davilas had hosted their first Thanksgiving at their home – bringing both of their families together. About a month after that, Bryan Davila’s nieces – Davila-Morales’ – spent New Year’s Day there, first going to the Rose Parade, and then eating posole and watching football.
For the Davilas, that was supposed to mark the beginning of a calm 2025 after years of busily building a family and a home.
A week later, they and the community they love were left devastated.
“It took us a while to get to sleep,” Dani Davila said. “I would close my eyes and see fire.”
Dani Davila’s grandmother still wants to go home. Her parents, blue-collar workers, lost the home they spent years cultivating. Dani and Bryan Davila lost the home they thought they’d grow old in.
“My heart breaks for them,” Danny Montanez said. “My heart breaks for my mother and my sister, and my niece and nephew. I just want to be there for them.”
That was a common theme among the family this week. They want to be there for themselves – and their community.
“Altadena and Pasadena are the only home I’ve known” Alexandria Stone said. “I’ve always wanted to come back and I don’t think I’ll ever give that up.”
For Dani and Bryan Davila, they are mourning the lives they thought they’d lead, the memories they thought they’d create in their home.
They know they won’t get closure until the barricades are removed and they can see the detritus of their home.
But even though it’s too early to discuss rebuilding their home, they, like Dani’s little sister, know they won’t give up on Altadena.
“We want to do something to help our community,” Bryan Davila said, looking at his wife from across the couch.
“We want to help rebuild,” Dani Davila replied.
Their family, like their community, is resilient, they said.
The flames may make them flinch. The fire may flit beneath their eyelids. The inferno may make them cry for what’s been lost.
And the Eaton fire may have burned their homes.
But their trauma will fade. They, and their community, will endure.
And they will build anew.
How to help
To donate to help the Davila family rebuild, go to gofundme.com/f/help-dani-bryan-rebuild-after-losing-their-home-in-fire.