The flames have been extinguished, but the devastation created by the Eaton Fire in Southern California last month is far from over. On Jan. 8, Nafasi Ferrell, a 33-year-old Black woman currently living in Kirkland, Washington, woke up to the news that her family home in Altadena, California, had burned to the ground.
The Eaton Fire has disproportionately impacted Black families. Researchers from the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA found that 61% of Altadena's Black households were located within the fire perimeter. Almost half of these homes were either destroyed or majorly damaged, leaving folks without a place to live and some with no pathway to recovery.
"It's hard to grasp that it's all gone. The wind took it," Ferrell said. "From the time I went to sleep to the time that I woke up that morning, everything was gone. It took no time for Mother Nature to move through and wipe clean things that we've held so dear for over 50 years."
Ferrell and her husband learned about the fires in the Palisades on the news. Both cable news and social media were flooded with stories of celebrities' homes on fire. It looked bad, and they could tell the winds were blowing hard, but she never imagined it would reach Altadena.
"Fires, we know, are a thing that happen in Southern California. They happen but they don't affect you that much. Especially not those of us on the mountain," said Ferrell.
A friend sent her the Watch Duty Wildfire Maps & Alerts app so she could track the fire and get a sense for whether there was an evacuation order. At that time there was not, but she called her mom anyway and encouraged her to go spend the night at a friend's house just in case. At the time, she still assumed everything would be okay.
"There's not a moment where I thought this is the end, our community is gone," said Ferrell.
Her mom packed an overnight bag, but her uncle decided not to leave. Around 10 p.m., Ferrell began to worry because the fires were still going strong and the winds were blowing hard. When Ferrell went to sleep around 12:30 a.m., there were still no evacuation orders or any indication that the fires would reach where her family lived.
"When I woke up, I looked at the map and my heart dropped because it showed that the fire had spread all the way through Altadena drive," said Ferrell.
Ferrell couldn't believe it. She called her uncle, and the line didn't go through. That's when she began to panic. She called her mom, who was safe, but confirmed that there were several members of the family missing. It was hours before they heard from her aunt, Ann Huckaby, that at 4:30 a.m. the smoke woke them up and they fled to safety. Ferrell's uncle, Lonnie Beal, escaped with a neighbor and made it to the Pasadena Convention Center, but it was a full day before he was able to get in touch with the rest of the family. With 17 people dead, Ferrell's family counted themselves blessed to have survived. But the price of survival is the burden of figuring out a way forward.
On Aug. 1, 1973, the Beal family purchased a home in Altadena and relocated from Fort Worth, Texas. "Grandma wanted to come to sunny California. Who didn't want to come to Southern California back in the day? Sunshine, it's away from the snow," recounted Ferrell. "It's kind of the same reason my dad left Chicago. He said I don't ever want to see snow ever again. I want to sit and tan in the sun." More than good weather, the Beal family headed west in search of opportunity.
Three siblings — Ferrell's mother, Billie Beal; her aunt Marva Beal; and her uncle Lonnie Beal — split the cost to purchase a home in Altadena. Though at the time they didn't use the term "redlining," it was clear they were not welcome in Arcadia or Glendale, which were known as "Sundown Towns," where Black folks were not allowed to live until well after the 1960s. Ferrell's aunt Ann Huckaby and Huckaby's ex-husband were already living in California, and Cleo Beal, Ferrell's grandmother, chose to make the move as well, creating an intergenerational network of family all based in Altadena. Ferrell was born in Los Angeles and raised in that house in Altadena.
"Those became their stomping grounds, as we like to say, Pasadena, Altadena. Altadena eventually being their home that the three of them decided to get together to take care of their mother, my grandmother," explained Ferrell.
Ferrell's mother attended Pasadena City College. Billie Beal was a devoted worker for Los Angeles County and the Naval Undersea Research and Development Center, formerly located in Pasadena. She survived breast cancer and is now courageously battling lung cancer. Lonnie Beal, a veteran of the Vietnam War, dedicated his career to General Dynamics/Lockheed Martin. Marva Beal worked at Neiman Marcus and Universal Studios until she passed away in 2023. Ann Huckaby also worked at Universal Studios.
"It was always a place where I felt loved and I had community," said Ferrell, reflecting on her neighborhood. She grew up in an upper-middle-class home in one of the few places where Black folks could become middle class. It wasn't perfect. Ferrell also spoke about the prevalence of gang violence and how growing up she always had to choose her clothing colors carefully, but it was home.
"I think one of the biggest things was we were an intergenerational home. My mom had me," explained Ferrell. "Ann raised her kids for a brief time in that home. My cousins … my uncle, one of his daughters had kids and they were raised in that home for a time as well. So, it was a place that served the needs of the family at different times in their lives."
This was the Beal family's American dream. With their combined incomes, they purchased land and provided their family with economic stability and built community with other Black folks trying to do the same.
"If the family needed anything, my aunt and my mother did everything, and my mom was the rock as they got older to try to take care of things. So there were a lot of fun times in the pool playing, all the kids, all the nieces, all the cousins. There were very happy moments that we shared that I got to have for 33 years of my life. A home that has been there for over 50 years to serve so many different people in different stages of their life is what an intergenerational home was meant to be," said Ferrell. "It doesn't mean it didn't come with a lot of pain, but it came with a lot of good things that at least shaped my life."
It took just four hours and a shift in the wind for everything to burn down
"I always used to say Altadena never changes," recounted Ferrell with a laugh. "Even if it was flawed, I miss Edison [Elementary]. I miss the art school. I miss walking down the street and seeing the trees blow in a certain way and seeing that tree on the corner and knowing where to turn on that left corner on Mariposa, you know … like our Christmas tree lane. Part of it is still there, but it's gone. I miss the consistency that was, that made our community what it is, and I think only time does that."
The Beal family plans to rebuild. When asked if Ferrell is afraid to rebuild in a place where there would still always be the risk of fire, she answered: "I don't believe this was an everyday kind of thing. I think this will happen again in the future, but no matter where we live on Earth, we can't control it, and if this is what my elders want, this is what they want to rebuild, then this is what we'll do is rebuild."
Ferrell grew up to be a racial wealth gap and economic equity educator and the founder of Narratives Unbound. She is a faculty member for the Trauma of Money and runs wealth redistribution circles. She believes in universal basic income and does what she can to support others to address and dismantle the barriers to creating generational wealth. This fire has been a huge setback for her family's goals of wealth distribution.
Recently, with the support of crowdfunding, Ferrell helped her family transition from a hotel into an Airbnb where they can stay for a year, although likely this will not be enough time to complete construction. The Beal family is fortunate in that they had fire insurance. It is not equal to the value of what they lost, but it will help. There are many families whose insurance was canceled either because the rates were too high to sustain the coverage or simply because the insurance companies decided they weren't worth the risk. And now they have nothing left, not even their community.
As they wait to hear from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and their insurance about how to proceed, an army of engineers has been dispatched to clean up all the properties that have opted in. Ferrell shared her concerns for those who didn't opt in for the support. "The asbestos that was in all of our properties, other chemicals that need to be cleaned up on your property as well, it has to be a communal effort. How do we keep everyone accountable to the process of collective cleanup to make our community healthy and safe again for us to live in?"
There are a lot of unknowns, but the Beals are committed to salvaging their legacy and holding onto what is left of their community. For now, they are safe and grieving the loss of what was. "I think our community should rebuild, partially because people are going to build on it anyway, and it needs to stay in the hands of those who have stewarded before, which is People of Color, which is Black folks," said Ferrell. "It's our land. We need to be able to keep it and not sell it to corporations. We can build something new, a stronger community than we've ever had."
Disaster capitalism is real. While the Beals will likely be able to rebuild, many others will be forced to sell their land for far less than what it's worth. For those who were not homeowners and didn't have renters insurance, they will likely be permanently displaced and spend years trying to recover. Also, there is the added complexity of price gouging for folks looking to find a place to relocate and for building supplies. Some Altadena residents fear that rebuilding the wealthier areas of L.A. will be prioritized, leaving them to put their lives even further on hold.
"There's been over $200 million raised for L.A. fire victims. If all of this money is being fundraised, where is it going?" asked Ferrell. "It makes me sad. We know how to gather the wealth. We don't know how to distribute it in a way that is truly effective to help those that really need it."
And there are still some things that money cannot replace.
"My whole childhood was in that home," said Ferrell. "My dad's legacy as a photographer was in that home. Our last 50 years … my aunt was a collector, Marva was a collector. She collected really expensive Barbie dolls, and we had things from times past that can never be replicated. Those times are gone."
But what happens next time? There's a saying that history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes, and in the Beal family story, I am reminded of Hurricane Katrina, another natural disaster that disproportionately impacted Black folks and left many displaced, traumatized, and scrambling to rebuild some semblance of economic stability. Many residents of New Orleans had a lot less wealth to lose than the folks in Altadena, but both communities were rendered vulnerable, first by systemic oppression and the politics of land and then by the very land itself.
And here in Seattle, as each smoke season seems to last longer and come with more intensity, we live in an epicenter of fault lines, volcanoes, and who knows what other natural disasters might be headed our way. How do we protect and preserve our communities?
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Reagan Jackson (she/her) is a multi-genre writer, artist, podcast host and producer, facilitator, and international educator. Most days you can find her at Young Women Empowered, where she serves as the co-executive director. She is the author of Still True: The Evolution of an Unexpected Journalist (Hinton Publishing 2024); Summoning Unicorns (2014); Love and Guatemala (2013); God, Hair, Love, and America (2009); Coco LaSwish: When Rainbows go Blue (2014); and Coco LaSwish: A Fish From a Different Rainbow (2013).
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