Little Flower has been a beacon for the Pasadena community. Owner Christine Moore, a resident of Altadena, battled the flames and embers of the Eaton Fire with her son and neighbors. Despite saving her home, much of the street was destroyed. As the National Guard moved in, Christine headed to her bakery and cafe to do what she knows best, show up and help.
Evan Kleiman: Well, it's only been a week. I mean, we should just let that sink in. And with the two largest fires not contained as we speak, the wind is scheduled to pick up and work against the firefighters. How are you managing to hold up?
Christine Moore: Truthfully, I don't even know what day it is, and we are trying to keep our heads above water. It's all incredibly overwhelming.
The 27 employees of Little Flower have been working to feed evacuees who lost everything in the Eaton Fire. Photo by Christine Moore.
How long have you lived in Altadena, and why did you decide to settle in that particular neighborhood?
Altadena is the most beautiful, green, creative town. I love it so much, and I'm so incredibly sad about what's happening right now. I opened a restaurant 10 years ago on the border of Pasadena and Altadena and fell in love. And it has always been a dream of mine to live up there with a little beautiful dark earth and planted 25 fruit trees, and to live up amongst those beautiful mountains has always been such an inspiration to be in that space
The caption on your Instagram feed that said fully prepared was really striking. It accompanied an image of camping lanterns, flashlights, and car keys. Where were you when you first saw the smoke and realized that you had to evacuate?
Well, my son and I were coming down to Little Flower just because we had no power because of the wind storm on that first night. So we decided to come and sleep in my office, because we live amongst these giant, beautiful deodar trees, and we were fearful that one might fall on our house. So we decided to come and sleep on an air mattress in the office and hunker down and get away from the wind.
That night, we went down to get him a burrito on our way out, and every single emergency vehicle in the city of Pasadena was whizzing past us, and I turned around to see Eaton Canyon explode in fire. I can't say that I have ever screamed that loud in my life, because I just knew it was biblical. We are literally three blocks from Eaton Canyon, and when I saw that happen, I instantly knew, this is the beginning of the end.
We raced back to the house, and there's no power, mind you, so my neighbors were in their dark homes with their candles lit, trying to withstand the windstorm. Colin took one side of the street and I took the other and we just started banging on doors for our friends and neighbors to get out. We were calling everyone that we knew in the area and telling them, "Get out, get out! Eaton Canyon has just exploded!"
I say the word biblical because I just really want people to know that there is no fireman, no fire company in the world that could have stopped this. It was massive, and it was coming our way. I was there, I saw it. It was incredible.
We escaped and came down to the Little Flower office. We didn't sleep, and at four o'clock in the morning, I said to my son, "I'm going back up. I need to see where the fire line is on the mountain." So we drove up to the base of JPL, and the smoke was so thick, we drove up Linda Vista to the base of JPL, just to see where the fire was. I saw that it was behind JPL, so we tried to get back into the neighborhood, and we were turned away and turned away. I went straight over Washington and snuck up Allen, and pulled into my street, and it was on fire.
The firemen, there was nothing they could do at that point. My house was standing, my neighbor's house was standing, my neighbor across the street, and the rest of the street was on fire, exploding. I ran to the firemen and asked them if I could hose down my house. They said, "Good luck, lady." And Colin took the front of the house, and I ran into the backyard and started hosing down the roof and the walls and the trees around it. We did it for hours and hours.
I called my next door neighbor, Dave, and said, "Dave, I'm here. Come up. Your house is still standing. Come and hose it down." And he was there in 10 minutes. Dave and Colin and I put out fires. My son's a hero. He put out fires on four lawns and saved houses and jumped fences in his slides in his soaking wet feet. I pulled the boba straws out of the drawer in case we had to jump into the pool. We had no exit strategy. We were just running on pure adrenaline, trying to save our homes, and we did it until the sun came up and the water ran out.
The National Guard rolled into the Altadena neighborhood, blocking off streets to both residents and looters. Photo by Christine Moore.
How old is your son, Colin?
He's 17. He's a senior in high school.
Can you describe what your street looks like today?
The entire street on both sides has burned to the ground. My block, to the left and to the right and behind me, has been spared. There are two houses across the street on the corner, and everything else is gone. Our dear friends lost everything. Explosions, propane tank explosions, all night long. It was a war zone. It was an absolute war zone.
Are you able to stay there, or are you staying away from the area for now?
We stayed for 48 hours. We were on what was called "ember watch," because there were so many active fires in the neighborhood. For two days, we stayed. All the gas lines were raging with fire. There were trees still catching on fire. We were hauling pool water in buckets. There were looters everywhere. There were guys on electric vehicles. I literally threatened to kick this guy off his bike and told him I was going to stab him. I didn't have any tools or anything, but I was not going to lose my house now to marauders and looters, and we had to hunker down.
My friend Louis across the street, Dave, Colin, and I stayed and protected our homes for two days until the National Guard moved in and blocked everything off. Once you leave, you can't get back in. We haven't been able to get back in. I went in yesterday with CNN to do a story on all the businesses that are now being incredibly affected. You know, I have a million friends that are calling me saying we can't make payroll. And I'm terribly worried about all my friends.
I'm terribly worried about Randy and April up at Good Neighbor Bar, and Leah at Ferrazzani's. We're all in the same boat. It's quiet out there right now, and we're afraid we're going to lose our businesses on top of being displaced.
I mean, I am a lucky one. I know that. I do have survivor's guilt, but there is a possibility that they're going to tag my house as unlivable, and there is a possibility that we will be out for a year. Our house did not burn to the ground, but we are displaced and living with a friend in South Pasadena and trying to keep our business alive so that we don't lose that too.
Let's talk about Little Flower for a minute. It's been a hub of the community for 17 years. How are your employees? I know that so many employees of businesses that are standing have lost so much as well.
My general manager is also an Altadena resident. She's a renter, [I'm] trying to help her figure out how to get what she needs from her landlord. She's needing a place to live. We have employees that have health issues that can't work because they can't breathe this air. We were closed for two days. We aren't able to pay people for the days that they missed work [and] that hurts their pockets. We have 27 employees at Little Flower that we're trying to keep employed.
I have quite a few friends that have called me and said that they have been laid off for the week from their jobs, all across town, not just in this area, but all across town. Every business is slow right now. So many of my friends with restaurants are just calling and saying, "What do we do? Nobody's coming out, we're dying on the vine."
Colin Moore boxes up takeout from his mother's Pasadena cafe, Little Flower. Photo by Christine Moore.
You've asked the community for donations, and what has the response been so far?
Look, I'm trying really hard to hold it together right now, because our community is showing up in such an unbelievable way. Today has been unbelievable, and we have a fund to buy a meal for our families that have lost everything. I encourage my staff to encourage them to have a hot meal. We've had families in the windows, meeting, sitting down in the dining room that have lost everything.
Candy is my love language, and I've just been shoving bags of candy at all these little kids that have nothing. It's pretty incredible to hear these families have lost everything say, "No, no, no, that's okay," or "that's enough." And I said, "Oh no, no, no." The answer is, yes, we need everything. We will take it all.
You know, we're just a little restaurant. We're not a 501C, we're not a charity. Our customers are helping us make our payroll. This is going to be a long-term problem. This is going to be at least a year. I mean, we feel so powerful that we survived COVID. We feel so incredible that we're still standing after 17 years, and truthfully, from what I'm hearing, because this is a local problem too, it's not worldwide or national, so many people are feeling defeated, like they just don't know how they're going to get through this one.
Someone said, "You know, you need to start a GoFundMe." And I said, "No, the GoFundMe pages are for people that have lost everything." We have had customers show up and buy $500 worth of sandwiches. I had to call my bread guy and say, we need more bread today, now. So we are so grateful for that. We've been sending food home with so many of our friends and customers to drop off to their people that are displaced and in homes all over Pasadena and South Pasadena
Housing is a huge problem. There's no place for all these people to go. I need to find a place to live, and haven't even started to address that. I just cannot thank our community more for stepping up for Little Flower, because I feel so lucky that I have this platform, that I talk to you, to let everyone know, please go out and support your local coffee shop, your local restaurant, your local wine shop, anything. We are all struggling right now.
Fires rage on an Altadena street, just three blocks from Eaton Canyon. Photo by Christine Moore.