When I visit Justin Murphy a few weeks after the fire, he counts off the houses that burned on this street in Northeast Altadena: “That one down there was the first,” he says pointing to the end of the street.
For over a century, eight homes stood on this quiet, secluded street with panoramic views of the San Gabriel Mountains. Now there are just two: A neighbor’s place across the street, and the one belonging to Murphy’s 93-year-old mother.
Murphy evacuated her to a relative’s home in LA as flames roared into the neighborhood, then raced back to Altadena. Murphy and his brother stayed up all night battling the fire with hoses, buckets and sprinklers — ultimately saving the home their parents bought 65 years ago.
Reflecting on that night while sitting in the spacious living room, Murphy is still processing the experience.
“Maybe on some level, I wasn’t afraid of the fire,” he says. “I was willing to take the risk, I was set on it to protect what’s ours and protect this neighborhood.”
Nearly three miles away in Southwest Altadena, retired U.S. Army medic Tom Salinas was making the same risk calculation as the fire bore down on his neighborhood.
“See, there’s two types of people. The ones that run from the fire, and the ones that run to the fire,” explains Salinas. “I’m forever going to be the idiot that runs to the fire.”
Some combination of courage (or foolishness), adrenaline and profound attachment to their community kept both men and a handful of other holdouts on location before, during and after the fire immolated all the homes around them. As the cleanup continues and many residents are still too concerned about the dangers of toxic ash to return, Murphy and Salinas paused to reflect on why they stayed.
Tom Salinas and his dog, in the backyard of his Altadena home. Photo by Steven A. Cuevas.
In opposite corners of Altadena, with most of their neighbors evacuated to hotels and Airbnbs, Salinas and Murphy hunkered down and met the fire.
The only protection Salinas took was to pull his t-shirt collar up over his mouth and nose. An avid motorcyclist and thrill seeker, he admits being a bit of an adrenaline junkie.
“I love being scared,” Salinas tells me, taking a break from tinkering on his vintage Volkswagen bug.
“I can go to Magic Mountain on any ride, any theme park. I enjoy being flipped upside down and turned around, it’s just the greatest feeling,” he says.
After the fire burned through, Tom Salinas and Justin Murphy could have evacuated. They chose to stay put. Even though that meant no electricity, no gas, no clean running water – and in Justin Murphy’s case, no people.
“I lived kind of as an outcast, really,” says Murphy. “People were going to their jobs, going to the market, and it was difficult not to be able to do that. But in a weird way, it made me look at myself and do some self-review.”
In West Altadena, Tom Salinas wasn’t feeling so isolated.
“I didn’t have a problem,” says Salinas.
To his surprise, the fire brought neighbors who barely knew each other together.
“I got a chance to get to know all the neighbors. I know Carlos, Leandro, Martha, they’re like my family. Because I realized that I’m not in the fight alone, I didn’t have no fear,” he says.
Salinas wasn’t thrown by the fire, nor did he fret over the scores of properties all around him heaped with rubble laden with asbestos, lead and other toxins that can pose health risks. While the EPA completed phase one of debris removal in Altadena in late January, the agency says hundreds of properties are still considered too dangerous to enter and clear toxic materials.
The exposure worries Justin Murphy a bit, but he’s kind of in the same camp as Salinas.
“If I took in too much, that’s what I did,” says Murphy.
“There are some people that are throwing out their mattresses because some smoke damage came into their house, and I guess I don’t live in that camp. I cleaned everything out. I washed all the curtains. I washed all the floors. I’m not letting that fear rule my mind,” he says.
Even his mother, Jane Murphy, went right back home as soon as security checkpoints were lifted. She’s also resumed her daily two-mile walks.
“I am well known in the neighborhood,” says Murphy.
A licensed therapist for about 50 years, Murphy continues to be someone her neighbors can lean on for some sense of normalcy.
“I know a lot of these people by their first names, many of whom have either lost their houses or can’t live in their houses because of the smoke,” she says.
“I have a little prayer, and I will say that to myself as I go by people’s burned houses. And I also greet people, they come up and hug me because they’re so happy to see me because I represent some stability.”
But just because these holdouts have confronted the danger head-on doesn’t mean they’re unaffected by the trauma of losing so much of their community.
The Murphys can’t look outside or walk down the street without seeing widespread destruction. The same goes for Tom Salinas and his neighbors. Unflappable in front of the fire, Salinas stays away from the ruins.
“I don’t even go to funerals,” he says. “I don’t do grief well.”