Jean Dalmore’s house sits across from a partially-destroyed middle school in Altadena. If you drive up her street, toward the mountains, there are only six or seven homes left, including hers.
“I started to cry driving up here again today,” Dalmore admits. “I mean, how do I live in this neighborhood? Half of Lake Avenue is gone. The neighborhood is gone. I don’t even know if emotionally I could live here.”
Dalmore is asking the same questions as many others whose homes survived the Eaton Fire: When will it be safe to return and how will we know? And do we even want to return to live surrounded by ash and rubble or in a soon-to-be construction zone?
While Dalmore’s house survived the fire, her detached garage, which had been converted to a home gym, did not. The rubble sits next to a perfectly manicured yard, with purple flowers and even a hummingbird flying through.
“We just, we redid everything,” Dalmore says. “It was so nice. And we loved it so much.”
It’s still not clear how much damage the heat, smoke and ash did to Dalmore’s home. Some patio furniture melted. There’s ash and dust around the doors of the house, which reeks of smoke inside.
Dalmore, a construction law attorney, doesn’t know if they’ll have to strip the inside of the house down to the studs.
“Is there lead? Is there asbestos?” Dalmore says. “What is here?”
Jean Dalmore’s home survived the fire storm in Altadena, but her garage did not. She faces questions about when to move back. Photo by Susan Valot
Dalmore has made sure that her insurance adjuster is from Southern California and has a construction background. She says a lot of people don’t realize you can ask about the background of your adjuster and request another one if you don’t think they have the appropriate experience, as many are being brought in from out of the area to handle the deluge of claims.
Dalmore and others are concerned that if they clean up too soon, their homes will be covered again with toxic ash kicked up from the lot-clearing process. She’s worried that the cost of construction will increase, slowing recovery, not only because of sudden demand due to the fires, but because of tariffs and crackdowns on immigrant workers.
Across the street from Dalmore’s house is the fire-gutted school where Jane Lambert teaches – or at least taught until the fire forced her students to move temporarily to another campus. Lambert lives about a block on the other side. You can almost see her house from Dalmore’s place because so much vegetation burned away.
Lambert’s house is intact and she shares similar health concerns about ash and smoke. She says it’s like the fire “kissed her patio” and didn’t go any farther.
A panorama view from Jane Lambert’s house shows the destruction around her, but her home survived. Photo by Susan Valot
“In the beginning, it was like, ‘Oh, thank goodness, our house is standing, but this is hard to celebrate because everybody around us lost their house,’” Lambert says. “Then as the time went by, every day you’re realizing there’s more and more unknowns. It’s not as simple as, ‘There was a fire, it’s gone, clean your house, go back.’ It’s so much more complicated.”
Lambert says her family has been told it’s best to wait to clean up until 250 yards in each direction is cleared. That’s the equivalent of about two football fields each way.
Until then, she, her husband and their two cats are living in a hotel, as they’ve had trouble finding a rental that will do a month-to-month lease, and they don’t know how long they’ll be out of their house.
Lambert says the whole situation has also changed how she looks at things.
“I think one of the things that we’re going to do differently moving forward when we can clean up and come back is: We’re not going to collect so much stuff, to be honest. I know that sounds funny,” Lambert says. “Things don’t quite mean as much as they used to.”
She expects they’ll get to know their remaining neighbors better. She says most of the houses along her daily walking route are gone.
“We’ll be even more connected because there’s so few of us with standing structures,” Lambert says. “But we’re going to be living in a community that’s so fractured.”
Lambert wants to focus on the positive side of watching the community rebuild, even though she says it’s still emotional to come back to the burn zone.
“It rings true to the whole concept that nothing is permanent. Sometimes I’m really emotional about that because it’s hard to grapple with that sometimes, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad thing,” Lambert says. “It just means you’ve got to live in the moment. You’ve got to find the joy in the moment, even with all of the devastation around you.”
A look of joy pops onto Lambert’s face as she notices a yellow daffodil has popped up by the damaged part of her backyard.
“I love it!” Lambert says. “A sign of hope!”