Nearly every house on their west Altadena block was incinerated. Nearly everyone will be back

Nearly one year after the Eaton fire incinerated their block in west Altadena, neighbors gathered again, greeting one another with hugs that spoke to a bond forged by shared loss.

They had agreed to meet with me at the same burned-out lot where we’d gathered in February, and talk again about what they once had, what they lost, how they made it through a wretched year of grief and uncertainty and what they see in the months and years ahead.

Of the two dozen houses on their stretch of West Palm Street, all but two were destroyed in January. Even now, the block is a ghostly landscape of vacant properties in neat rows, like plots in a cemetery. Of the two houses that survived, only one has been occupied since the fire.

“It’s like being in solitary confinement,” said Robert Hilton, a retired teacher who evacuated in January but returned when he found that his house had defied the odds.

Construction continues along West Palm Street in Altadena on Dec. 2. In January, nearly the entire 200 block of West Palm Street was burned down.

Hilton lives alone. Very alone. Just him and the coyotes and the memories of the way things used to be, back when he’d take one of his homemade instruments across the street on a lazy Sunday and strum tunes while Steve Hofvendahl and Lily Knight hosted a farmer’s market on the front porch of their little yellow farmhouse.

As in February, we gathered at the “home” of Monica Koskey and Peter Kaiser, who organized a potluck. Neighbors brought chairs and food, including Thanksgiving leftovers. Last time, the property was littered with the charred remains of the Koskey house, and the scent of annihilation still hung in the air. This time, the lot had been cleared, and Koskey was eager to show off something unexpected.

Before the fire, she did not have a pumpkin patch.

She does now.

A couple of the pumpkins are the size of basketballs, with 10 or more smaller ones trying to catch up. The vine was rooted in what had been Koskey’s front yard and crawled to where her house stood. In “Cinderella,” she said, the fairy godmother turned a pumpkin into a carriage, and Koskey said she’s hoping her own fairy godmother will turn “a pumpkin into my old house again.”

However the pumpkins got there, it was an uplifting sight, as was the greening of the mountains and foothills just up the way.

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1. Monica Koskey stands on the debris of her home where pumpkins have begun growing on Sunday, Nov. 30, 2025 in Altadena, CA. In January of 2025, nearly the entire 200 block of West Palm Street in Altadena was burned down during the wildfires, resulting in many members of the community trying to figure out how to rebuild. 2. Anthony Ruffin, left, and Monica Koskey, right, embrace while visiting the remnants of their home that burned down during the Eaton wildfires on Sunday, Nov. 30, 2025 in Altadena, CA. In January of 2025, nearly the entire 200 block of West Palm Street in Altadena was burned down during the wildfires, resulting in many members of the community trying to figure out how to rebuild.

That natural beauty is one of the great draws of Altadena, but the risk of windstorms, wildfires and floods is part of the bargain, with climate change elevating the threat. You see plenty of for-sale signs in the foothill communities because people are tired of the risk, or fearful of soil contamination left by the fire, or unable to meet the cost of rebuilding even if they had insurance.

But when I asked if anyone had decided to bail, not a single hand went up, although Bryan Martinez admitted that for a brief time, he wasn’t sure.

And what were his doubts?

“Just the inconvenience and the hassle,” he said, along with a question: “Will I be able to afford it?”

So what turned him around?

“The people and the mountains and the environment and the quiet,” he said.

Jeffrey Xiong said he’s apprehensive about his parents returning to Altadena. He recalled that just after his family moved to West Palm in 2009, the Station fire raged, destroying 200 buildings and killing two firefighters.

“I still remember standing in the living room and just watching the mountain on fire. That was our welcome to Altadena moment,” Xiong said. “My parents are getting up there in age … and for them to retire in this environment is not very comforting. We’ve had several conversations.”

His parents, Aimin Li and Shigang Xiong, smiled, listened politely, and respectfully disagreed.

“He can’t change our minds,” Li said.

They’ve lived in several L.A. communities, Shigang Xiong said, but none like this.

“Aimin and I decided to come back because this is a really beautiful area,” he said. “Not only for the nature, but for the people.”

My introduction to West Palm Street came by way of Anthony Ruffin, a longtime social worker who used to be my friend Nathaniel Ayers’ case manager. Ruffin and his wife, Jonni Miller, are in the business of housing homeless people, and they became homeless when the fire erased their home.

They are surviving, as best as they can. And they are struggling.

“I know I have broken down and cried a few times through this process,” Ruffin said. “It’s been scary at times, it’s been nerve-racking at times. … I just figure I’m in the same boat everybody else is in.”

Neighbors gather last month in the backyard of Monica Koskey’s home that burned down in the Eaton fire.

The insurance fund that pays for their temporary lodging will run out in January, Ruffin said, but they don’t see how they can get back into a new home before next summer, given all the planning and permitting and construction still in front of them.

“I’m scared to death,” Miller said, about the possibility of not being able to return. If their plans fall through, it would be like losing everything a second time.

They have a house at the moment, Ruffin and Miller said, but not a home.

“Home is where you feel comfortable,” Ruffin said. “So in that sense, I’m homeless.”

Ruffin had lived on West Palm since he was a little boy, and staying on that block is a matter of pride and family history. His parents bought there because much of the rest of L.A.’s real estate market was off-limits to Black people, but west Altadena’s doors were open.

Miller is still incensed that west Altadena received late evacuation warnings and limited firefighting services as the fire spread. Eighteen of the 19 Eaton fire deaths occurred in west Altadena, and roughly two-thirds of the victims were Black.

Knight and Hofvendahl were the only two in the group who said they’re not yet sure they’ll return, and Knight cited the emergency response as one reason.

“I don’t have confidence that they’re going to solve the problems that caused so much trouble for western Altadena,” she said.

As actors closing in on 70, Knight and Hofvendahl think the industry has changed in ways that would make it feasible for them to live in Oregon or Washington and work from there.

“I’ve been waiting since my 20s to be able to start over, and do I want to blow that?” Knight said. “It’s really kind of exciting to think of a whole new life at our point. … We don’t need to be in Los Angeles anymore for what we do.”

And yet.

Hofvendahl became passionate about gardening in Altadena, where he turned their double lot into an orchard, with more than 150 fruit trees, many of them exotics. Finger limes, pomelos, pawpaw and sapote, to name a handful. After thinking the fire had destroyed virtually the entire orchard, he began seeing signs of life, and figures about two-thirds of the trees could survive if he invests the time to meticulously graft stalks onto rootstock.

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1. Oranges grow on the remaining fruit trees after the Eaton wildfires affected Steve Hofvendahl’s home on Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2025 in Altadena, CA. In January of 2025, nearly the entirety of Steve Hofvendahl’s property burned down including many of his fruit trees. 2. Burned flower pots after the Eaton wildfire is seen in the backyard of Steve Hofvendahl’s home on Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2025 in Altadena, CA. In January of 2025, nearly the entirety of Steve Hofvendahl’s property burned down including many of his fruit trees. 3. Small shoots grow from the base of a Peter’s Honey Fig tree

Steve Hofvendahl stands among the remnants of his fruit trees that were burned by the Eaton fire.

“I spent every weekend up here all through the summer watering, because a lot of stuff came back, and I don’t have it in me to just let it die,” Hofvendahl said.

He’s not sure if toxic soil would be a problem, but he is sure of one thing. The way that garden and the porch market became a centerpiece of the block was “one of the great creative acts of my life, and I didn’t even know we were doing it. We were just expediently trying to solve the problem of — what do we do with all this fruit?”

“I’m sure Altadena will do stuff like that again,” he said. “I’m sure this neighborhood will do stuff like that.”

But regardless of what he and Knight decide, what happened once before will always exist in a sense. It’s part of the bond that made a collection of modest homes a thriving neighborhood, and the residents have stuck together since the fire, using a text chain to share tips on resources and rebuilding strategies, frustrations, hopes and fears.

They’ll now carry that cherished past into an uncharted future.

“I almost feel like we’re pioneers, like we’re coming back with our little covered wagons,” Koskey said. “To see what it’s going to look like is kind of cool. You don’t have that opportunity very often.”

This time, she said, they’ll have the advantage of fire-hardened homes to limit risk.

Ruffin and Miller had vowed to rebuild their traditional home exactly as it was, but in thinking about starting anew, they’ve instead settled on a modern design with big windows and more natural light running through the house.

Maxwell May, who has been coming back to the street once or twice weekly to check on things, said he and his wife, Lauren Ward, will “flip the kitchen and dining room around” and add a bathroom.

Lauren Ward, left, and Maxwell May stand on the remnants of their home that burned down during the Eaton fire.

They decorated their empty lot for Halloween, as did Ruffin and Miller (a skeleton still stands in the front yard wearing an “Altadena Strong” T-shirt, and he’s about to get a Santa hat). May and Ward also decorated for Christmas, and we walked down West Palm to see their handiwork.

A big red bow — ”like you get when you buy a car,” May said — hangs on a deodar tree that survived, and a miraculously healthy orange tree is loaded with ornaments. A small lemon tree, once thought dead, is coming back strong.

“Coming here makes us feel comfortable, and like we’re home again,” May said.

The residents know there are more trying times ahead.

“As much as we try to make space for hope,” Koskey said, she fears facing Christmas “not having the ornaments and decorations that my son made or that were from my childhood … I am scared of how that will hurt. Christmas so soon followed by Jan. 7, I am afraid of, and want to hide from how much it may hurt.”

She neatly summed up the cycles of what they’re going through — what everyone, ultimately, goes through.

“Pain, hope, loss, life.”

The parkway strips on the corner were filled with yellow marigolds that were planted to honor loss and welcome recovery. They struck me as bold symbols of defiance and resilience.

A block away, four young boys walked along West Palm, coming from the direction of the park Ruffin used to play in as a boy. They were chattering innocently and said they’d been to the cookie store on Lincoln Avenue and were headed home, to a house that survived.

It was the most normal, hopeful sight imaginable.