The deep bonds on an Altadena street driving neighbors to rebuild

Before the fire, Heather Rutman could look up the street from her frontyard to see if her mom was home. Sometimes when her kids were playing outside and her mom was coming back from the store, they’d jump in her car to go play at grandma’s house.

In the late afternoon, Highland Avenue came alive with families playing catch, neighbors walking dogs together, children biking and skateboarding. At night, Rutman often joined her neighbor Pearlin De Long on her strolls, catching others along the way. A 30-minute venture could easily turn into an hour of vigorous conversation.

This long block in Altadena — canopied with oaks and camphor trees and bookended by two roads — offered a rare small-town feel in the L.A. metropolis. And the people who landed there planted deep roots.

A view of Highland Avenue, where several homes at the base of the street were spared by the fire.

More than half the neighborhood is gone now. But in the months that passed since the Eaton fire, the neighbors have continued to talk remotely and meet regularly to figure out how to rebuild their little world, where parents raised their kids where they had grown up, where the neighbor who had chickens shared their eggs, where residents of all ages watched annual fireworks shows and gathered at block parties and movie nights.

About 30 homes burned down on this street in the Eaton fire; less than 20 remain standing. But 10 months after the fire, nearly every resident has vowed to return.

“We know we have something special,” De Long said. “From the moment we moved in, we knew this was different.”

The tight bonds that Highland Avenue bred are a driving force behind the rebuilding efforts.

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Debbie Younger embraces neighbor Stephen Sredni, whose house was damaged in the Eaton fire but is still standing.

It was a street lined with Spanish, Craftsman and ranch-style homes, set back behind wide lawns and shaded by stately trees.

Now many lots are empty, scraped bare of the fire debris. Moving and storage pods sit in front of homes still standing. The tree cover has thinned so much that residents who’d never had a city view can see downtown Los Angeles.

Gilien Silsby grew up in Altadena a few blocks away, and moved into a home on Highland Avenue 25 years ago. She had a Spanish-style house with bright morning glory vines where she hosted a neighborhood screening of “To Catch a Thief” on her front lawn. It is gone now. So is her childhood home, where her mom was still living. The violins her great-grandfather made in the 1800s, family portraits painted by a relative, photo albums, souvenirs from travels and personal treasures were all lost inside the homes that kept her family’s legacy.

“My history is wiped out,” she said. “It’s like our whole life is gone.”

Silsby’s family remains displaced. And as the months have dragged on, reality has gotten harder to bear.

She misses the rhythms of her neighborhood — the friendly waves while out for walks, the sound of one neighbor’s trumpet through the windows at night, the jogger who sings on his runs. Her neighbors’ commitment to going back has buoyed her. A neighborhood WhatsApp chat that used to be filled with observations about coyotes, the occasional bear sighting and Girl Scout cookie sale announcements is dominated by the efforts to return.

During Zoom calls and gatherings, neighbors counsel one another, sharing names of contractors and builders and updates on their design plans and permit statuses.

At a recent block party, Highland Avenue residents reunited. One neighbor created a tablecloth that memorialized the addresses of the homes.

They rally around each other. Those who have moved back help water properties of those whose houses burned. Neighbors find solace in knowing that they won’t desert each other.

Silsby and her parents recently submitted paperwork to the county for permit approval and hope for a swift timeline. To date, Los Angeles County has received more than 2,460 rebuild applications for structures destroyed in the Eaton fire, according to county data, and has issued more than 790 building permits, which includes more than 470 single-family homes.

The fire wiped out nearly 5,000 single-family homes. In Altadena, some blocks were completely obliterated. On others, homes that survived stand beside homes that burned. On Highland Avenue, the base of the block is mostly intact but as the street ascends toward the foothills, homes disappear.

At night from the top, it is easy to imagine what once was as lights from the remaining homes shone below, blending into the neighborhoods that were wholly spared.

Rutman, 52, grew up on this street, next door to Silsby’s house. Her mom still lived there and in 2015, Rutman bought a house less than 10 doors away. Rutman’s California ranch survived the fire, but her Spanish-style childhood home, where family would gather for Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations, burned down.

It was always a close place. When she was young, her parents’ best friends lived across the street. Kids walked to the local Thrifty ice cream shop, to Altadena Elementary and Eliot Middle School. Her own kids often ran across to the neighbors for snacks or to visit their favorite bulldog.

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1. A fence surrounds a burned-down property on Highland Avenue. 2. Highland Avenue is bookended by two main roads. 3. An “Altadena Strong” sign sits on an empty lot.

“It just felt like this really wonderful little bubble,” Rutman said. “The street continued that feeling of being a tight-knit community throughout the years.”

She and her family have remained displaced since January as remediation continues on her home, which was under construction when the fire broke out. She hopes to be back in by early 2026, but questions about health and safety loom.

Her kids are 11 and 14 years old, and she worries about what contaminants remain in the soil and what effects they may have on their health. But she also longs for the community she’s known her whole life.

“We’ve heard a lot about how unique and special Altadena was,” she said. “It’s something when you’re growing up you don’t really understand because that’s kind of your whole world.”

Carmen Hechavarria, 54, grew up on the block with Rutman. The house where she lives with her mom, daughter and boyfriend survived. But in many ways, moving back since remediation has been harder due to the financial burden of cleaning up what insurance won’t cover, and the daily reminder of what was lost.

“When you go outside and you see all the houses that are gone, it just doesn’t feel real,” she said. “Did that really happen?”

Still, she and her family never considered not returning. This has always been home.

Gary Sterling, left, Tiffany Hechavarria and her mother, Carmen Hechavarria, neighbors whose homes survived the Eaton fire, reunite at a block party on their street.

Christyne Burdett has lived on the block for 28 years. She moved back in the spring after remediation and testing as the nearby cleanup operation at the Altadena Golf Course caused more traffic in the area. Despite the headache, she also didn’t think twice about returning.

“I count people on this block as my friends,” Burdett, 66, said. “We’ve all been working to come back to our homes, come back to the neighborhood.”

De Long, 47, is a relative newcomer to the street compared with some others. She and her family moved into their home 13 years ago and never dreamed of leaving.

“The house that we had was our forever home,” she said. “We had planned on being old in it.”

It took the De Longs about six months to sort out a new layout for their home, which they plan to submit to the county for permit approval. The milestone is overshadowed in part by reality of the loss.

“It’s hard to get excited about a new house, because I miss our old house — and our old house wasn’t perfect.”

She knows exactly where her youngest son, now 11, took his first steps in that house. Neighbors can still remember when he was in her belly, she said, when after-dinner walks started to become a custom on the street and the best time to catch up as people watered their lawns, tended to their gardens and walked their dogs. If it weren’t for her neighbors, she may have considered moving on.

“That would be the only reason we wouldn’t have returned,” she said about the possibility of people not going back.

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1. The Eaton fire destroyed Gilien Silsby’s home. 2. The San Gabriel Mountains overlook the tight-knit neighborhood on Highland Avenue.

She said she resolved to rebuild “once we started to hear that our neighbors are rebuilding and everyone was going through plans and talking about architects and builders.”

Susan Christensen, 65, and her husband lived on Highland Avenue for five years. They lost their 1923-era home in the fire, but are preparing to break ground on a new home in the same style as their old one.

Christensen said the process to get design approval was a nightmare; she visited the county planner’s office nearby on Woodbury Street so often to press for updates that people knew her by name. Eventually, the couple got the green light to move forward, but will have to pay the gap that their insurance won’t cover since the cost of materials has gone up.

“I get that people are selling and leaving — this has been frustrating to deal with,” she said.

The Christensens considered not returning to the area on multiple occasions. But regular dinners with neighbors — people they now consider family — helped sway their decision to stay.

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On New Year’s Day, Kate Sullivan threw a potluck for her neighbors.

It was one of the last hurrahs on Highland Avenue before the fire.

Now she and her husband are living in Los Feliz. Sullivan is grateful they found a temporary place to land, but misses her home of 25 years.

“What I wasn’t prepared for is the cacophony, the traffic, the congestion [in Los Feliz],” said Sullivan, 63. “I long to get to Altadena because of the peacefulness — you can always park in front of your house. I miss living under the San Gabriel Mountains.”

The move has been an adjustment. Their car insurance went up because there are that many more vehicles on the road.

But Sullivan tries to get back to Altadena often. Once over the summer, she was able to swim in her pool. Among the ruins, she had a clear view of the mountains.

Months after the fire, she helped organize a block party for old time’s sake.

At the reunion just before Halloween, the neighborhood gathered in the middle of the street over an hours-long meal at a table that spanned the stretch of seven homes. Kids flocked to the bounce house pitched out front of one of the standing homes. Neighbors who had left years before the fire returned, and residents who lived nearby joined. Hugs were shared; tears were shed. A quilted tablecloth memorialized the address numbers of all the homes on the street.

Neighbors Jim Boldes, Russ Fega and John Brekke reunite on their street.

Silsby, who helped organize the party, was heartened by the turnout. She even met the woman who lived in her house before her, whose kids’ handprints had been preserved in cement until the fire hit.

“The fact that we could pull off a block party when two-thirds of the neighbors lost homes was just incredible. And everyone showed up,” she said. “It was just unbelievably beautiful. I just felt like my heart was full.”

As night fell, beneath twinkling string lights, laughter and chatter filled the air.

Highland Avenue had come to life once more.