Ondi’s 70-year-old neighbor, Randy Vance, has lived in Altadena since he was 17. Randy lived across the street with his son, his son’s high school sweetheart, and three grandsons. It was Randy who texted Ondi to tell her that their homes burned down. He has moved several times since the fire, from fleabag motel to Airbnb, and is short hundreds of thousands of dollars to rebuild.

Four blocks south of Ondi’s house, the fire cast a warm glow over the Wormley home where four generations have lived under one roof since 1971. They never received an evacuation warning. Only with the help of a neighbor were they able to escape. Now that their roof is gone, family matriarch Ranell and her daughter, LaPorsche - both retired nurses - begin raising two children at a Travelodge motel.

The night of the fire, David Timoner, Ondi’s brother, evacuated his elderly mother Lisa and her three pets, plus his wife Kelly, daughter Gigi and their dog from Altadena with only three changes of clothes. Kelly was an artist; her work covered the house’s walls. David didn’t want Kelly’s sculptures near the pool to be destroyed in the wind storm, so he brought them into the house before evacuating. The house burned, along with all of Kelly’s art, a mile southeast of Ondi’s. Thousands of other homes burned between them.

Born-and-raised Westside Altadenean Heavenly Hughes and her daughter, Shanna, have devoted their lives to serving the community through Heavenly’s organization, My TRIBE Rise. Altadena has been a black community for as long as Heavenly can remember. Black families were redlined out of renting and owning homes in Pasadena, so many settled on Altadena’s west side and have passed down those homes through generations. Now Heavenly fights to keep those families from being permanently displaced.