Death Toll Rises to 25 as Strong Winds Threaten L.A. Again (2025)

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Here’s the latest on the fires.

Forecasters said the latest round of Santa Ana winds had been weaker than they had feared. But that could quickly change in the coming hours, and officials in Los Angeles County urged residents to prepare for power outages and be ready to flee.

“If you have power now,” said Lindsey Horvath, a Los Angeles County supervisor, “charge your phones, charge your batteries and be prepared to be without power.”

Officials on Tuesday evening announced a 25th death related to the fires, and about two dozen other people remain missing. More than 100,000 people have been displaced.

• Containment updates: The largest blaze in the county, the Palisades fire, was larger than 23,700 acres but only 18 percent contained on Tuesday, up from 14 percent. The Eaton fire covered more than 14,000 acres and was only 35 percent contained, up from 33 percent. There were no reports of new homes or major structures burning in either fire. Track the fires here.

• New fires: At least 11 small fires ignited overnight and more were popping up on Tuesday, though most were quickly extinguished, state and fire officials said. The Auto fire, which grew to more than 60 acres in Ventura County, northwest of Los Angeles, had been 47 percent contained by the evening. Another vegetation fire burned more than two acres in the afternoon near the Santa Ana River in Riverside, east of Los Angeles, and was completely contained by the evening.

• Forecast: The National Weather Service, which had warned of wind gusts of up to 70 miles per hour, dropped its highest-level fire weather warning for the rest of the day, though a red-flag warning remained in place. The winds may pick back up soon, forecasters said, so the higher-level warning will be back in effect starting at 3 a.m. Wednesday. Read more about the shifting conditions.

• Uneasy return to normal: For many Angelenos who did not have to evacuate, daily life has carried on, but it has been anything but normal. “It’s this weird balance of, how much do you pause, and how much do you keep going?” one resident said.

• Housing crisis: The fires have exacerbated a housing crisis in Los Angeles. Mayor Karen Bass issued an executive order to expedite permitting for rebuilding, and fast-track approval of temporary housing. Hundreds of schoolteachers were among those who lost their homes.

• Safety advice: Here are some steps you can take to stay safe in at-risk areas, including signing up for emergency alerts and packing a “go bag.”

The forecast is for widespread wind gusts of 40 to 55 m.p.h. across much of Ventura County; the mountains of Los Angeles County, including the Santa Monicas; the northern and western valleys of Los Angeles County; and the Malibu Coast. There will be local gusts of 60 to 65 m.p.h. in the windiest locations from just before sunrise until noon on Wednesday.

L.A. air quality improves, but windblown ash could rapidly worsen it again.

Air quality, measured on a scale from good to hazardous, was good to moderate on Monday and mostly good across Los Angeles County on Tuesday, according to data from the South Coast Air Quality Management District. A smoke advisory issued by the agency expired at 10 p.m. Sunday. Similar conditions are expected Wednesday, as long as wildfires do not flare up again and no new blazes break out.

Los Angeles residents might be breathing easier when they step outside, but Dr. Scott Epstein, the air quality assessment manager for the Air Quality Management District, warned that conditions can suddenly change and that windblown dust and ash continue to be concerns. The lightest of winds can pick up the ash from burned areas and carry it across the county.

“We know that this ash has a lot of toxic, carcinogenic material in it,” Dr. Epstein said. “The instruments that typically measure air quality don’t measure ash. However, it tends to be big enough to be able to see with the naked eye.”

A Los Angeles County Public Health Department advisory about windblown ash and dust is in effect through 7 p.m. Wednesday. The National Weather Service expects winds to pick up again, with the strongest gusts likely Wednesday morning and afternoon in Ventura and northern Los Angeles Counties. An N95 or P100 mask can help provide protection from the ash, according to health officials.

The Palisades and Eaton fires, the biggest in the region, were no longer pumping out massive amounts of smoke on Tuesday. The strong winds that were forecast to develop Monday night into Tuesday morning and further spread the two fires never arrived. That enabled firefighters to put out actively burning sections and keep addressing the remaining hot spots, an effort that will continue for days.

“We have smoldering hot material within the burn perimeter, but there’s no active fire that’s producing smoke,” said Brian Newman, who analyzes blazes for Cal Fire. “We’re in a slow, creeping, minimal-active burning phase.”

Dr. Epstein said that if people step outside and smell smoke, it is best to go back inside and close their windows, and wear a mask when outdoors. They can also monitor air quality conditions on the South Coast Air Quality Management District website.

Officials seek to stem property speculation and eviction.

The wildfires have destroyed thousands of structures and displaced tens of thousands of people. There is mounting evidence that they have sparked bidding wars and double-digit increases in the price of rental offerings, putting pressure on a housing market that was already one of America’s least affordable.

The bidding wars and rent increases are happening even though the state of emergency that Mr. Newsom declared last week banned any increase above 10 percent for the duration of the crisis.

The first part of Mr. Newsom’s two-part executive order bans unsolicited offers for less than what a property’s fair market value was before the fires started. The ban expires after three months. Mr. Newsom said in the order that he had heard from owners who had received such unsolicited offers over the past week and that owners in that situation could be “especially vulnerable to exploitative practices of unscrupulous individuals who seek to profit from this disaster.”

The second part calls on California’s Department of Real Estate to investigate predatory practices against owners and to inform the public about them.

The City Council motion introduced by Ms. Hernandez and another councilor, Hugo Soto-Martínez, proposed a moratorium on evictions in homes where tenants have suffered economic or medical hardship as a result of the fires. A draft of the motion published by the local television station KTLA says the intention was to prevent a “predatory pattern” of rent increases that has been documented after previous wildfires in California and Hawaii.

“It’s a sad reality that people will try to take advantage of this tragedy to jack up rents and evict tenants,” Mr. Soto-Martínez said. “Before this, housing was already unaffordable for the working class.”

KTLA reported that the City Council motion is likely to be heard in the council’s Housing and Homelessness Committee before it is returned to the full council for a vote in the next few weeks.

In Pacific Palisades, proof of a previous life is hard to find.

Also, the chimneys. Oh, the chimneys.

Rising up like headstones from plots of blackened debris, they stood sentry over streets strewn with ash, now the tallest structures that remained on block after block. At one home on Bestor Boulevard, the wind blew a twisted piece of metal against the chimney’s bricks, clanging like the toll of a church bell.

One week ago, residents of this wealthy neighborhood were fleeing for their lives, panicking in traffic on Sunset Boulevard and taking off down the hillside with whatever they could gather in their arms.

Now, the neighborhood is in ruins. Residents are still not being allowed to enter, and National Guard members patrol a series of checkpoints. The police and sheriff’s deputies keep watch along streets lined with orange trees and burned-out cars, while private security guards stand outside several businesses and homes in the Palisades.

The Palisades fire killed at least eight people and leveled thousands of structures, including houses, cars and landmarks that had come to represent a neighborhood home to dozens of celebrities.

Among them was what had become known as the Robert Bridges house, a Brutalist home that once hovered above Sunset Boulevard and was named after the architect who designed it and lived there. All that remained of the home on Tuesday were its large concrete support columns and floors, the interior and redwood siding having been gutted by flames.

Not far away, Palisades Village, an upscale outdoor shopping center owned by the billionaire developer and former mayoral candidate Rick Caruso, was still intact, a monument to the protection provided by private firefighters during the blaze and now, a week later, by security guards. Nearby, volunteers handed out food and water to emergency workers.

Higher into the neighborhood, one could see the ocean sparkle through a thicket of burned-up trees. Hillsides once full of luxurious homes now teemed with the detritus of the blaze. On side streets, the cars that did survive were coated in a thin layer of ash.

Bob Iger on Disney’s relief efforts: ‘Can we help in setting up temporary schools?’

Mr. Iger, of course, still has a $200 billion, multinational company to run. Disney, like other entertainment companies based in Los Angeles, has seen minimal disruption to most of its businesses. But Mr. Iger has also been leading Disney’s response to the fires, which has included — but goes far beyond — the donation of $15 million to local disaster recovery organizations.

“We want to help rebuild,” he said in an interview. “Can we help in setting up temporary schools? Can our Imagineers help design new town centers? Rebuilding is not just about money. It’s about ingenuity and determination.”

In terms of immediate employee assistance, about 100 displaced Disney workers — from assistants to the company’s general counsel — have been staying in hotel rooms at Disneyland, where operations have not been interrupted. (It’s 30 miles south of Los Angeles.) Disney’s employee relief fund provides up to $1,500 for basic household necessities. Disney is also giving some employees an additional $2,500 as a lump sum for incidental expenses.

For anyone at Disney who cannot immediately return home when the evacuation orders are lifted — some houses are gone, while others require extensive repairs — the company is providing two months of free furnished housing, among other benefits. Disney has also opened its studio wardrobe warehouses to employees who need clothes and shoes, according to Sonia Coleman, the company’s chief of human resources.

In parts of Los Angeles, life carries on but is hardly normal.

Life, in other words, went on.

One of the defining characteristics of the greater Los Angeles region, an area of 18 million people and more than 33,000 square miles, is its enormous sprawl. So while tens of thousands have been displaced and are dealing with immediate needs like finding shelter, many other residents have been grappling with the unsettling feeling of witnessing a crisis unfold from afar — but not that far.

“It’s this weird balance of, How much do you pause, and how much do you keep going?” Nathalie Martin said, as she stood in the contemporary art gallery where she was associate director in Mid-City. “The whole city isn’t shut down — it’s definitely shocked.”

Ms. Martin, 24, said she had friends who had lost their homes or had been evacuated, and the gallery had artists who had lost their work and their studios. She said people like herself, who live far from the damaged areas, were trying to help out — including offering refuge to friends and displaying art so that displaced artists could earn money — while continuing to live their lives.

“It’s walking a line of putting your energy where it’s needed but also working your job so you can make money,” she said. “It’s definitely jarring.”

After days of hazy skies, the air quality on Tuesday in many parts of Los Angeles, especially farther from the fires, was recorded as “good” or “moderate,” according to AirNow — better than in other areas of California, like Sacramento and parts of the Bay Area. Most schools reopened on Monday, and the city’s two N.B.A. teams, the Los Angeles Lakers and Los Angeles Clippers, both hosted home games on Monday night, after contests last week were postponed.

In Santa Monica, just south of the evacuated zone for the Palisades fire, people were walking their dogs and jogging in Palisades Park along the water, even as the view of burned patches of the Santa Monica Mountains to the north offered a sobering reminder of the devastation.

On the Santa Monica Pier, some shops were open and the Ferris wheel was spinning, but the usual crowd of tourists was not there. Philip Moinester, a Postal Service worker making deliveries to the pier, said he worried for the businesses.

“It’s so quiet here,” he said. “Normally, this is mobbed.”

Ryan Frederick, a firefighter from the Bay Area who pulled a 48-hour shift when he first arrived last week, was taking a moment to soak up the sunshine now that his schedule had eased slightly.

“It’s a nice break,” Mr. Frederick said. “You go from devastation to normal life.”

The danger was far from over, with the National Weather Service continuing to warn of extreme fire risk through Wednesday because of high winds. Smaller fires have also continued to break out around the region.

Even people enjoying a quiet morning far removed from the at-risk parts of Los Angeles were well aware of the crisis elsewhere in the city.

On Pico Boulevard in Mid-City, a major thoroughfare that stretches from Santa Monica to downtown, Mark Boone was grabbing breakfast at a cafe with his dog. Though the fires continued to rage elsewhere, he couldn’t even see the smoke.

Mr. Boone, 35, said his uncle lost his home in Altadena, the neighborhood north of Pasadena where the Eaton fire swept through last week. He said he had tried to volunteer and get involved, but donation centers and volunteer groups said they were at capacity, overwhelmed by a surge of support.

“It’s kind of weird to be going on with your daily routine and knowing what’s happening around the city,” he said.

Farther down the road, Lloyd Robinson, 82, said he had received calls from relatives on the East Coast worried about his safety, without knowing that he lived far from the blazes. He, too, said he had friends whose houses had been destroyed, and had tried to help find them a place to stay. In the meantime, Mr. Robinson, who was dropping off his dry cleaning, planned to keep going about his day.

“Life is a daily journey, and that journey continues regardless of your circumstances,” he said. “Whether you’re homeless, or you’re in a home, or you’re in the midst of the fire area, you still have to think about tomorrow.”

Tuesday’s winds didn’t reach their predicted speeds, but Wednesday’s might.

Just a week ago, at the start of a cycle of four Santa Ana wind events that have overtaken the region since then, the forecast warned of a “particularly dangerous” wildfire outlook, with a windstorm of a strength not seen in over a decade. That forecast was realized when the Palisades fire, the Eaton fire and other blazes sent Los Angeles residents fleeing from their homes as a torrent of winds pushed fires raging through their neighborhoods.

Weather Service meteorologists make their forecasts based on a combination of current conditions, historical events and computer weather models. They take all this information in and then forecast what they think is the most likely outcome. There are always outliers, conditions that could occur but are less likely.

Sometimes, a storm will overperform the forecast, and sometimes it will under perform. In meteorology, both eventualities are considered “busted forecasts.” While forecasters who predict an especially extreme event might be happy if the conditions aren’t as bad as they had predicted, they know that if the forecast is off by too much, people will trust future warnings a little less.

James Brotherton, a meteorologist with the Weather Service in Los Angeles, said he would much rather have a forecast be wrong if it meant there was “less pain and suffering.”

Ahead of this cycle of winds, forecasters put another “particularly dangerous situation” warning in place from 4 a.m. Tuesday through noon on Wednesday, as they feared more strong winds would help fuel existing fires and possibly spark new ones. But by early Tuesday afternoon, the winds were proving to be less strong than expected, and the Weather Service dropped the warning for the rest of the day. The move was temporary, and another “particularly dangerous situation” warning will be in place from 3 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesday.

Ryan Kittell, another forecaster in the Los Angeles office, compared it to someone filling out an N.C.A.A. bracket every March. “Even if you’re the best, at some point you won’t have a forecast verify as you would like,” he said.

The “particularly dangerous situation” designation is still a relatively new tool, Mr. Kittell said. Tuesday’s forecast was always right at the line between high level and not, and the office opted to use the stronger warning because of the ongoing fires across the region, he said.

Robert Clark, a fire behavior analyst for Cal Fire who is working on the Palisades fire, was relieved Tuesday’s winds weren’t as powerful. The fire didn’t grow overnight, and quieter weather was allowing crews to extinguish fire in pockets of smoldering landscape and vegetation.

While conditions have improved, Mr. Clark said he was most concerned about the forecast for the Santa Ana winds to pick up again Tuesday night into Wednesday.

“And then we’re looking out to the future to see what happens with the weather forecast with an additional round of Santa Ana winds possible next week,” he said.

Though residents are eager to return to their homes, many areas are still under evacuation orders, and Bohall rattled off a long list of the hazards that remain days after a fire has been extinguished: flare-ups, downed power lines, unstable walls and roofs, and unsafe water.

A self-made weatherman used Facebook to warn of fire danger. People listened.

Many members of his Facebook group, Altadena Weather And Climate, listened.

In the days since, posts to the group have flooded in, with people thanking Mr. McGregor, a devoted weather watcher with a bachelor’s degree in climate science, for his hyperlocal weather posts and his warnings for days before the fires broke out that the danger of a life-threatening event was high.

And they praised him for saving lives — their own or others’ — by inspiring them to evacuate in time. One, Gregory Han, posted that Mr. McGregor had galvanized him to leave with his family, “so clear was his language that this would be a catastrophic event.”

Mr. McGregor, reached by phone Monday, said: “I was always worried wildfire would break out at Eaton Canyon.” He drew comparisons to the buildup of parched vegetation that had fueled other major fires, like Lahaina, Maui, in 2023, and Paradise, Calif., in 2018.

“I knew it was ready out there for years,” he said. But, he added, “I didn’t expect this.”

His own home survived — barely. Just two blocks over, houses burned.

He said he expected the Eaton fire would be remembered as a catastrophe on the scale of hurricanes Harvey and Katrina.

Mr. McGregor has run the Facebook group since 2022. It now has over 7,000 followers, with more than half added just in the last week. He also runs WeatherMcGregor on Patreon, which has drawn hundreds of subscribers.

On the Facebook group, Mr. McGregor often posts maps, models, and infographics from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, demystifying the technical information in clear and understandable language.

Even in the last 24 hours, he has continued to provide granular analyses and answer questions on Facebook from people struggling to cope.

“He’s guided us through damaging wind, local flooding, mudslides, fires, and even a hurricane! And he has never asked anything in return,” wrote Lisa Schultz, 46.

As the Eaton fire still burns, locals gather seeds to regrow.

Ms. Raj’s home is still standing, but hundreds of other homes and backyards burned as the Eaton fire devastated 14,000 acres in Altadena, including thousands of acres of woodlands, streams and undeveloped land where locals hiked, rode bikes and watched for birds and other wildlife.

Ms. Raj, a University of California naturalist and master gardener, is a docent at the Eaton Canyon Nature Center and had been working to build a seed bank there. Altadena residents were familiar with one of the dozen or so wooden structures she had scattered around the neighborhood marked “Altadena Seed Library,” where people could take or leave free seeds.

“Plants do so many amazing things,” she said. “They’re so intelligent.”

Fire is a natural part of the ecosystem in Southern California, so much so that some native plants have adapted to germinate in the ashes, while others have been shown to clean scorched soil and prepare it for new growth.

As wildfires become more dangerous, extreme and fast-moving, the re-establishment of native plant life, coupled with clearing away invasive species that dry out, becoming kindling, is urgent work for conservationists across Los Angeles.

On Monday, Ms. Raj was working with friends from the local nursery Plant Material to get gardening tools and protective gear to people on the ground who needed them as they cleaned up debris, or excavated what was left of their homes. She also put out a call for seed donations, knowing they would soon be essential to restoring the area.

Within a day, people were dropping off seed packets — bladderpod and desert globemallow seeds, poppy seeds from “Sue’s yard in Pasadena” and brickellbush from “a south facing slope in Topanga Canyon.” Someone brought Ms. Raj a single California black walnut sapling. Others mailed in yarrow, mugwort, sagebrush and lupine seeds. On Instagram, users tagged seed companies and native plant nurseries hoping to get their attention.

In recent years, many home gardeners in Altadena replaced their lawns with native gardens. Others tended to vegetables patches and community gardens for decades, and cared for mature fruit trees, sharing the hauls with their neighbors. In the winter, the homemade greenhouses of Altadena were filled with dormant treasures.

As the fires burned through yards and wilderness, Ms. Raj saw more than just clusters of greenery disappearing. She thought of how hot the summers would be without the shade these plants and trees provided, the degraded air quality, the polluted water sources, and the loss of habitat for deer, coyotes and other animals and insects.

“I’m also thinking about the comfort that plants bring to so many folks in Altadena who rely on gardening and tending the land to feel connected to themselves,” she said. “We all have a lot of work to do.”

After a wildfire, if land is polluted with chemical fire retardants, salt water and ash, soil scientists say it can take five to 10 years for healthy regrowth, depending on rain and other factors in the years that follow. When growth is possible, the soil must still be analyzed to determine if foods that grow there are safe to eat.

Ms. Raj was focused on seed education and seed equity for years in preparation for disaster, though she didn’t expect one so soon, so close to home. “I first started making these videos on how to collect and germinate seeds because so many native seeds have so many specific requirements,” Ms. Raj said.

In one of these old videos, published on her website, she demonstrates how smoke helps to crack the tough exterior of a Matilija poppy seed, a dazzling native plant nicknamed the “fried egg poppy,” for its lush, yolky center and large, fluttering white petals.

“Even if the entire field burns down, they’ll regrow,” she said. “That underground resilience and connection is such a metaphor for Altadena — those nodes of connection and care are still so strong. Even if they’re invisible, we know we’ll come back.”

In picturesque Ventura County, the threat of fire looms.

The lighter winds moving through Ventura County’s valleys on Tuesday could help fire crews halt the spread of a nearly 56-acre fire that ignited in an overgrown riverbed on Monday evening. By Tuesday afternoon, the fire was 25 percent contained, according to Cal Fire.

As fires continued raging in Southern California on Tuesday, fire officials in Ventura County, northwest of Los Angeles, encouraged residents to remain vigilant and prepared — something they were doing themselves.

“This weekend my wife and I were going through our house and looking at what we would bring with us,” Andrew Dowd, the public information officer for the Ventura County Fire Department, said. “We were talking about where we would meet up if we had to leave.”

The county, nestled between Los Angeles to the southeast and Santa Barbara to the northwest, features 42 miles of Pacific Ocean coastline, making it an attractive destination for surfers and beachgoers alike. Farther inland, smaller cities like Ojai, with its spas and wellness resorts, offer a retreat from hectic city life.

Half of the county’s 1.2 million acres is occupied by farms and the Los Padres National Forest.

Originally part of Santa Barbara County, Ventura County separated in 1873, and had an initial population of about 3,500 residents. Now, with more than 840,000 residents, according to the 2020 census, it is the 11th most populous county in the state.

But residents of Ventura County pay a price for living so close to both beaches and mountains: Last year, the median price of a single-family home in Ventura County was $912,000, according to the California Association of Realtors.

Forecast models show that on Wednesday, winds may reach 30 to 50 miles per hour in coastal and valley areas, and up to 70 m.p.h. in the mountains. While dangerous fire weather may still occur tomorrow, it isn’t forecast to be as intense as last week’s first event.

A historically Black enclave within Altadena has been shattered.

“I felt it was like back home — peaceful and calm and a little secluded,” said Shirley Taylor, who was raised in North Carolina and arrived in 1979.

The town also offered a striking element: a flourishing community of middle-class Black families. Ms. Taylor, a manager for the Social Security Administration, knew she and her two sons would fit right in.

She purchased a three-bedroom Craftsman on Las Flores Drive for about $75,000 that offered a view of the mountains from the master bedroom.

“Oh, it was beautiful,” she said. “I called it ‘my little country home.’”

Around them, a community thrived. Everyone was an auntie or uncle or cousin. Neighborhood barbecues were lively events. Children played in the streets and hurried home when someone rang a bell at sunset. A network of artists, county employees, blue-collar workers and retirees bloomed.

Now, the future of what was historically a Black enclave within Altadena is in peril, after Ms. Taylor and many other residents lost homes in the blistering Eaton fire. Entire neighborhoods in the town of about 42,000 have become deserts of ash. The loss of homes is staggering. The loss of a unique haven, shattering.

Nearly 21 percent of the residents directly affected by the Eaton fire are Black — a high proportion, considering that Black residents account for only 8 percent of the overall population of Los Angeles County. Some of those who lost homes did not have fire insurance.

“It’s very painful, because it feels like a family of people have been destroyed, and I don’t know if that family will come together again, with property in California being as expensive as it is,” said Ms. Taylor, 75.

Neighbors have been horrified to learn the names of the dead.

Rodney Nickerson, 82, a retired aerospace engineer who loved to fish. Victor Shaw, 66, a former courier whose body was found in his front yard with a garden hose in his hand. Dalyce Curry, 95, a former actress known for the old blue Cadillac she had long vowed to restore. Erliene Kelley, 83, a retired pharmacy technician who doted on her grandchildren.

They, along with other Black victims of the fire, lived west of Lake Avenue, where many early homeowners of color were pushed because of redlining — a discriminatory bank-lending practice that effectively precluded them from buying in white neighborhoods. Even after redlining was outlawed, the practice continued informally through steering by real estate agents.

The west side of Altadena became racially diverse, home to a small number of Asian Americans, a substantial Latino population as well as Black residents. It had cheaper, more modest homes on smaller lots than the other side of town, east of Lake Avenue, a major street that bisects the community and runs from the San Gabriel Mountains south to the 210 Freeway.

Altadena was overwhelmingly white in the 1950s, at the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement. When Black residents slowly began to appear, they were not embraced.

Wanda Williams, 74, recalled that her father, who worked with the Union Pacific Railroad, was not allowed to buy a home in Los Angeles because of redlining. When the family settled in Altadena around 1953, they were one of two Black families in the whole neighborhood. Ms. Williams recalled how an older white woman would spray a garden hose at her when she rode by on her bike.

Around that time, a neighborhood watch group known as S.E.N.C.H., each letter standing for a street name, was started by a Black resident in part to address a strained relationship with the sheriff’s department.

In 1968, the Fair Housing Act prohibited race-based discrimination against home buyers and renters, and helped to change the racial makeup of Altadena. Black families who were pushed out of urban housing in neighboring Pasadena made their way in, and the area became sought after by families from the South.

About a decade later, the Black proportion of the Altadena population peaked at nearly 43 percent, according to census data. With the surge came additional scrutiny from the authorities, as well as white flight, according to Michele Zack, a local historian who wrote a book about Altadena, an unincorporated part of Los Angeles County that lacks a city council or mayor of its own.

“Real estate agents actually scared a lot of white homeowners, especially those west of Lake Avenue, and said, ‘We can’t be responsible for your property values falling, so get out now,’” Ms. Zack said.

“They would get white owners in modest areas to sell their houses cheap, and then bring in Black people and sell to them at higher prices,” she said. “So there was a lot of land that was exchanged in a panic mode.”

A considerable number of the first-time home buyers from that period stayed in Altadena for good. These days, about a quarter of Black residents in Altadena are 65 or older.

Many of Altadena’s Black families passed their houses down from parents to children, and hoped they would be the foundation of generational wealth.

All of that made for a community where, if you didn’t know someone directly, you probably knew someone related to them. Entire blocks operated like extended families, anyway.

“My neighbor on one side, she taught me how to cheerlead, and then an older lady, Mrs. Cheatham, she’d babysit us,” said Regina Major. “But if you were in trouble, she’d tell your parents. In that whole community, you took care of each other.”

Ms. Major, 62, was a toddler when her parents purchased a home in the area. Her father was a minister who also ran a printing business; her mother was a jury services supervisor for the Los Angeles County Superior Court, and did hairdressing on the side.

“There’d always be someone over — she would press and curl their hair in the kitchen,” Ms. Major said. “She also baked a lot, so anybody that had a birthday, she made a cake for them.”

Ms. Major moved into a house around the corner from her father, who is now 101. His home did not burn, but hers did.

The camaraderie among neighbors has meant that no matter who lost what in the fire, the devastation has been shared. Group chats have been never-ending with messages of support and resources.

“Sometimes someone has a tragedy and all of us get together to support that person,” said Felita Kealing, 61. “But in this case, it’s not one or two, it’s thousands of people.

“You see Candace lost her house, or Cushon lost her house, and you know those people. You’ve been to their homes, you remember their furniture, you remember how they greeted you.”

Ms. Kealing has lived in Altadena for three decades. She and her husband were known for hosting a Christmas brunch where anyone could stop by for quiche, banana bread and waffles. The couple and their two sons were involved with the Altadena Baptist Church, which hosted an annual Black history celebration. Both their house and the church were destroyed.

More than half of Black households in Altadena earn more than $100,000 a year, a tidy sum in many places but firmly middle-class in Southern California.

“When you lose a middle-class Black community, it’s a loss of a culture, but it’s also a loss for the next generation,” said Wilberta Richardson, president of the Altadena unit of the N.A.A.C.P., which started in 1984.

Ms. Richardson, who is 75 and has lived in town for nearly four decades, pointed out that Black children who grew up in Altadena had the privilege of accessible role models.

But many residents worry that the fires will scatter neighbors and hasten gentrification. The proportion of Black residents in Altadena’s population has fallen to around 18 percent. Altadena is now considered affluent, with an average household income of $190,000.

The median sale price of a house in Altadena is now nearly $1.3 million, a figure that few longtime residents could afford. Long before the fires, many Black homeowners were capitalizing on their newfound equity by selling and moving away.

Many of those who remained had planned to stay for good.

“Even though we were kind of cordoned off, we made the best of it, and there’s a real sense of genuine community that we particularly enjoy,” said Jervey Tervalon, a novelist who was born in New Orleans and has lived in Altadena for 20 years. His own home burned, and he and his family have been staying at a nearby hotel.

“The fear of something to lose is real.”

Ken Bensinger, Robert Gebeloff and Christina Morales contributed reporting.

Audio produced by Adrienne Hurst.