Los Angeles: Scenic and charming and tucked into the foothills, Altadena seemed like a secret just outside the reaches of Los Angeles.
“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. Taylor, a manager for the Social Security Administration, knew she and her two sons would fit right in.
She bought a three-bedroom Craftsman on Las Flores Drive for about $US75,000 that offered a view of the mountains from the master bedroom.
“Oh, it was beautiful,” she said. “I called it ‘my little country home’.”
A firefighter battles the Eaton Fire in a neighborhood of Altadena. Credit: Philip Cheung/The New York Times
Around them, a community thrived. Everyone was an auntie or uncle or cousin. Neighbourhood 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 Taylor and many other residents lost homes in the blistering Eaton fire. Entire neighbourhoods 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 per cent of the residents directly affected by the Eaton fire are black – a high proportion, considering that black residents account for only 8 per cent 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, wi
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