Altadena’s historic Black community pulls together after destructive Eaton fire

By Amancai Biraben

Vickey Turner-Ezell had evacuated due to the Santa Ana winds before, so as she watched the embers and smoke rolling along in the distance from her Altadena home last Tuesday night she didn’t think to pack her belongings. Little did she know she’d return to her home in ashes.

Sorting through donated masks on Monday morning at Pasadena’s New Revelation Baptist Church, where her uncle once led as pastor, she kept a hopeful attitude.

“God is faithful. He’s sustaining me,” Turner-Ezell said.

The church’s gymnasium had rows of home goods, suitcases, hygiene supplies, toys, clothing and hot meals for survivors of the Eaton fire as the church kicked off its first day in a week-long “HELP Center” — a partnership between the church and the Los Angeles Urban League to provide relief for victims of the catastrophe in Altadena.

The church will continue to offer supplies as well as a range of services including legal council and therapy for children with disabilities.

According to Pastor George Hurtt, most of New Revelation’s parishioners live in Altadena. The city is home to a historic Black population whose ancestors fled the Jim Crow system of racial segregation in the South decades ago, with hopes of homeownership in California.

Although Pastor Hurtt’s parishioners all survived, he was friends with Rodney Nickerson, a deacon who died in the Eaton fire.

Hurtt says at least 30 of his congregants have been personally affected by the fires. Aside from them, at least 80 Black families in the area have lost their homes.

See more: Black communities in Pasadena, Altadena devastated by Eaton fire

Tamika Simms, an assistant chef at an assisted living center, lost her powder blue home with its front yard palm tree — a house she inherited from her grandmother who moved to California from Mississippi as a teenager.

Weeks before the fire, she held her son’s 10th birthday party at home. The two are now staying with Simms’ godmother nearby.

After evacuating her home on Tuesday night following police orders, she returned to grab essentials. The power was out, and embers that lit the hallways guided her to the family’s birth certificates, insurance documents and medications.

In the following days she had to remind her 10-year-old how lucky they were to be alive.

“I’m like, ‘Elijah, we have everything right now. We have so much. We have each other,’” Simms said. “I’m like, ‘All that stuff is material. We’ll rebuild. We’ll start new. This is a fresh start.’”

She is relieved that Elijah’s school is intact, but with classes currently in an online setting she worries how the fires will add to the years-long learning struggles he’s had since Covid-19.

Younger generations who saw their homes lost to the fire also showed up at the HELP Center.

Destiny Williams, 24, looked through a cardboard box of shampoo and body lotion to replace the products she left in her grandparents’ home, now destroyed. In her run from the fire, she took only a blanket and pillow, and she and her grandparents fled to an aunt’s home.

“It’s hard,” Williams said between tears. “My whole entire life I’ve never seen my grandparents cry. Now I see them cry every day.”

Some of the volunteers who are helping out in Altadena have been members of the New Revelation Baptist Church for decades. Dell Stewart has been helping since 1967. Last week she helped call church congregants to check in on their well-being, and this week she will help organize donations at the HELP Center.

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“This fire is devastating,” Stewart said. “It’s time for us to get together and do what we have to do.”

When she was 3 her family moved to Pasadena from Mississippi, and she is grateful the home she grew up in and continues to live in was safe from the fires. But those of her cousins and in-laws have been lost.

Though Turner-Ezell also laments the homes of at least twenty of her Altadena-based friends and family members lost in the fire, she recalls their parties and unions at hers fondly and is motivated to continue building those traditions through once she  rebuilding property.

“Altadena, to me, is a community that pulls together,” Turner-Ezell said. “Even when I’m dead and gone, it will always be real estate, generational wealth for my two children.”