It was after dark. The power was out. And fires were already raging on the west side of Los Angeles.
Kirsten Schaffer saw a pink glow from her kitchen window in her Altadena home on the evening of Jan. 7. She grabbed her computer, her family’s passports, her 15-year-old daughter Olive and left.
By 8:30 p.m. that night, the Eaton Canyon fire had spread to over 200 acres. By Wednesday morning the flames had burned up over 1,000 acres, including Schaffer’s house that she shared with her wife Linda Kennedy and two daughters — now left in a pile of ashes.
“This last week all I’ve wanted to do is knock on my neighbor’s doors and see if they’re OK,” Schaffer, the executive director of Women in Film, told TheWrap. “But of course, there are no doors.”
Every house on Schaffer’s cul-de-sac burned to the ground. Remnants of chimneys, melted picket fences, metal patio chairs and the corpses of cars are all that remain on her street.
As of Thursday afternoon, the Eaton fire had devastated 14,117 acres of land in the canyon, which spills into the neighboring community of Altadena. At least 27 people have died as a result of the Los Angeles fires, 17 in the Eaton fire alone. CalFire estimates more than 7,000 structures were decimated by the Eaton fire.
While Pacific Palisades, the site of a even larger blaze last week, is a suburb of Hollywood powerbrokers and A-list actors and directors, Altadena is home to its own distinctive and vibrant community of artists and entertainment professionals. Schaffer, who runs a nonprofit that advocates for parity and career advancement for women in film, has several friends who were affected by the unrelenting fires — producers, designers, writers and documentarians alike.
The area has historically been a haven for Black residents. After the “White Flight” of the 1960s, Black families bought property in Altadena; now the community is 58% comprised of people of color.
“Altadena is an historic Black community, we all need to work together to ensure equitable distribution of resources and to protect this legacy,” Schaffer said.
The nonprofit executive initially fell in love with the neighborhood after her two daughters went to pre-school at Village Playgarden, a holistic farm and early childhood program, which has since burned down. She and her wife’s adopted daughter is Black, and it was important to the couple to immerse their children in their community.
While diversity was the initial driving factor for the couple, in the nearly two years since they have lived in their house, they found so much more. Nearly half of the families in her neighborhood also worked in entertainment.
“Living there felt like we found our people,” she said. “Because of the true diversity of this community across race and class, and a rich arts community that includes so many people who work in film and television.”
Though Schaffer’s home is all but gone, she and Kennedy are committed to rebuilding not only their home but the community they love.
When she visited her property for the first time only a day after it went up in flames, Schaffer said she saw her stone Buddha sitting upright against the rubble. The head had broken off, so she took it with her as a “souvenir.” Planters in her front yard looked more like bathtubs filled with ash.
Her metal patio furniture did survive. She remembered nights with Kennedy, sitting in the presence of their 200-year-old oak tree (which did survive) and listening to her neighbors play music from their homes.
“There are three different homes [in the neighborhood] that we could hear people play music. We could hear Bennie Maupin playing his jazz saxophone,” she said. “At night, sometimes we would just sit outside and listen to him play.”
TheWrap was able to capture scenes from the devastating Altadena fires, including Schaffer’s home. Read on for a full gallery:
To donate to Kirsten Schaffer’s GoFundMe, visit this link.
