On Monday I found myself once again on Woodbury Road, the east-west thoroughfare tracing the boundary between Pasadena and Altadena. To the south, an ash-stained but otherwise normal-seeming city. To the north, a torched, nightmarish wasteland. Like a lot of borderlands, Woodbury, in the days since the Eaton fire, had drawn an endlessly interesting cast of altruists, entrepreneurs, opportunists, sufferers, scammers and lost souls. Some begged for help; others rushed to offer it. Now, I stood on the sidewalk, listening to Tony Rodriguez. He grew up just a few blocks away. When the fire broke out, he rushed back to stand beside his father as they desperately fought the flames lapping at the family's home. They had been ready; Mr. Rodriguez's father packed a bag with the most important things. They made sure Mr. Rodriguez's mother drove away before making their final stand. But the fires were too much for their garden hose; the little house caught an ember and began to burn, just like thousands of other homes in Altadena. Overwhelmed by smoke and heat and wind, they finally dashed away to safety. Father and son are close. They're both truck drivers. They collect classic cars. And in their spare time they buy banged-up Kias at auction, fix them up and sell them for a small profit. It's their hobby and how they spend time together now that the younger Mr. Rodriguez lives in Long Beach. It was only after they'd driven far away, to safety, that Mr. Rodriguez's father realized that, in all the chaos, he'd forgotten his bag sitting on the floor just inside the front door. Inside was his passport, birth certificate and other vital documents. It also contained the $200,000 in cash he'd been saving and stowing in the house for years. "He's a boomer," Mr. Rodriguez said of his father. "He's 75 years old and never had a cellphone, doesn't do email, doesn't trust banks." He looked down at his shoes. That morning, the police barriers came down and people could finally return. Mr. Rodriguez and his father had gone to poke around the ashes and see what they could salvage. The bag with the cash and documents was gone, burned up with almost everything else. After a while, they found the keys to the Kias they had been restoring. On the sidewalk on Woodbury Road, he showed me the plastic bag holding the keys. They were blackened and looked brittle. "At least we found these," Mr. Rodriguez said.
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California Today: Residents Return to See What the Fire Left Behind, and to Say Goodbye
January 23, 2025
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