The firestorms in Southern California last month were horrific. Our hearts go out to the survivors of the devastation caused by the Palisades Fire in Pacific Palisades within the City of Los Angeles and the Eaton Fire that laid waste to parts of the cities of Pasadena and Sierra Madre as well as almost all of the community of Altadena. 

An urbanized, unincorporated place within Los Angeles County, Altadena is part of the California (un)Incorporated family. Our colleagues there have reported on their experiences with the Eaton Fire, which stand in stark contrast with what happened in the impacted cities. People from Altadena summarized their major difficulties:

• No disaster plan. There was neither an accessible disaster plan and nor regular community efforts to educate people on how to respond in the event of a fire. The absence of a specific plan caused unnecessary death and destruction of property. There were several properties that did not get timely emergency notifications. As one resident reported, "Our street was on fire by 10:50pm and houses closer to us started to burn by 1:30am. The notification for our section went out at 5:50am." Many residents saw no firefighters the night of the fire. The general feeling by a lot of residents is that the County let us burn either through mismanagement or apathy.
• Communication failures between the County and the citizens. Shortly after the fire no one knew who to talk to or how to even get updates on what was happening after the fire. There is no YouTube channel for Altadena. Information had to flow from  the City of Pasadena. Altadena's community meetings and town halls were even held in Pasadena. Some of the Town Council (more on that later) representatives could not get back online until weeks after the fire. People had to get information from their immediate neighbors.
• No infrastructure plans.  Altadena's citizens have tried  for years to get underground power lines, widening of major streets, wider sidewalks with landscaping, safe bicycle facilities, and filled-in sidewalk gaps. Facilities like that matter with respect to mitigation and evacuation. Residents have been told again and again that undergrounding and infrastructure for improved mobility are "too expensive". Residents are now also asking for real infrastructure changes to their streets, changes that L.A. County Public Works put off for decades despite there being more than enough funds for those improvements.
• Scams and looting. From the moment after the smoke cleared residents were overrun  with all sorts of predatory behavior.  Residents have been inundated with fake text messages claiming to be from FEMA or promoting smoke damage expertise. In Pacific Palisades, the City of Los Angeles restricted access to deter looting; L.A. County did not do that for unincorporated Altadena.  Property owners of Altadena were given a day's notice that access to the community would be restored. They had to hurry back to their properties to board up doors and windows. 

Residents and businesses in nearby cities were treated differently. Pasadena has an Eaton Fire recovery website with information about mudflows, about ash in swimming pools, water quality and how to reach FEMA. The City's Planning Department offers online rebuilding help. Sierra Madre's home page has a pop-up box with the latest information about debris removal. They have another one on how to deal with disaster scams. Why do those cities tend to have better support? It's because the job of city mayors, council members and staff is to look after whatever lies within the city limits. If they aren't good stewards of the territory defined by the city limits, they hear about it, whether at community meetings or in the grocery store or at youth soccer games. On the other hand, the 1 million or so residents of unincorporated communities in LA County must depend on the 5 county supervisors for their municipal services. That's a completely unwieldy governance system, one guaranteed to leave large numbers of people behind. In that setting, Altadena's 42,000 people on 8.5 square miles have gotten lost in the noise. They are underserved - essentially invisible and voiceless.

The fire has made Altadena something of a Poster Child among unincorporated communities. For starters, it has been cherished by its residents. There has been a very strong sense of community. Those emotional factors, coupled with the community's rich architectural heritage, have made the devastation and destruction of Altadena particularly newsworthy. Journalists from all over have been writing articles about how they grew up in Altadena and loved it there. Yet there is a common theme about how Altadena, being unincorporated, wasn't a place of privilege.

Altadena has a Town Council, a kind of surrogate city council, that advises the County Supervisor in charge of Altadena's municipal services. A key point is that the members of the advisory Town Council are elected by the people, rather than appointed by the county supervisor, as is the case elsewhere in the state. Being responsible to constituents, the members of the Town Council demonstrated extraordinary leadership as a result of the fire. The Chair of the Town Council was interviewed on NPR as the fire raged. Though her neighborhood had been destroyed and her property was without electricity and water, she made time to speak to a national audience about what had happened to her community. When asked what people there needed the most, she stated that the unincorporated position of the community had made it very hard for people to get information about status, recovery and next steps. That problem has persisted from the firestorm itself on into the recovery and clean-up activities. 

Altadena's voters are only allowed to vote for one of the five County Supervisors. The Town Council has a fair relationship with the County Supervisor who represents the area and the  Supervisor, in turn, presents a supportive face. Still, it takes a minimum of two other Supervisors to get anything done and none of the other Supervisors have direct connections to Altadena. To its credit, the Town Council has published a recovery website for the community. However, as the Town Council has stated, the Supervisor has a massive array of other communities to attend to within the district. That circumstance has seriously complicated getting solutions for Altaden's issues and needs. Altadena's governance, then, is ultimately dependent on the kindness of strangers. That model has proven to be difficult for Altadena, as it has for unincorporated communities elsewhere in the state. Regretably, the recent firestorm has highlighted the dysfunctionality.

If the inequities dealing with the fire and recovering from it are any indication, rebuilding Altadena will be a challenge. Altadena is a racially and economically diverse community, one  where the working-class felt comfortable and where African-American and Latino families could build generational wealth.  Many residents now worry whether their legacy homes and close-knit sense of community will come back. Given the skyrocketing price of building materials and the obvious demand for construction in Los Angeles County, it isn't clear that residents will be able to rebuild their homes with their insurance settlements (assuming they had insurance). Pasadena and Sierra Madre have specific plans and goals in place such that one can be reasonably assured that their rebuilt neighborhoods will closely resemble the ones that used to exist in their cities. Pacific Palisades was an upscale neighborhood before the fire and will no doubt be an upscale neighborhood when rebuilt. Burned-out lots in unincorporated Altadena are now showing on Redfin for $400,000 and up. California seems hell-bent on giving developers carte blanche to build "affordable" (AKA "cheap cookie-cutter") apartments. Will L.A. County see unincorporated Altadena as just a way to fulfill its required housing targets or as a place that deserves to have its community fabric restored? Time will tell.