Fire Victims Hold Meeting to Piece Together Lives

Exhausted residents in the fire-stricken Altadena-Kinneloa Canyon area gathered this week at meetings sponsored by town councils and homeowners associations to devise plans for rebuilding their lives.

About 75 Altadenans clapped loudly as a representative from Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich’s office took the stage during one such session Monday evening in the Eliot Middle School Auditorium.

“First of all, we need to thank God, or whatever being you pray to, and thank the firefighters,” began Carole Robinson, Antonovich’s staff representative.

“But the Santa Anas are still blowing,” Robinson said as she urged residents not to let down their guard against the danger of new fires.

Robinson said the county is hoping to find money to rebuild the Eaton Canyon Nature Center. She said the county will reseed about 1,400 acres of burned county land and the U.S. Forest Service will reseed an additional 6,000 acres in the Angeles National Forest.

Robinson urged victims to visit the Fire Victims’ Processing Center at 405 S. Santa Anita Ave. in Arcadia.

“It’s designed to be a one-stop place to get help from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the county assessor and other agencies,” she said.

Altadena lost about 15 homes to the blazes and about 100 were destroyed in Kinneloa Canyon, according to county records. Both are unincorporated areas in the foothills near Pasadena. Presentations from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, the Forest Preservation Society of Southern California and the Greenspan Co., insurance adjusters, rounded out the meeting.

Tempers flared like hot spots all night as tired residents strained to hear what each organization’s representative was saying over the weak sound system.

A mother trying to hush her crying baby was assailed by five or six people yelling at her to keep her child quiet.

“I don’t have any child care, and my house burned down too,” she told the crowd as she clamped a hand over the baby’s mouth.

The 75 residents who attended counted themselves lucky to have heard about the session at all.

“I heard about the meeting on the radio, otherwise I wouldn’t have known about it,” said Gary Ward, 49, director of security for an Orange County hospital.

About 75 Kinneloa Canyon area residents attended a similar meeting at High Point Academy at the base of Kinneloa Canyon Drive, one of the main roads leading up into the blackened hills of the community. The area is made up of a loose confederation of five homeowner associations: Kinneloa Canyon, Kinneloa Mesa, Kinneloa Estates, Kinneloa Ranch and Pasadena Glen.

Residents succeeded in establishing three committees: one to increase security to prevent any looting of damaged homes, one to promote reseeding to lessen the danger of mudslides when winter rains come, and one to contact residents and government officials to inform them of upcoming meetings.

But then the hot classroom and the cramped schoolchildren’s desks fanned tempers like Santa Ana winds drove the flames.

As insurance adjuster Stan Pore stood up and introduced himself with the disclaimer, “It’s not my purpose to sell anything,” the room erupted in an angry chorus of “No, your purpose is to make money.”

Pore quickly sat down as de facto chairman John McDannel, a 52-year-old United Airlines pilot, called the room to order.

At the end of the meeting, residents voted to have another session at 7:30 tonight across from the academy at the Church of Christ, 1727 Kinneloa Canyon Drive. They will invite as many agencies as possible to attend, from Antonovich, to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to the Pasadena police.

But frustration was evident on many faces as homeowners drove back up the hill to their still-standing houses or back to hotels in Pasadena.

“People have their own interests at stake,” said contractor Mark Dokter, 33, with a shake of his head. “These meetings could go on for weeks.”