When Fire Came for Their Neighbors, Older Adults Called Each Other First

When the Eaton Fire tore through Southern California on January 7, the first warnings many older residents received didn’t come from official alerts—they came from their neighbors.

Members of Pasadena Village, a peer support network for seniors, were calling, texting, and knocking on doors, many evacuating together as flames approached their homes.

Seven months later, that same neighbor-to-neighbor model has become the blueprint for one of the region’s most comprehensive disaster recovery efforts. The Eaton Fire Collaborative, formed in mid-January, has distributed $3.8 million in emergency grants and served over 1,200 families across Altadena, Pasadena, and Sierra Madre.

On August 20, the Collaborative’s Wellness Cluster will gather from 12 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. at Pasadena Village’s new office—itself rebuilt with disaster recovery funds—to plan the next phase of mental health support for fire survivors.

The lunch meeting, organized by Pablo Ortiz-Morales and limited to cluster members, marks a critical transition from emergency response to what organizers say will be years of recovery work.

“And we’re in it for the long haul,” said Katie Brandon, Executive Director of Pasadena Village. “The Eaton Fire Collaborative is making plans to be here until the last house is rebuilt, and it’s very exciting.”

The Collaborative’s structure reflects lessons learned from the chaotic first days after the fire. Within days, Pasadena Village had contacted all 236 older adults in their network. Ninety-one had evacuated; 20 had lost their homes.

“As a peer support community, the older adults involved in Pasadena Village had developed strong relationships with each other, and so they were often the first people to call and text and knock on doors to notify each other that the fires were happening and many of them evacuated together,” Brandon said.

That immediate, relationship-based response has evolved into a multi-sector alliance bringing together nonprofits, neighborhood associations, faith groups, foundations, and government agencies through four working groups: Relief & Logistics, Long-Term Recovery Group, Communications & Data, and the Wellness Cluster.

The Collaborative operates with a sophisticated structure including a Steering Committee with major funders like California Community Foundation, a centralized resource hub website, master calendar coordination, and multiple distribution centers.

The Wellness Cluster alone has provided trauma-informed counseling to over 600 residents. But perhaps its most innovative contribution has been addressing a problem rarely discussed in disaster response: the burnout of helpers who are trauma survivors themselves.

The cluster developed specialized training for both professional therapists and volunteer helpers, many of whom lost homes or evacuated themselves.

“These workshops have helped them address burnout, help them address compassion fatigue and ways that they can take care of their own mental health so that they can continue to help from a place that’s from a healthy standpoint in their own lives,” Brandon said.

“This is really critical because we have many wonderful therapists and social workers who are out there on the front lines, but we also have people who aren’t trained in those professions.”

Through the Collaborative’s network, organizers reached over 100 organizations to offer the burnout training to staff and volunteers.

The recovery effort has shifted from distributing air purifiers and emergency supplies to addressing longer-term needs: replacing fire-damaged computers, providing transportation services, and connecting survivors with counseling through organizational partnerships.

Pasadena Village’s new office space, funded by $25,000 from the Annenberg Foundation and $100,000 from the California Community Foundation, features a Village Commons area and multipurpose community room designed for community programming—a physical manifestation of the collaborative approach.

“We are seeing the continued need for building community, for having trustworthy connections and resources and to know who to turn to ask for help,” Brandon said.

The August 20 gathering at 236 W. Mountain Street, #113, represents more than organizational planning. It’s a test of whether the spontaneous mutual aid that saved lives in January can be institutionalized for the years of rebuilding ahead.

“What is exciting is right now the Eaton Fire Collaborative is establishing a long-term recovery group that’s modeled after other recovery efforts in communities across the nation that have also experienced wildfires,” Brandon said.

But unlike those other efforts, this one began with neighbors checking on neighbors—and it plans to end the same way.

For more information, visit https://www.pasadenavillage.org/