In Altadena, RV dwellers live next to their homes, straddling burn zone and normalcy

Los Angeles Times

28-03-2025

To stand in Greg Gill's frontyard in Altadena is to straddle two worlds: The Eaton fire burn zone. And normalcy — or, at least, the appearance of it.
Look to the east down Crosby Street, and there's his neighbor Tina Kardos' house. Still standing. As are houses all down the block. Across the street, there's Mariya Mazarati's place. Intact.
Look west, though, and Gill's neighbor's house lies in ruins. So do half a dozen next to that one.
Although their houses survived the flames, Gill, Kardos and Mazarati can't live in them yet. The smoke, soot and heat on Jan. 7 did too much damage.
So, like a growing number of fire victims weary of bouncing among hotel rooms and vacation rentals, they are staying in recreational vehicles parked beside their homes. The RVs are a far cry from the formaldehyde-laden FEMA trailers that sickened victims of Hurricane Katrina two decades ago. One was hauled in by a Tesla Cybertruck. Some are plush. All are cramped.
And they're part of how this trauma-bonded neighborhood on the fire zone perimeter in western Altadena is trying to survive and move on — together.
'Two years in a Motel 6? No, baby, I'm in an RV,' said Gill, who is living with his partner in a 27-foot Puma trailer next to their 3,100-square-foot historic Craftsman house.
Gill is a gregarious, optimistic Southerner whose decision to move into an RV inspired others on his block to do the same. But the weight of the tragedy — and the bizarre juxtapositions of life in the midst of it — often catches him off guard.
'It is still surreal,' he said. 'Several times a day, when I walk out of the trailer, and I open the door and I look at the house, it's OK.
'And I look at this —' he said, nodding toward the burned property next door. 'And it's like, gosh, here we are again.'
His neighbor on the other side, Kardos, is living with her two teenage sons in a 35-foot Cougar fifth-wheel that barely fits on her small, fenced-in front lawn. They moved into the trailer in early March.
Kardos tries to not venture more than a block or two north. Any farther and neighborhoods are so completely wiped out they look like a war zone.
'This is a crazy situation,' she said. 'But I guess, out of the bad situations, this is the best it could be.'
The Eaton fire destroyed more than 9,400 structures, including more than 6,000 homes, across roughly 22 square miles. Lots are still being cleared. And the soil on the vast majority of properties has not been tested for hazardous materials.
On the fire zone perimeter, where burned and untouched properties are side-by-side, the return of residents, visitors and commerce has prompted mixed emotions and difficult questions: Is it respectful to return to Altadena? Is it safe?
Good Neighbor Bar — near Crosby Street and Lincoln Avenue, around the corner from Gill's house — opened 21 days after the fire. Many customers, owner Randy Clement said, were locals who craved the before-times and wanted to be near people going through the same grief. His bartenders became sounding boards, sharing tears and frustrations, hopes and stories.
'It's horrific and beautiful all at the same time,' said Clement, whose house in Altadena survived.
'Being inside Good Neighbor Bar is like riding the subway a month after 9/11,' he said. 'Just because of proximity, there's an immense likelihood that the person next to you is going through what you're going through.'
Clement said Altadena's still-standing small businesses are struggling to stay open — not just because tens of thousands of local customers have been displaced, but because of outsiders' hesitation to visit even the surviving parts of Altadena.
Around the corner, on Crosby Street, the people with RVs have been happy — if, initially, a bit startled — to see nearby restaurants, a supermarket and a gym bustling.
'We are actually so lucky that there is a sense of semi-normalcy around us,' Mazarati said. 'I have to drive past some devastation, but you turn the corner, and you're like, OK, this is normal: There's a guy getting tacos. And someone getting cute coffee at a cute coffee shop. It is bizarre. You have survivor's guilt for sure.'
In January, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order temporarily suspending local laws restricting the use of RVs and mobile homes as temporary housing on private lots — so long as the lots have a fire-damaged home being rebuilt or repaired.
Mazarati has a brown, roughly 30-foot Heartland Wilderness RV parked in her frontyard.
For several days after the fire broke out, Mazarati's husband stayed on Crosby Street, behind the evacuation zone lines. So did his neighbors — including Kardos, Gill and Rob Bruce, Gill's partner — fighting flames with garden hoses and rakes. They called themselves the Crosby Command.
Last month, Mazarati and her husband borrowed the RV from a friend. She's a hybrid employee for a payroll company in Burbank, and she spends her work-from-home days in the trailer. She wants to be near the house while repairs — including replacing smoke-damaged insulation — are being done.
The RV in Mazarati's yard is too cramped for her energetic 2-year-old and 6-year-old sons, so her family is staying in an Airbnb in North Hollywood.
But when she is in the RV, she said, 'it feels like there's a weird normalcy being near my home.' And she relishes trailer-pal lunches in Kardos' RV across the street.
The fire burned right up to Kardos' home. When the house cooled, the walls cracked. The adhesive holding together her wood floors melted and warped. The air conditioner turned toxic. Furniture reeked of smoke and had to be removed for cleaning.
For two months, she and her teenage sons — hauling a few clothes and personal belongings in Trader Joe's bags — were constantly on the move, able to book a few days at a time in various hotels and vacation rentals in a suddenly squeezed market. One week, they moved three times.
Bouncing around Pasadena and Glendale made the logistics of school dropoffs feel impossible. Kardos' older son attends class near their house. Her younger son goes to school in Duarte. Kardos was part of a carpool group with other families that took turns making the commute.
The carpool fell apart after the fire. She drove to Duarte every day. And she hired a taxi to take her oldest to school from wherever her family happened to be staying each night.
In the midst of her shuffling, Gill and Bruce got their RV.
'I was like, 'Oh my God, this is kinda nice. You have, like, steel appliances!'' she said laughing.
Kardos called her homeowner's insurance company, which had been paying for the rented rooms as temporary housing, and said she wanted an RV instead.
A few days later, she had to laugh when a man in a silver Tesla Cybertruck rolled up with the enormous trailer hooked behind. He had rented a truck to tow it, not knowing he would get the electric vehicle, which needed frequent charging because the RV was so heavy.
It's parked behind a green frontyard hedge — and a yard sign that reads: 'Altadena is Not for Sale.'
Kardos is nervous about the health effects of living near burned homes. But her kids, she said, needed stability. And they've been glad to see progress on their block — lot-clearing, tree chopping, home repairs, neighbors moving back.
'It helps, for now, for the kids to see all the activity, all the hustle and bustle, the forward movement,' she said. 'There's something healing in seeing the change. We're not just putting our hands up and saying, 'Oh crap.''
Gill and Bruce also leased their RV through homeowner's insurance because they did not want to live in a hotel for months on end.
The RV has a tiny but functional kitchen. An LED faux fireplace. A small table-turned-desk, where the couple deal with reams of disaster recovery paperwork.
Their view is of the fire debris next door: The husks of a washing machine and dryer. A brick chimney that still stands. Chunks of walls that don't.
'I couldn't be away,' said Bruce, a self-styled handyman and retired city planner who worked in Simi Valley and Palmdale. 'There's just too much to do to try to do this from a hotel. There's an acre of grounds here that I maintain. And I can't maintain it if I'm in a hotel. I can't rebuild the fencing if I'm in a hotel. I can't rebuild the electrical, the irrigation.'
Bruce, a native of the San Gabriel Mountains foothills, and Gill, a Louisiana transplant, have the RV parked next to their single-story Craftsman, which wraps around an outdoor courtyard. Built in 1915, it's an architectural gem with stained-glass windows, original wood floors and a basement wine cellar.
Bruce and Gill bought the place in 1999 for $305,000. It had fallen into disrepair, and they spent years painstakingly restoring it. Before the fire, it was worth $1.4 million, according to Zillow.
The couple were in the midst of a remodel when the fire came. Exterior walls, built from Douglas fir, were freshly oiled and flammable. Charred palm fronds brushed against the house, leaving streaks.
'It makes no sense at all that we're still here,' Gill said. 'The wind pattern — it was like a fire cyclone that went completely behind the house.'
Smoke and embers blew in through cracks around the doors and windows, through attic vents and into the basement. Thick soot — then cleaning chemicals — damaged the hundred-year-old wallpaper.
Before the fire, Gill said, it was 'a party house,' big and boisterous.
'You can have a disco in the porte cochere. You can have a drum circle in the back. ... So many people have put such good vibes into this property for so many years. Us included.'
On a Friday morning in March, the couple hosted Bruce's yoga class, which usually meets in a Pasadena park, for a session on their lawn.
Bruce and Gill host the class once a year in the springtime, when their wisteria vines bloom with purple flowers. They decided to go through with the class after cleaning their yard, Bruce said, because 'the sooner we recover, the sooner the community recovers.'
Some regular attendees were not emotionally ready to visit Altadena. Others had health concerns.
Twelve attendees — including an 82-year-old woman who lost her home in the fire — stretched out their mats on the green grass beneath a singed eucalyptus tree. Birds chirped. Down the street, chain saws whirred.
Yoga instructor Tina Lenert, a professional magician, urged attendees to stretch their shoulders, which 'get tight because we're always waiting for something to happen.'
She stood facing Bruce and Gill's house, the debris behind her.
'My emotions are so mixed right here in this oasis,' Lenert told the class.
Bruce said: 'Just don't turn around.'