Reporter Danielle Chiriguayo:  

History is personal. And no matter how far away it might feel when reading about it in textbooks or watching it in a documentary, it touches us all. Honestly, it took me a few days to fully realize the full impact of the Eaton and Palisades Fires. They’ve also made history of their own: The blazes are now, respectively, the second and third most destructive wildfires in California history. 

Within all this havoc are so many places that are part of the fabric of Southern California’s own history. I’m sad to say that I never had the chance to visit many of them. But it is incredible to hear the stories and see the pictures of all these places that generations of Angelenos have visited and made memories at — whether that was a communal diner like Fox’s Restaurant in Altadena or an architectural wonder like the Keeler House in the Pacific Palisades. 

One big question has swirled through my mind amid all of history-making: How do we move forward when we’ve lost so much?

LA fires: How to preserve history when the buildings are gone?

The LA Conservancy has tracked and verified dozens of historical places that have either been partially or completely lost in the wildfires. In Altadena, the 1887 home of Andrew McNally, the co-founder of Rand McNally Publishing, is confirmed to have burned, as well as the 78-year-old artist colony Zorthian Ranch, and the 1925 Spanish Colonial property featured in HBO’s Hacks. 

Across town, the Palisades Fire destroyed Will Rogers’ Santa Monica Mountains home, as well as the residence of modern classical composer Arnold Schoenberg. The Viennese musician fled the Nazis in the 1930s and eventually settled in the Palisades — an experience he once described as being “driven into Paradise.”

LA Conservancy President and CEO Adrian Scott Fine says, “We always say it in preservation: If the physical place no longer exists, it's much harder to understand the stories, the people that were important to that place, the architecture. If you can't see it, touch it, feel it, and experience it by going into that place, it's so much less real.” 

Today, many of the lost historic buildings, or decades-old homes, can’t be replicated exactly. Years of new California building codes and legislation have made homes more energy-efficient, reduced their carbon footprint, and changed what materials are used to build.

Beloved stuffed animals lost in LA fires: Volunteers are replacing them

A Google spreadsheet allows families to describe stuffed animals that were abandoned or lost during LA’s recent wildfires, and connect with volunteers who try to replace them. Shana Merrill used this after the Palisades Fire destroyed her family’s home and nearly all of her two sons’ (ages 10 and 12) beloved plushes.   

“You would think that maybe by this time, they were getting over the stuffed animal phase, but they're still so attached,” she tells KCRW. “And this was just the biggest area of grief for them in those first few days … They just were crying non-stop. … Their stuffed animals were their confidants, their friends, their family. .. They have names. They play with each other's. They know who's who. … I would even catch my kids talking to them, and great, that was their outlet.” 

Volunteers found replacement options on eBay for Merrill’s son’s Angel Dear brown owl lovey. “Just the happiness, the smile he got when I told him … there's going to be one, it's a little bigger, but it's the exact same color and same company and everything. And he's just so excited for them to come in, and I know they're en route, being shipped.”

‘We deployed everything’: Lindsey Horvath on LA fires, rebuilding better

At a public meeting on Sunday, some Palisades residents were furious over officials’ initial response to the disaster, citing the lack of fire trucks in their neighborhood.  

“We deployed everything that we knew to be prepared for the moment that was before us,” Palisades-area LA County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath tells KCRW. “And we've also heard from our fire chief, [Anthony] Marrone, that even if we had every single firefighter, every single truck in the United States of America, we wouldn't have been able to stop the fire that happened.”

She also points out that year after year, the county has increased its fire budget; and in 2024, residents passed Measure E, the parcel tax that goes toward LAFD, which would help upgrade infrastructure, vehicles, and equipment. Plus, after the Woolsey Fire, the third district launched a Community Brigade so trained civilians could support firefighting efforts.

As for the expense of rebuilding, she has asked her staff: “What are the incentives that already exist to … make sure that [homeowners] are adopting as many of those 21st century home-hardening and fire-hardening practices into their rebuilds as possible? And what else do they need from us, as legislators, to push for more incentives and more support for our homeowners?” 

Domestic workers face double impact: Wildfires, Trump’s deportation threats

Monica Motta runs a small house cleaning business and has lost five to six clients in the Palisades, an area she says accounts for 60-70% of her income. She has five permanent employees, plus another five who work one or two days a week. 

Now Motta is sending her workers to Silver Lake and other LA areas. “I'm distributing whatever we have left between all of us. So that way we all have even a little bit. …  Some of them are working just two days.”

Via phone calls to her social circles and distributions of flyers, she’s trying to advertise her business, see if she can partner with someone else, and/or add more services to what she’s already doing. 

Meanwhile, with a new second Trump presidency, the threat of ramped-up deportation efforts is looming. “I'm afraid to go to the supermarket to do the essentials and buy food because I don't know if immigration is going to be there. … Sundays, we used to go to church and take the kids to eat or something. But not anymore because we're afraid to do those basics.”

Eaton Fire destroys Altadena artist studios, but not spirits

Margaret Griffith and her husband, Jamison Carter, are among an untold number of artists who lost their homes, studios, galleries, and entire bodies of work.

“Being artists and moving into just a regular neighborhood, we’re the weirdos. And it’s not the case [in Altadena],” Carter says. “Everybody was eclectic and strange and had interesting things in their homes, interesting conversations. Everybody was into something different, but we were all creators. And it was a huge support system.”

Part of that support system was a couple of blocks away, at the artist-run Alto Beta Gallery, which fellow artist Brad Eberhard opened in 2022 to feature up-and-coming and mid-career contemporary artists. Now his gallery needs a new permanent home. 

“This tragic experience has increased my awareness that art is valuable and meaningful to people, and not because someone told them it’s meaningful,” Eberhard says, “but because … when they see it go away, when they see it destroyed, they know that that’s bad.”