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I'm David Nazar.

How do you rebuild your home, your life after losing everything, after your forever home is burned to the ground, leaving nothing to your name, all your cars, your documents, your official papers, cherished belongings gone in a matter of minutes.

That's what happened to thousands of Los Angeles residents.

That's what they're dealing with in the aftermath of the Palisades and even fires.

We begin our broadcast with part one of a special two part series, L.A. fires.

How do you rebuild?

As we travel here to Altadena, California, the heart of the fire, I talk with a family who lost everything.

And then we travel to a medical clinic in Pasadena that also burned to the ground to find out how doctors and patients there are dealing with this crisis.

January 2025 Los Angeles witnessed the worst wildfires on record.

It was as if a nuclear bomb had been dropped on L.A. in the aftermath of the deadly Palisades and Eaton fires.

Devastation like never seen before.

29 lives lost, thousands of homes and structures burned to the ground or badly damaged.

Tens of thousands of acres scorched and billions of dollars of financial ruin.

What could not be destroyed was the fighting spirit of so many courageous Angelenos who, with strength, survival, and some savvy, and with a neighbor helping neighbor, are beginning to piece their lives together, beginning to rebuild Angelenos like Altadena residents Rachel and David Thaxton.

We used to sit here and have coffee and wave to our neighbors as they're driving by to go to work.

And enjoy our mountain view.

Our mountain view.

This is the front door that when I closed it that Tuesday night, I just knew I was going to come back.

I didn't realize that would be nothing left.

This is our living room and up on the mantel we had our wedding pictures, our daughter's wedding picture, family pictures, and yeah, we didn't end up taking any of that stuff with us when we left.

I was absolutely gutted.

And it just you just walk in and think, where am I?

You don't even recognize it.

So I look at this and it's like I can barely tell where anything was.

So for me, David, it was just total devastation.

This is all that remains of Rachel and David Thaxton s property.

Their forever home, or so it seemed.

Their house now burned to the ground.

Their cars burned to the metal frame.

The heat and fire made certain of that.

Ethan was the out of control while fire that destroyed much of the Altadena community here.

Altadena is located directly north of Pasadena, about 15 miles from downtown Los Angeles, a SoCal area famous for the Rose Bowl.

The Tournament of Roses Parade, Caltech, and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

For nearly 25 years, the stones lived here.

Lifers, like so many of their neighbors in this quaint, picturesque Altadena community.

As Rachel and David explain, the night the fire broke out, they had gone to meet some friends on what was an unusually windy day.

Now, it's certainly not uncommon for the Santa Ana winds to fiercely howl throughout SoCal on dry, hot days, wreaking havoc and contributing to blazes igniting all over the place.

However, nearly 80 mile an hour ferocious winds which fueled both the Palisades and the fire as well.

They're not so common.

As Rachel and David were driving home that night.

There was a lot of smoke, and when they got to their house, they had no power.

Little did they know, that was going to be the least of their problems.

The next day.

We had gone with some friends to dinner, and as we were coming back home, we dropped them off and we could see the glow of the fire way off in the distance.

But, we came home and we had no power and we thought, you know, our daughter was encouraging us to go down and stay with our other local daughter.

So we, decided to go ahead and pack up some things.

So we did an overnight bag.

And as we were leaving, I just said to David, let me just grab our important papers.

I felt I was being a little overdramatic because, you know, we're not fire zone, and we've seen the hills burned before and had no idea that this was going to be the end result.

So we really didn't take other than our papers, we didn't take anything else with us other than a change of clothes.

So you really have nothing, right?

Except each.

Other.

As Rachel explained, she and David are not unfamiliar with wildfires burning here in this SoCal region.

They witnessed several blazes over the years near their unequip rated Altadena community of L.A. County.

However, they never witnessed anything like this.

I've lived here long enough where I've seen fires in the mountains, and I always thought, we're not in the fire zone.

And that night we left.

I kept thinking to myself, and even tell my wife, we're going to be back.

We're going to be back.

So I never thought that it would come this far.

And to see this and to think that everything that we've built up here is now gone.

Was our couch.

And Ruth is just sitting.

Look out the window.

There's our ceiling fan.

That was right here.

And as you can see, we had a pretty good sized picture window.

So that for us was our our mountain view.

This is why we live.

We moved here.

Look at that.

The mountains are right there.

And our kitchen was over here.

We just remodeled that in 2020.

And it was we.

It was.

Our kitchen.

We were so happy with it.

Because we got everything we wanted in that kitchen.

And I know over the years you both put a lot of money into this house to make it what it was.

Yes.

Yeah.

We redid the kitchen.

We had a bunch of upgrades done and, and this is our, is our daughter's bedroom back here.

That was our daughter's bedroom.

And they they shared the space for quite for their younger years.

And then as our older one got a little older, we actually kind of jimmied our dining room and made her her own little space for a few years until she moved out.

But yeah, this was this was their childhood home.

And we have just a lot of good memories, a lot of parties, a lot of school projects.

Oh my goodness.

There's, you know, some of our wedding China.

That's your.

Wedding.

That's our wedding now.

Yeah.

Because we had a.

China, we had.

A China Academy down.

We had a dining room right here.

Right.

And the China cabinet would have been right about here.

And the China cabinet was my mom's China cabinet that she gave to me.

And it was it was treasured because there was there was silverware in there that she and her mother had.

Yeah.

Yes.

It's weird to see the few things that did kind of survive.

And I'm just actually noticing our topping of our wedding cake that, Oh, my gosh.

What does that say?

I'm missing?

She's still there.

That was part of your wedding cake.

How many years ago?

Five years ago this year.

35.

This year.

This.

This.

Actually, I think her books don't touch it because it will make a big powder.

Yeah, yeah, but yeah, that was our bookcase.

We had a bunch of books in there.

That's right.

Because this wall right here would have been our was our bookcase.

So this is what's left of my barbecue patio furniture.

This was a gazebo.

We drive up here and I and it's like I there's no point of reference.

So it looks completely unfamiliar.

We're the first time we came up as we were driving the streets, I didn't even know what street we were on because I didn't have anything to kind of.

Yeah, give me a frame of reference.

As Rachel and David sift through the rubble and their once precious memories, they know they're not alone in their tragedy, their loss.

Thousands of families like the tens lost everything.

Are there in the eating fire or the Palisades fire that also scorched the LA Earth.

Pacific Palisades is a SoCal community, partly located from Sunset Boulevard to Pacific Coast Highway in the Pacific Ocean, a giant swath of land that also in part, divides Santa Monica and Malibu for decades, the Palisades have been home to everyone from doctors and lawyers, Hollywood actors and producers, to working class folk, surfers and students.

Unfortunately, no matter what socioeconomic background, those residents did not go unscathed in the Palisades or even fires today in Altadena.

It's that Thaxton fighting spirit that's helping neighbors rebuild their homes and their lives.

And even with their strength and resilience and their never quit attitude, there is overwhelming sadness for Rachel and David.

The initial few weeks, it was just like the utter shock of it.

And now I think we've developed this like deep homesickness.

And we've said a bunch of times, me, I just want to go home, you know, and just that feeling like.

And then I look at it, but I don't recognize it and it's just heartbreaking.

I just recognize parts of it and it's not complete.

It's just holes with holes all around this yard.

And this is yeah, I guess like my wife was saying, it's just the loss of what we build.

Is that the most overwhelming part, the loss of what you build or to or is it the worry and the anxiety over what you're going to have to build where you go from here?

How do you rebuild not just a home, but your lives?

Yeah, it's all of that.

And it's also communal grief because we're not just grieving for ourselves, we're grieving for our neighbors.

Everybody's scattered everywhere.

And I, you know how long before we all get to be back together?

And so, yeah, it's that it's that you said at.

One point something about the house was crying or something.

Oh, I had to had this feel.

I have this, like, weird vision of our house when it was burning, just screaming out save me!

Which, you know, just kind of haunted me.

Saving their house is going to be a tough task.

Rachel and David worked their entire lives to make a dollar and save a dollar.

They say they are going to rebuild their cherished home.

They have no choice.

Other Altadena residents have chosen to do the same.

Stay here.

Rebuild.

With that said, locals are very aware of the obstacles before them, particularly the expensive rebuilding efforts that could force neighbors out of this community.

The eating fire destroyed thousands of Altadena structures, and the economic rebuilding challenges for the current residents are formidable.

Housing experts say.

There are going to be massive challenges with supply chain disruptions and overwhelming competition for things like construction, labor and materials as well.

Residents here say they're concerned they're going to be displaced, partly due to economic pressure to build apartments, condominiums or other types of rental units that could replace their single family homes.

And then there are the problems with the insurance companies.

Yes, some Altadena homeowners, like Rachel and David, have begun to receive payments for their destroyed properties.

Others have not mired in the red tape and bureaucracy of the insurance industry.

And there's fear among some residents here that mega wealthy real estate developers with deep pockets are going to make neighbors who cannot afford to rebuild an offer they can't refuse.

In other words, they're now going to possibly have to deal with predators or developers who are trying to purchase some of these Burnett lots.

Rachel and David nervously admit this is unchartered territory for them.

They have no idea what's involved with the rebuild.

They just know they're worried and concerned these days.

Okay, now we got to face reality.

Now we got to face the what comes next?

How do we rebuild?

We never wanted to build a house.

Had.

No.

And also you.

There was a point.

You said that our whole history has been erased.

Yeah.

It feels like.

It feels like.

Yeah.

Everything's here.

Yeah.

We're starting from scratch.

Everything we've known is gone.

The history possibly erased your fighting spirit, your legacy, your strength.

Definitely not erased.

I am guessing that's what is going to be carrying you through.

Yeah.

Well our insurance company has actually been very responsive.

We've we've had a lot of response from them and they're very communicative.

So in terms of, you know, getting the payouts, I don't think that's going to be so much of an issue for us.

I know for a lot of people that were, you know, dropped from insurance or very much insured.

Again, I don't know if we're under-insured because I have no idea how much it's actually going to cost to rebuild a home.

But, you know, then it's a matter of, you know, finding an architect and drawing up plans and fulfilling, you know, permit requirements and, yeah, just the anxiety of, you know, making sure we're not falling behind and not making this take longer than it needs, then, you know, than it needs to, because we want to we want to be back here as soon as we can.

That's kind of the biggest anxiety is just how to how to even go about it.

You know, not having any experience with any of this and coming on is so suddenly because most people, if you're going to build a house, you're thinking about it for a while and you're planning, but all of a sudden it's like, boom, we got to do this.

So that really stresses me out and I'm kind of more the paperwork person out of the two of us.

So I feel like, yeah, that's something that really out.

And then the big question is we want to build it exactly the way it was when we left.

And we know it's not going to be exact, but we're going to get as close as we can.

And it's, you know, for the of course, for the size we have to be because it's the footprint of the property that we're where our insurance is owning the footprint.

So we can't go live.

You can't oh, but I want it back like it was because that's what I remember so far.

What have they told you?

Whether it's the city, the county, the architects, the engineers, the, folks who do all the mitigation, do all the clean out, so to speak.

This is, labor intensive, herculean, arduous task that you're going to be dealing with.

What have they told you so far?

Well, there was that phrase like to like.

Yeah, yeah, we can build like to like, and, Which is the same footprint.

Right?

Yeah.

And I think they are allowing an additional 10%.

I don't know that realistically we can do that on our lot.

But, so we know that, you know, we can do that.

But with in terms of the cleanup there, there's a map that we can go to that showing you can put in your address and it'll show you like what phase you're in.

So we're still waiting for I don't know for sure.

I can't tell if they've actually done all the hazardous cleanup yet, but then they'll come in and do debris removal.

But again, we don't have a date.

They'll call us 72 hours in advance.

We can either be here and not be here when they do the debris removal.

So.

And what we've heard is Army Corps of Engineers, I guess that wind that's going to come in and physically take all this away.

It's so new, though.

It's such a different animal.

This is not your normal rebuild.

Obviously.

It's it's not your normal rehabbing a house.

Is your anxiety that you were mentioning before just the fact that you don't know what the future is going to bring as far as where you go from here?

Yeah, I think that is it's like finding the right people, you know, finding a reputable contractor and, you know, trying to stay within a budget and just not knowing whether with, you know, this many homes, thousands to be rebuilt, what's going to happen with the price of materials or availability of contractors.

And so those things really kind of.

Yeah.

Warriors and yeah.

And in terms of, you know, yeah, what is the actual bottom dollar going to be for what we're going to end up having to pay to rebuild?

Are you going to be okay financially?

Do you folks have the money?

We hope so.

I mean, we you know, our insurance again, I don't know what it cost to rebuild a home at this point and what it's going to cost.

So, but, you know, we've we have some money we can fall back on if we need it.

And, you know, there's FEMA and there's the SBA loans.

And so we've kind of put in for the work we put in for FEMA.

We're working on the SBA loan, and we're.

Reaching out to just everybody at this.

Point.

You both work your entire life.

You're a bookkeeper in a law office for 35 years.

Yeah.

And they're office manager, too.

And the office manager?

You are a courier, if I'm not mistaken, for Fedex.

You're 30 years.

You finally retire.

You're about to live.

What you had expected to be a comfortable.

Yes.

Quiet, financially sound life.

Right.

And now this.

You guys are showing off the your working class folks.

Like most of us.

This is gonna be tough.

Yeah.

Just knowing this is probably going to consume the next, you know, 3 to 5 years of our lives, at least.

You know, that's not what we planned.

And I just say, what?

I'm standing here now.

And I didn't really think about this before, but I can see from here six chimneys.

That's my neighbors.

Yeah.

Six chimneys.

So it's not going to be just my rebuilding as they're rebuilding because I want my neighborhood back.

I don't want just my home and see six chimneys or three chimneys this way.

I want the whole neighborhood.

So I'm hoping that we can.

And we want it to be our original neighbors.

You know, our you know, I know a lot of fear in Altadena is that people will come in and try to buy out lots and build, you know, who knows what.

So that's not what we're hoping for today.

Rachel and David are very connected with their community.

They know so many people who have lost their homes in the January infernos that destroyed much of Altadena, parts of Pasadena and much of the Palisades fire victims are pulling for each other, all working together.

But I'm so heartbroken to not be seeing them every day, and there definitely is there.

We have a lot of, you know, chat groups through text messages.

And we have I'm on a Facebook page with the Altadena people and yeah, just everybody's really trying to provide each other with information.

Anytime somebody gets something new, we put it out there for everybody.

And so we're kind of trying to work together.

And some of our neighbors have talked about trying to find the same contractor to like, rebuild together using one contractor.

It's interesting.

You can technically rebuild all these homes.

The question I have for you is, can you rebuild that sense of community because there is a tremendous loss here.

It's neighbor knowing neighbor, neighbor helping neighbor, your kids, your dogs, your pets.

Do you ever get that unification back.

When you said that a minute ago?

This is what I thought.

When I go to the hardware store, I'll see a neighbor when I go to the bank, when I go to my favorite hamburger store, which hamburger shop?

Which is no longer there, one of our supermarket.

You see your neighbors.

That's community to me, because when I go out, I can see my neighbors and remember I was a fetus.

Care.

So this was my community.

Work wise.

These are your people.

Yeah.

I've lost.

I shouldn't say I've lost because I haven't lost some of the people.

But the properties that I deliver to some people every day, once a week, once a month.

But this was Altadena, was my was my route.

And it's a diverse, really diverse, very diverse hood, which is what really draw us to the neighborhood to being a kind of a multi-ethnic family.

We just really enjoyed the diversity up here and the closeness, I mean, you know, especially this part of Latino where small homes on smaller lots.

And so there's real connection.

And I just hope that as we rebuild that we'll be an even better, even more connected, I think because we have now have this shared experience and a shared trauma.

So the loss of this clinic, which has been providing services for the community for over 50 years, is, is really tough.

Just a few miles from Altadena in Pasadena, this is all that remains of the ultimate health care clinic, a clinic that had been at this location serving the children and families of this community for half a century.

In recent years, ultimate took over this medical facility as doctors and nurses here continued the tradition of taking care of the thousands of people who depend on ultimate for their health care needs.

With many patients suffering from serious health issues, both physical and mental.

Doctor Francis Renault says the ultimate regional medical director for this Southern California area, doctor Us, explains that the loss of the ultimate clinic here in Pasadena is impacting generations of families.

Used to be able to walk in here, get your X-rays done, your lab stone, your preventative care from one day to the next.

This has been up.

It goes from a trusted place where you can bring your children to you, to your parents.

Again, providing multigenerational primary care, preventative care to it's just gone.

And that's the shock not only to the community, but for our staff who live in the community, who have been working here.

So we've been doing our best to try to pivot and just really try to be as available as possible for our for our staff and our patients and to try to minimize the disruption and care that does exist.

We're over 4000 individuals who were assigned specifically to this clinic, but to the Altadena Pasadena region in general, our organization had over 6000 patients affected who were either in direct fire zones or evacuation zones.

Patients suffering with everything from heart disease and diabetes to cancer and depression.

Doctor Rooney says.

After this clinic burned to the ground in January, all employees who worked here were relocated to another ultimate based facility.

This as their doctors and nurses now work 24 over seven in the aftermath of the eating fire to desperately try and continue to provide community health care, a community that encompasses middle class folks, working class blue collar folks, Medicaid and Medicare recipients, people with no insurance, many people living at or below the poverty line.

And now with the fire, their situations have worsened even further and ultimate has to try and do some damage control.

Unfortunately, in the immediate aftermath of the fire, we had to close seven of the clinics in the area.

So those first few days they had to remain close because they were still in active fire areas.

So a community clinic like like the one that was here with ultimate is a trusted member of the family.

I know that though the building is not physically standing anymore, we will have to persist because the mission is still there.

There's still a need.

So we're going to try to fill that need in as in whatever way we can.

So in this case, if we have clinics in the area and even in the surrounding areas, because our organization extends into, deeper into L.A. and Orange County, we're trying to wherever if you were essentially a refugee from this fire, we're going to do our best to try to help, continue providing services.

So it's just the other thing about it is it's devastating to see the the loss of the structure, but there's a commitment from the organization to make sure that we try to rebuild as soon as possible, because that's what's going to help people get come together.

The community to come together is having anchors like our clinic that people can come back to, and that's where the community can start building around again.

Doctor Rooney's explains that this now destroyed ultimate clinic was what's known as a federally qualified health center, which basically means the clinic took all patients, no questions asked, regardless of their ability to pay or their insurance status, regardless of their socioeconomic status.

Regardless of anything.

It doesn't matter that we we need to.

We're treating the people who need it the most, and the vast majority of our of our patient population is dependent on Medicaid.

And in California, Medi-Cal.

And this there's very few resources within medicine where we can say it's purely about the medicine, right?

Medicine.

The United States needs a lot of revamping.

It's not as far from universal, but as a federally qualified health center, I, I, I'm proud to work here because I know that I can just keep it about the medicine, that I'm just gonna be able to treat the patient in front of me with whatever resources we have.

They've lost their homes and a lot of them.

On the transportation as well.

So when you consider all the different socio economic factors that are at play, whether they've lost their jobs, their, their, their, their homes, their means of transportation.

So our our mission right now is to try to make sure that our patients who don't have as much of that buffer, that maybe some of our other patients at other, at other locales may have, that they don't suffer that fate.

And while the I-10 and Palisades fires have taken their toll on their respective communities, Doctor Rooney's admits that he is suffering as well.

For a while, he acknowledges he had to stay focused, stay in the zone, fight or flight, so to speak, to simply take care of his patients after the fires.

However, as the dust settles, literally and figuratively, now Rooney's is finally taking stock of his own emotions.

I'm sorry.

It's it's difficult to to to really like, pivot because I still have my life and it's one of those things where maybe I do feel a little bit of like survivor's guilt that that, you know, how am I here?

And then other people are not.

But with this opportunity that we have, we have to do our best with this.

If I could have a message out to the others in the community, it's that we are proud to be part of you and that we are not going anywhere, and we will be building back stronger than ever.

And we want to make sure that you're there with us.

Sound familiar?

Just ask Rachel and David Thaxton.

I just want to see our neighborhood come back together.

And.

And I do feel a sense of hope just having come to our property today.

We have a daffodil that's coming up out of the ashy ground.

And that's just for me with a little sign that, okay, it's not completely dead here.

There's life.

There is life.

And we can rebuild it.

And a friend of ours drove up a couple nights ago, and they saw our little lights out in the front of our house that are solar.

They were on.

Nothing else was here.

Was lit except those two lights.

I'm feeling that.

Even that it's telling us we're coming back.

As for the future, I mean, since we've have each other and live through this.

If you see something wrong, like a fire, don't do what I said.

I won't do it.

I'm gonna stay here for someone.

Knocks on my door.

Because that would have been too late to get out.

Because yes, it is your home.

Yes, it is your memories.

Yes, it is stuff.

Your life is more.

But we're we're here to talk about it now because we have each other.

Thank you so much to Rachel and David Thaxton of Altadena and Doctor Francis Rooney's regional medical director of Ultimate Health Services.

We wish you the best.

We're here for you.

Certainly let us know if our reporting can help in any way.

Now for more information about our program, just click on KLCS.olg and then click Contact Us.

Send us your questions, your comments, even your story ideas so we can hear from you.

Or you can contact me directly at DavidNazarNews on X or on YouTube or just go to DavidNazarNews and contact me there in order back with you and be sure to catch our program here on PBS or catch us on the PBS app.

Thanks so much for joining us.

I'm David Nazar