Michael Cohen

So there were people who owned horses and they would just take the horses walking down our streets.

And that's not something that you'd imagine seeing when you wake up to take your dog for a walk in the morning.

But I would walk my dog with a guy who walked his horse.

The west side of Altadena, where Mike's house was and where the fire hit the hardest, had historically been a middle-class Black community.

Many homeowners of color had been pushed into West Altadena in the mid-20th century by a discriminatory bank lending practice called redlining.

Nearby white neighborhoods like Pasadena used this process to keep those residents out.

A disproportionate number of homes destroyed in the fire were in historically Black Altadena.

Over the years, these families stayed and passed down their homes.

This contributed to the racial diversity of the neighborhood Mike and Gregory moved into, with many Black, Asian American, and Latino families.

Gregory and Mike both felt lucky to have landed in Altadena.

It's a community, they said, that looked out for each other.

And that community would become an invaluable resource during and after the Eaton Fire.

We'll talk about that when we come back.

Although many people might associate fire as the central problem of the L.A.

wildfires, extreme wind had just as much to do with the disaster.

In early January 2025, the Santa Ana winds peaked in Los Angeles.

These extreme winds and dry conditions caused small fires that may have otherwise been contained to spread quickly.

Joan Didion wrote about the Santa Anas in an essay first published in 1967.

She wrote, quote, The violence and unpredictability of the Santa Ana affect the entire quality of life in Los Angeles.

Accentuate its impermanence, its unreliability.