The L.A. wildfires took away immigrants' homes, not just rich ones

Esperanza couldn’t hold her tears as she recalled the night of January 7 when the Eaton Canyon fire forced her out of her Altadena home. She rented the house where she lived with her son, daughter-in-law, five grandchildren and elderly parents. Esperanza said she didn’t receive a notification with enough time to evacuate. The alert came at around 11 p.m. and the family evacuated at around 11:30 p.m. 

“I just grabbed my savings, some important documents and the clothes that I was wearing,” she said. “My mother and father didn’t want to leave the house, and finally we were able to convince them.”

Esperanza, who is undocumented, said this is not only her home where she had lived for the past 10 years, but also her whole family’s home as well as her business where she cared for 14 children. So an additional 10 families are being affected because they don’t have a daycare facility to take their children.

The 67-year-old business owner said she is very worried because she doesn’t have any income source after losing her business. Her parents, who are 92 and 86, receive retirement money but is not enough to make ends meet. 

“It is very overwhelming,” she said. “We already went to get clothes for the children in the donation places but it’s really hard to accept that this is happening,” she said.

In search of help

Due to her undocumented status, Esperanza fears that she won’t receive the appropriate help from the government. Therefore, she arrived on Tuesday in search of more resources at the Pasadena Community Job Center, where she felt welcomed. 

She said not everyone who lost their homes was rich people. Many were immigrants and many are undocumented like her.

In the aftermath of the fire, the center created the Service Brigade so jornaleros could volunteer by cleaning up nearby streets, removing fallen trees, branches and other debris. However, the word spread and soon the location turned into a donation center.

Thousands of volunteers have been arriving to help in the cleanups or to sort the donations. Also, hundreds of people affected have arrived to receive help, from clothes and shoes to food, water, diapers, medicine and other essential items.  

A few days earlier, Juan Valenzuela and his wife Maria Galvan arrived at the center in search of help and resources. On the verge of tears, Juan confirmed he is a leukemia patient who left all his prescriptions at home and he needed to get a refill as soon as possible.

It was about 4 a.m. on Wednesday when the heavy smoke woke them up in their home in Altadena.  Unable to breathe, they and their three children ran out of the house without taking anything, except some documents Maria had under the bed.

The couple went to bed the night before, knowing that there was a fire in the Eaton Canyon area but never imagining it would expand so quickly to the residential area.

On Wednesday afternoon, he and a family member returned home to pick up items and the only thing they found were ashes of the duplex where they lived on Mariposa Street.   

“We ran out of the house with the clothes we were wearing,” said Valenzuela. “We don’t have anything anymore, everything is gone.”

Juan said there were six members of his family plus another two in the duplex behind where his brother-in-law lived. They had been renting the house for 10 years. Now the property is only ashes. 

Staff from the center were able to connect him to the right services. While at the center the couple were able to get some donated clothes and food.  

Valenzuela said he was overwhelmed and worried about losing all the material stuff, but he was glad to have the most important person with him, his wife.

“If she loses me, she’ll be fine but if I lose her, I lose everything. She’s my love,” he said.