When the Warnings Come Too Late

Mimi Brown is back to take us inside the heart of a California community forever changed by the Eaton Fire. In Episode Three of her five-part docu-series, "To Altadena, With Love", we hear from Staci Mitchell, who shares the chaotic moments of evacuating her family and the troubling delays in evacuation orders for the west side of town.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
For decades, black families in Altadena built something extraordinary, a
community rooted in resilience where families thrived despite redlining, discrimination
and gentrification. They fought to stay, they thought to own.
They fought to build legacies that could be passed down
for generations. Then the Eaton Fire came, and just like that,

(00:27):
history was reduced to ash. But what happened that night
wasn't just a natural disaster. Some are also calling it
a failure. A new study from UCLA confirms what so
many already knew. Black families in Altadena were more likely
to lose their home, more likely to suffer catastrophic damage,

(00:50):
and now face a much harder road to recovery. Sixty
one percent of black households in Altadena or within the
fire's perimeter compare to fifty percent of non black households.
Nearly half of black homes were leveled or severely damaged,
compared to thirty seven percent of non black homes. The

(01:11):
numbers don't lie, and neither does the history. The fire
tore through Altadena's West Side, a historically black neighborhood where
families found home ownership only after being locked out of
wealthier white communities. Decades ago, redlining policies kept black families

(01:32):
west of Lake Avenue, suppressing home values but ultimately allowing
them to buy property. By nineteen seventy, seventy percent of
black residents in Altadena owned their homes, nearly double the
rate of black home ownership across Los Angeles County. Now,
those same homes, those same legacies, are gone, and while

(01:56):
the flames did not discriminate, many questioning whether the response
time did. Seventeen lives were lost, all of them on
Altadina's west side on January seventh. Evacuation orders for the
east side of town were sent out at seven twenty
four pm, just about an hour after the fire started,

(02:18):
but on the west side, the first orders didn't come
until three point thirty am, about eight hours later. By then,
entire blocks had already burned. Families were trapped, neighbors were
calling for help that never came, and perhaps the most
damning part, according to the La Times, fire crews were

(02:39):
already receiving calls about homes on fire prior to midnight.
Seventeen people never made it out, Many of them were older,
some had mobility issues, some never even knew the fire
was closing. In Why did it take so long to
warn them? Why did it take so long to save them?

(03:00):
These are the questions Stacy Mitchell is asking herself. She
and her family lived on the West side of Altadena.
When her phone finally buzzed with an evacuation order at
three point thirty am. She grabbed what she could and ran,
but she can't stop wondering was there more that could
have been done? I Mimi Brown, and in this series

(03:24):
you'll hear stories told firsthand by the people who live them.
These are their stories, their memories, and their truth. This
is to Alta Dina with love. Meet Stacy Mitchell.

Speaker 2 (03:41):
I've lived all over Alzadena throughout my life, born and raised,
and our home was on the West Side. That's where
we bought our home in nineteen ninety nine. We've been
there ever since. We raised all three of our children,
and we started with our granddaughter there who's now six,
and my husband and I, you know, we bought it
and started making at ours and h try, you know,
transitioning it and remodeling and adding on and making more

(04:08):
space and really making it ours. We were at a
sweet spot, you know, but such as life. So let
me tell you What was crazy. What was crazy was
we already had a power outer. So I was at
the gym. When I leave the gym, I come home,
we don't have no power. The wind was blowing. It
was crazy. We already knew that these are conditions that

(04:28):
we are fo that we are familiar with. We're familiar
with a lot of wind, We're familiar with a lot
of debris, trees falling down. That's not out of the
ordinary for where we live. So I get home and
the powers out. So I was like, oh, I was
at the gym. I coulda took a shower at the gym.
I was like, now I gotta take a call. I
was like, but I gotta take a shower cause my
son had a game. It was his first league game

(04:49):
that night. He left early and we then my husband
and I we went to the game. And as we're
driving across the outs eating to drive. When we leave,
by the time, it come like kind of like out
of our street and like up we see the sky
is like pink, and it was it was you know,
it was like awesome and kind of beautiful. But we're like,
it's a fire over there, and we're like and here

(05:10):
my husband goes, we're not gonna be able to get through.
I said, well, just keep going until you know, they'll
direct us off if we need to. And we get
right to out and then the drive where it curves
right by the Eaton Canyon and I see the apex
of this fire, and I see this tower on top
of this mountain, and I remember fussing, going, now, see
over here on the west side of town, they got

(05:30):
us over here with no power. They got us over
here in the dark, no electricity, And this has been
going on for a couple of days, right, And meanwhile, look,
white folks over here got power, but here's the fire
is over here on this side of town. I remember fussing,
like just you know, just talking shit. And for some reason,
and I'm not even a real big like I'm not
really on social media, but I just pulled up my

(05:52):
phone and I start I knew that it was kind
of like something happening, and I took video of it,
and I can see it coming down the mountain, and
I mean, and there's no secret. Now, see has already taken,
you know, as much responsibility they're going to take, understanding
that where it started. So this was the game was
at six forty five. I think the fire started like

(06:14):
six fifteen, six thirty, So we didn't know that we
were right there as it was beginning, like it was
just about to pop off, and they hadn't stopped. I mean,
you know, police cars are kind of driving by us,
their sirens are coming on. They're just a riding to
the scene. We see the guys who we who I

(06:34):
believed were you know, men who maybe are in fire camp,
pulling up and they're just getting there, like pulling on
their pants, tightening their belts, they're just riding and you know,
and we crept by and I took video where you know,
and then I went on. We went on to the game,
and then we get to the game and I'm kind
of like, this game is still happening, like no, and

(06:56):
it's it was on the route, but it's it was
close enough to make me think, I wonder why they
haven't evacuated this game or stop this game or like.
But I didn't realize how fresh it was. So we
got there. It was took us longer than usual. So
by the time we get in, it's about halfway through
the first quarter, and we watch about five minutes of

(07:20):
the game, and everybody is feeling some kind of way.
I'm like, can you guess you's like, you know, we're
all talking. I'm like, I don't understand. Like they canceled
this thing day, shut up, shut us, you know. And
at the end of that quarter, they said, that's it, folks.
You know, everybody needs to evacuate immediately. Everybody go home.
We come home, we're still sitting by the fire. We
don't have any power. My husband had wouldn't and got

(07:40):
picked up some of his generators so that our food
wouldn't spoil. I remember having a family reunion meeting on
zoom with my family who lived in Inglewood and who
live in Fontana, and I'm sitting in this zoom like,
you know, I'm here, but I still didn't think I
was in any danger. I wasn't thinking in those terms.
I just knew something was happening, and I knew the

(08:01):
weather was really bad, and we didn't have any power,
and we're doing the zoom and I have a lamp
plugged up into the generator and I have my laptop
sitting there and I'm in the back and I'm just
you know, and I'm the talkative as you see it.
I don't really have anything to say in this meeting.
So now it's nine thirty. We sit around a little
bit longer, and finally I'm just like, I gotta go
to bed. I'm going to bed, go upstairs. I go

(08:23):
to bed. About eleven. By now we have gone out
to the front and we're looking over the house and
we can kind of see like eating cane. Like at first,
we couldn't see the fire, the mountains on fire from
our house. Now when I go off on my balcony
from my bedroom, I can see. If I look through
my neighbor's tree, I can see over there, I can

(08:43):
see the fire starting to make its way across the mountains,
but it's still far. And again, this may sound crazy
to folks who don't live here, but that's not uncommon.
It's not uncommon. I've seen these mountains burn many times
in my life. Every year, every other year, somewhere on

(09:04):
those mountains there's a fire. So for us, it's like, oh,
there it is. It's like, oh shoot, we can see it.
It's not like really close, but it's we see it.
Whereas before I was on the other side of town.
Now it's eleven o'clock. So from six thirty to eleven
five hours, it's made its way this way. You know.
I go to bed and we're just we both keeping
my son. He keeps running up and he's got the

(09:26):
app and he's like tracking, he is on it, and
he keeps coming upstairs and looking out the window. And
I opened the blind so that I could just kind
of check and see. And I went to sleep. And
then at about I guess three thirty three, quarter to four,
somewhere in there, the alarm comes through on your phone,
like and it comes through like an amber alert. And
I heard my husband's sold and I heard this, I

(09:46):
heard the laptop, and I heard my son's from everything
went off at once, and it just woke me up.
And when I woke up, like my nose was burning,
my throat was like tight, my eyes were dry, like
you know, I just didn't feel I felt not good.
And I look out the window and I can't see
anything all I It's just smoke. It's just smoke. I
still don't see no fire. I just see smoke. And

(10:10):
I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm like wow, you know that.
And that was so so from I went to see
maybe by midnight. Those next few hours, we went from
clear visuals of the mountains seeing the fact now it's
just smoke. We can't see anything. So my husband's like,
all right, let's just get our things, you know, pack up,
you know, pack up a little bag, grab some things.
And by now my brother's call and my sister's calling,

(10:32):
so all of us live within you know, a mile
radius of one another. So I just grabbed a couple
pair of my favorite sweats, you know, you know, and
I think now, like I was like, oh, I took
that little bag out of my bag, and I could
like I just remember, like, you don't need that purse
like a little my little coach backpack. I was like,
you don't need that right now, just you know, just
get what you need. And I've grabbed four sets of sheets,

(10:55):
i mean, towels, like you know, some of our light
kind of Turkish towels. I was like, because wherever we go,
it's probably going to be a shortage of towels, and
two pairs of sweats, and the shoes on my feet,
which were not even my favorite shoes. So then we left.
So now we're calling my older son who's thirty years
old and he has an apartment in Pasadena. So we're evacuating.

(11:17):
My husband went and got his mother in his mom
and so we're calling my son, calling my son calling,
calling him, but it's the middle of the Knights, was
not answering, and I was like, well, dot matter, we're
rolling up. We're pulling up on him because he's the
where else are we going to go? Right now? So anyhow,
at that moment, once we got there and we got settled,
my husband started to think and he's like, I gotta
go get my truck. He has his work truck, his

(11:38):
sprinter van, and he was like, I'm gonna go get
my fan. Me and e K are gonna go back. Now,
now y'all are safe, we're going to go back. But again,
when we left, we didn't see no fire. By the
time he goes there, he was almost like, man, f
that truck because parts of our neighborhood were starting to burn.
And he was like, man, our neighborhood is on fire.
It's not gonna make it. The fire is there. So

(11:58):
now my mother in law, she's like, well, let me
go get my papers. Let's go back and we'll get
e K's car and we'll try to get into my
house and get the papers. We all get in the car.
Now it's my seventeen year old, myself, my husband, and
my mother in law. We all drive back to try
to get to her house. She's two blocks, she's about
four blocks north of us, to get her important papers.

(12:20):
She said, the brown box. I didn't know exactly where
what it was, and she wanted and that was it.
She is Fharaohs, just north of Wobury. Oh goodness, gracious,
that house that's her all's white park Embers are like

(12:48):
flying through the air and the smoke and the heat,
and you can feel you can smell it, you can
taste it, and we're like, what are we doing? Like
our lives are on the line right now. We're not
gonna get there. We're not gonna get that stuff. Maybe
the house will burn, maybe it won't. So we backed out.
We turn, hit a U turn, you know, try to

(13:09):
go this way, hit another U turn, because you just
get to a point where you can't see anything and
you could just feel fire. You see the fire, you
see everything's burning around you. We're like, we're not gonna
be that family that your tires melt or your car's
on fire or we're stuck in our trying to get
to go get our stuff. So we tried to get

(13:29):
home twice. We tried, then didn't happen. Then you can't
rest because you're kind of like I wonder, I wonder,
and you don't know what's happening yet. So then we
tried again. We couldn't get through. Same situation. As the
sun comes up too, right, because all this is, you know,
that last trip when we got pushed back was like

(13:50):
six thirty in the morning. Now the sun is up.
Now it's light. You can see what's happened and what's happening.
It wasn't until like to to something in the afternoon
and we managed to get around everything. The you know,

(14:11):
they hadn't set up the National Guard wasn't in town yet.
And we got up to our street and coming up
my mother's street, it just was I was just like whoa.
And we pulled up and I mean, oh, geez jeez,

(14:37):
from front to back the garage like all of that.
It's nah that it's nothing. All this standing is like
the chimney and the like almost like like like at
Universal Studios, that that that facing, for some reason, that
facing of our house, one of those old houses I guess,
was just standing and it's just that facade. But and I,

(15:00):
I mean, I just and that's when we realized. That's
when I saw like, like how total, like it was
so total, smells fire. It's not like water, it's not
like anything else it was. And it's still burning. The

(15:22):
house is still kind of burning. No fire trucks nothing.
I saw some fire trucks, rarely not as many as
you would think when your town is on fire. But
I would see them driving weird seeing a fire teck drive.

(15:44):
But I never saw them stopping and fighting out. Granted,
you know, that was some extreme weather. Maybe they knew
what we didn't know, which was that it was gonna
be a wrap anyway, I don't know, but but no,
I did not see I didn't see anybody trying to,

(16:06):
you know, at no point fight these fires. For whatever reason,
I did not see that. Yeah, well, you know, I
don't know that. You know, we're coping. But I will

(16:30):
say this. You know a lot of people like I
can't imagine what you're going through. What I can say
is we don't have to imagine. And the road is
like most of it is still ahead of us. I
don't think we really started yet. Like here we are
this airbnb. We got to get out of here on Thursday.

(16:51):
But we started on my son's floor. Then we moved
to an air mattress, some air mattresses. Then we were
in a hotel for a few nights, and now we're
here this airbnb. And so there's been for us progress.
And then also we have a tremendous village. Our people,

(17:12):
they just won't stop, you know, I like, I like
what can I do? And you know, we don't know
what you can do. There's nothing to be done. But
that doesn't mean that they're not doing everything that they
can think of to support our family. I mean from
high to you know, to the anonymous gofundmes who just

(17:32):
give us five dollars. That's like the sweet spot right there,
like thank you family friends. Just knowing that they that
they are thinking about us and praying for us. We
feel those prayers. I think that's what's helping us to cope.
But we're going to rebuild, you know, that's that it

(17:54):
is the plan. We don't want to We have no
intentions of leaving Alta Dina because we're a first generation
in that house. And we wanted to give that house
to our daughter. Right. We grew up here in Olta Dina,
right in Dina. We're the ones who made this community attractive.
We're the ones who sustained this space, you know, and

(18:17):
maintain these properties and whether we were owning them or
renting them, but we created what is this Dina vibe?
You know that that is so I think rare.

Speaker 1 (18:33):
To Outta Dina with Love was recorded, produced and edited
by me Mimi Brown. For more content, including behind the
scenes videos, photos, and exclusive interviews, follow us on social media.
You can find me at Mimi Brown tv on all
platforms and follow to Outta Dina with Love for more

(18:54):
stories from the people who live them. I me Me Brown.
This is too out Toa with Love. See you next time.