Community leader reflects on loss from the Eaton Canyon fire one month later

Melissa Lopez, 46, was at home with ‘the coven’ – her two dogs Foxy and HoneyBee, and her two cats Stevie Nicks and Dulce – when she got a notification from Southern California Edison saying there might be a possible power shut-off in her area on the morning of Jan. 7. 

Lopez lived right off of Lake Ave., in Altadena – a city that sits at the bottom of the Eaton Saddle near Mount Markham and San Gabriel Peak in the San Gabriel Mountains, part of the Angeles National Forest. 

The fire stretched across 14,000 acres over the weeks it took to contain it. The latest report released on Jan. 27 by the LA County Fire Dept., listed 17 civilian fatalities, nine firefighter injuries and thousands of threatened, damaged and destroyed structures as casualties of this fire. 

Lopez’s was one of the structures that was destroyed shortly after Lopez and her four pets evacuated. 

She recalls that she was watching the news about the Pacific Palisades fire when the reporter got notice that there was a fire starting up in Eaton Canyon, announcing it live on the news. At that moment Lopez felt her stomach drop. 

“The second I heard that, my stomach just dropped, because when you live in Altadena, you kind of get notices of brush fires all the time. But, I knew this time was different because of the intensity of the wind,” recalls Lopez. 

Lopez, whose pronouns are she/they, is a licensed clinical social worker and mental health therapist who works primarily with queer clients in the Los Angeles area. They also have over 100 thousand followers on Instagram as @counseling4allseasons, where they regularly post and repost memes and educational material that is relatable, relevant and helpful for queer, trans, BIPOC, disabled and otherwise marginalized people. Lopez is known as a community leader who has been actively outspoken about issues that are intersectional with race, genocide, immigration, capitalism, patriarchy, queerness and mental healthcare. 

At the time of the interview, Lopez was having a particularly hard day as it was the one month mark since the start of the fires that burned through Altadena neighborhoods.

“Today is a hard day. It’s the one month anniversary of when I evacuated Altadena,” said Lopez in an interview with LA Blade. “I feel really pissed today. I’m pissed that so many things happened that could have been prevented. 

Lopez recalls that on Tuesday Jan. 7 when the Santa Ana winds were blowing the strongest, she received the notification about the power possibly being shut off, but during the time leading up to her evacuation, she recalls that the power was never shut off. All the other alerts she received came after the fire had already started.

As she was preparing to evacuate, she says that she was in communication with many of her friends and nearby neighbors. 

“It was really confusing because I was texting a couple of people and some were saying they hadn’t received [a notification], while others had,” said Lopez. 

At that point, their own instinct and intuition led them to make the ultimate decision to begin evacuating. 

“Everything’s kind of a blur, but I started to just grab the dogs and cats,” they said. “So I started getting all of their supplies like their food, litter – everything they use.” 

As soon as she was able to find short-term housing through AirBnB, she began organizing a group now led by a colleague of Lopez, to help people who had been directly affected and displaced by the Eaton Canyon fire. In the group, they discussed the experience of making the decision to take the evacuations seriously and begin gathering their belongings. She says she even felt ‘silly’ at some point, because she believed she would just be able to return the following day. 

“What I tell people now is that I don’t care how silly you feel. I don’t care if you pack up half your house and feel silly about it. If your house ends up burning down, you will be so grateful for it because there are so many things I wish I would have taken. 

Though Lopez says they don’t remember an exact timeline, they remember seeing the fire move in really fast and by the time she began evacuating it was complete chaos out on the main streets of Pasadena and Altadena because of the hundreds of people evacuating. 

“Some of us had gotten notices, some of us warnings, some of us hadn’t,” Lopez recalls the confusing ordeal. 

The smoke began to cloud the area so Lopez put her dogs into her car, but struggled to get her cats into a carrier and one of them was almost too scared to grab. She was able to make it out of the danger zone with all four of the members of ‘the coven,’ as she likes to call them. 

“I had a friend who was going to take us in who lives in San Marino and driving there is basically a straight shot, but because it was so windy, some trees had fallen over and some of the [street] lights were out, so it was all really chaotic.”

Lopez believes that the community support she has received since the evacuations has gotten through the hardest parts of the experience. Mutual aid came to Lopez’s rescue during this difficult time. Navigating the resources and legal assistance was incredibly difficult because of the stress, trauma and grief she is still currently experiencing. 

The Eaton Canyon fire burned through a large part of Altadena, an area that is predominantly and historically Black, Latinx and working-class. 

“I think it’s important for folks to remember that showing up for community is actually very political,” said Lopez. “I want to encourage people to show up and even if you don’t know people, show up. Even if you don’t f*cking like people, show up.” 

Lopez says they are very grateful for the community that showed up for them and that it is not only important to show up for this current disaster, but for everything marginalized communities are currently facing. They received many messages on IG from people offering their support in a variety of ways and that was all impactful to Lopez. They say that a lot of the support they received was from people they directly and personally knew, but a lot of it also came from people who were complete strangers. 

In Lopez’s case, she was able to get her monthly rent for January and security deposit returned. She says she realizes that this is not the case for most people who are also navigating the aftermath of this disaster. 

“I do want to highlight that I think tenants are having a really hard time because a lot of the resources and a lot of the support goes to homeowners and that is obviously a huge class issue,” said Lopez. “One thing I tell people now is get the f*cking renters insurance.” 

The cause of the fire that took weeks to fully contain is still under investigation and many renters and homeowners await answers from insurance companies on their long path toward justice and permanent housing.