The Eaton fire didn’t just burn down houses, it tore apart vibrant communities and disintegrated countless memories.
For more than 30 years, Zena Yamamoto called Altadena home. She and her husband moved to Pasadena in 1988 before settling into their Altadena house in the early 2000s, where they raised their six children. “Anybody who lives in a home, or has a home can attest that the home almost has a life of its own. It’s not just the stuff in it—there are memories being created all the time,” she said.
But in a single night, all of that changed.
For about a week, Yamamoto and her neighbors had been hearing warnings about strong winds. “We’ve been through many times,” she recalled. “There were little hints that there might be fire danger, but that really has never been an issue before.” When she looked out her doors, she could see the fire in the mountains.
“It still looked like it was confined to the hill, and I figured, well, the firefighters will take care of it. So I took some stuff, but really, I took stuff to go to work the next day. I took my wedding ring, one photo album. But that was it, not much.” With their two dogs and three of their children, the family packed into their two smallest cars and left as a precaution. Just as they were leaving, the official evacuation alarm sounded.
That night, scattered across different locations, Yamamoto and her neighbors anxiously awaited updates. “One of my neighbors had a Ring camera, so it was picking up pictures,” she explained. “She would just periodically say, it still looks fine. And then at some point, she said it was picking up embers blowing across the street” In the early morning hours, the camera went dark.
At 7:30 a.m., Yamamoto received a devastating phone call. “My friend was crying,” she said. “I started crying. I got a hold of my son and started crying. I just apologized because I felt really sorry that I hadn’t saved their childhood.”
The loss was immense. “We really didn’t take any pictures with us,” she lamented. “I had so much jewelry from my grandmother and my mom. Every yearbook I ever had, every yearbook my kids had. I had saved every love letter that my husband gave me from when we were 18.”
She reminisced on Christmas Eve gatherings with thirty relatives packed inside, playing games and laughing. “We had all these Christmas gifts that were still kind of around our family room. It happened so fast after Christmas.”
Despite the tragedy, the Yamamoto family has found solace in the kindness of others. “We stayed with my aunt and uncle for a week,” she said. “They totally pampered us. They cooked incredibly for us. They were so loving and sweet.”
Eventually, the family was offered a guest house by a woman who only knew them through her son’s friendship with Yamamoto’s son. “It was so amazing,” she said.
“Before we moved in, they furnished everything, put flowers in every room, left Korean beauty treatments for my daughters, spa treatments on the pillows. The most important thing I’ve learned out of everything is how unbelievably kind people are.”
Returning to work at St. Brendan School, she was met with the warm and comforting kindness of the school’s community. “A little boy in first grade ran up to me when I came back to school, and he gave me a huge hug.” Yamamoto recalled, her voice breaking a little as she did. “This little kid, he hardly knows me. He said, ‘I donated 20 dollars to your GoFundMe.’ I felt like it was right out of the bible.”
“I have a seventh-grade class with 25 boys and 8 girls, so there’s a lot of masculine energy,” she laughed. “When I came down to the playground to get them in the morning, they started clapping. The most boisterous boys were cheering, ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’ The girls came up and just gave me a long hug. The parents have also been extraordinary—offering to provide rooms or take care of our dogs. People will hug you, and they’ll start crying. It’s really incredibly heartwarming.”
As for the future, Yamamoto is uncertain. “Immediately, everybody was texting, ‘We’re going to rebuild!’” she said. “But then after you realize... we’re not sure. It might take 18 months just to clear the debris. And do we really want to rebuild another big house we won’t be able to stay in anyway?
She further explains, “I mean, my husband and I, as we start looking toward retiring one day, you know, we thought about trying to find a place that's an area that's less expensive to live in, including outside of California, but I was born and raised in California, so it is hard to think about that.”
Yet, even in loss, she holds onto the beauty of what was. “It was a great, fun, and funky place. The natural beauty was incredible—the pine trees, the hills, the hiking trails. It was kind of a unique place, probably one of the most ethnically diverse places in the country. I really loved it so much.”
Through all the heartbreak, Yamamoto keeps coming back to one thing: kindness. “With my sixth, seventh and eighth graders over the years, we've been through a lot. We've been through COVID together. We’ve been through the unrest due to the George Floyd incident. A lot of young kids have had to carry a lot of anxiety because of these things,” she says. “I’ve always told my students: when tragedy happens, look to the helpers. That’s who you want to be.”
“I’ve been astonished at how many people want to help in any way possible. It’s everyone. It blows my mind. It makes me cry to think about it. That’s probably the most important thing: the kindness. The helpers. The empathy.”
If you would like to donate to the Yamamoto family, you can do so through this GoFundMe. On this page, Zena has also recently published an essay titled "Everything" which is definitely worth reading.
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