Los Angeles Wildfires: For Some Racetrackers, Recovery’s A Long Road

[Wandering Eyes]

It's nearing two weeks since the fires that have torn across Los Angeles first erupted. Still burning, they're already among the worst in state history.

The two biggest fires were the Palisades Fire, on the west side of the city, and the Eaton Fire focused on the northeastern suburb of Altadena, a community in the San Gabriel Mountain foothills where many of Santa Anita's racetrack community live. Together, they have burned through some 38,000 acres. There have so far been 27 confirmed fatalities. AccuWeather estimates the financial toll to be between $250 billion and $275 billion.

Many still aren't allowed back to their homes. Others have no homes to go back to. For many—including some from Santa Anita's racetrack community—the long task of recovering lost lives has only just begun, including for Deedee Anderson, who lost her beloved Altadena home.

“There's good moments and bad moments,” said Anderson, Saturday afternoon, while treating a horse headed to Florida for next weekend's Pegasus World Cup meeting.

Anderson is a long-time staple of the Santa Anita backstretch. She's a former exercise rider and now the owner of a successful equine therapy business, whose clients include trainers like Michael McCarthy.

“I'm still left to navigate the whole uncertainty of it all,” she said. “Frankly, I have no knowledge of these things. Dealing with FEMA. Dealing with the insurance.”

Dealing with scammers, too. “It broke my heart a little bit,” Anderson said, of someone who had contacted her saying they had found her cat, Oliver, they had left behind in the mad rush to leave their home, unable to catch in time the semi-feral animal.

Anderson arrived at the agreed upon meeting place. That's when the person demanded suddenly a reward. “Of course, I never posted a reward… they asked for $40. Fourteen first, and $26 when they dropped off the cat. I was like, 'you're a horrible person to do this. You're just scammers.'”

Oliver (pictured) is still missing | Deedee Anderson

Anderson's already preparing for a years-long rebuilding process. She hopes the city will allow her and her neighbours the chance to live in trailers on their properties to save money and supervise any construction, though she knows it's a long shot.

As for right now, she has just moved into an apartment with her husband and daughter. For days, she had combed the rental market with increasing despair, many landlords price gouging the markets.

“It's absolutely despicable,” she said, about the phenomenon, which has courted the intervention of the state Attorney General.

Anderson credits the GoFundMe she started for giving the necessary “freedom and ability” to rent the place as quickly as she did.

“Thank God for the GoFundMe money,” said Anderson. “If you're going to write about this, I know I can't thank each person individually, and many, many donated anonymously. But whoever you are out there, I thank you so much. That enabled me to get into this place—it was before I could get anything from State Farm.”

“Everything happened so fast, I don't really know what I need,” said Teodolo Lopez, 52, the long-time chef in Santa Anita's backstretch cafeteria, owned and operated by Debby Baltas, who is married to trainer Richard. Baltas and Lopez have worked together for years, are as close as siblings.

“Debby makes sure we are okay. She tells me I'm her right hand and I tell her she's my left hand,” said Lopez.

Lopez lived alone in a one-bedroom bungalow in Altadena which was completely destroyed, along with most everything inside. His two children are adults, live on their own.

Lopez doesn't have a GoFundMe, instead relying on family and friends for support. He's currently staying with Baltas's parents, who he considers family.

“I loved my casita and I will help my landlord clean the area once they let us back in,” said Lopez, who added he hopes his landlord—who works for Santa Anita—rebuilds the little community of casitas that Lopez and his neighbors lived in.

“I don't have a GoFundMe because those are for people who lost everything,” he said. “I still have my car and my job and a place to live.”

Exercise rider Lisa Hanson lived in a trailer in Altadena up in the foothills of the mountains. She had time only to grab her passport, a change of clothes and her dog, threw everything in the back of her RV and fled before her home burned to the ground.

Like Lopez, Hanson's car somehow survived the blaze, though she hasn't been allowed back to retrieve it. Everything else has been lost, including a beloved personal keepsake from her grandmother, now passed, that she had taken with as she has travelled the world.

Hanson escaped to a campsite near San Diego for a few days, though she's back now in Los Angeles, where she has moved into an Airbnb with her dog as she prepares for a hip surgery on Monday.

“I'm luckier than a lot of people,” said Hanson. “Hopefully the renters' insurance comes through. I'm lucky to have someplace to stay for the next 28 days, to recover from the surgery. After that, we'll see how it goes.”

In the immediate aftermath of the fires, Santa Anita opened its parking lots for the relief efforts, one part of it as a staging ground for the larger response, and another section for a massive donation center. Here's a link to a list of charities for the local communities.

The scenes from a pop-up donation area in one of Santa Anita's parking lots | Getty Images

“It was an amazing effort,” said Rick Bakker, Santa Anita's associate director of hospitality. “To see the silver lining of something so terrible, it's to see the community come together.”

Santa Anita's racetrack community also includes frontstretch workers have found themselves at the mercy of the fires—like Galinda Bañuelos, a Santa Anita banquet server, who lost her Altadena home that she lived in with her son, 22, and daughter, 33.

“I had just paid off my house two years ago. I was a widow at 28 years old. My husband left me with two kids—he passed away of cancer. I was able to survive working my two jobs that I've always worked. I raised my kids alone and kept my house,” said Bañuelos.

Because Bañuelos had just paid off her house, “I figured this year was my year to travel,” she said. “My year to do what I wanted to do, for me. And I guess God had something else for me because it's not happening—now I'm homeless.”

She returned to her home the next day, unable to accept it was gone. “I went in, took a look, and it's totalled. Everything burned to the ground,” said Bañuelos. The ashes were so hot, the soles of her shoes melted.

“I lost all my 33 years of memories from my home,” she added. “I lost all my picture, all my clothes, all my jewellery. Everything.”

Amongst the ash and rubble, however, she did find a ring—a three-stone ring to signify past, present and future.

“A friend of mine gave it to me because I have gone through so much in my lifetime already, and he gave me the ring so I could look ahead and say, 'I'm over this, I can do anything. I can manage anything,'” said Bañuelos. “It was so weird that I found this particular ring. A few other rings in the same box were burned, shriveled. But this one wasn't.”

Bañuelos is currently staying in a friend's house. “I don't know how long. I'm taking it day by day. I know I'm okay this month. I'll worry about next month, next month,” she said.

“I want to say we're actually okay compared to others,” she said. Her GoFundMe page is here.

Alonzo Aguirre also works as a banquet server for Santa Anita. He lived with his parents in the family home in Altadena, seven of them all told.

“There's nothing left of it,” he said. “Just the chimney standing. And in the fireplace, one of my mom's religious statues was still standing in the chimney. But that's it.”

“We were eight payments from paying off the house here,” he said. “My mom worked hard all her life here. She's devastated. I cry when I see her cry. It's pretty hard.”

He's promised his mother he'll help rebuild it. “I'll take a bank loan out in my name to rebuild the house. We had a simple house. Nothing crazy,” he said. “I have savings, too. We'll manage. But it's sad.”

As for the fire, “it all happened so fast. In the morning, we were all sleeping, and then we smelled smoke in the house,” Aguirre said. “I opened the door, all I see is grey in front of me, I couldn't see in front of my face. We said, 'time to go.' We grabbed all we could. I had a bag of laundry I took with me. My birth certificate. My pink slip for my car. Cash I had in my hand. And cleared out.”

The family left for south Pasadena. Aguirre returned to his home about three hours later.

“And that's when I saw the house physically on fire. I tried to get out of my car to do something. I couldn't do anything. The wind was too strong. I saw flying logs and embers hit my neighbours' houses. It was just insane. Palm trees on fire. It was devastating,” he said.

Aguirre—whose GoFundMe is here—is staying with his uncle, while his parents are with other family members, though he's looking for somewhere for the whole family.

“We're trying to stay together, support each other,” he said. With such sky-high rents, he's worried that might prove impossible. “Anyplace is fine—I'll make it work.”

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