Wednesday, January 7, 2026

Eight Organizations, One Year Later: Inside Altadena’s Necessary Experiment in Collective Recovery

The Community Coalition for Altadena Recovery unites groups that don’t always agree. As the Eaton Fire anniversary arrives, they’re betting that shared purpose can hold a fractured community together

THERESE EDU

In the months after the Eaton Fire wrought devastation across Altadena and portions of Pasadena, Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger convened a meeting with an unusual premise.

She gathered leaders from eight established Altadena civic organizations — groups with overlapping memberships but distinct missions, different constituencies, and, at times, even competing priorities. The Altadena Town Council. The NAACP. The Chamber of Commerce. The Historical Society. Rotary. Heritage. ACONA. Altadena WILD.

Her charge: find a way to speak to the county with something approaching a unified voice, even when you disagree.

“This afternoon, we convened the very first meeting of the new Community Coalition for Altadena Recovery,” Barger wrote on April 2, 2025. “This group of local leaders know their community best and will help guide our efforts in the months and years to come.”

Nine months later, that coalition — known as CCAR — faces its first major public test. On Wednesday, January 7, at 5 p.m., the group will host a Community Gathering and Remembrance in the Grocery Outlet parking lot at 2270 Lake Avenue, marking the one-year anniversary of the fire that reshaped Altadena.

The event is deliberately spare: music, light refreshments, a chance to stand together as the anniversary hour arrives. No tabling. No handouts. No organizational agendas.

“We wanted to create an opportunity for the community to come together to heal, support, and rally around each other,” said Victoria Knapp, former Altadena Town Council chair and now president of the ACONA steering committee. “These milestones are important for marking our collective grief and also our recovery.”

A Coalition, Not a Committee

CCAR’s structure is unusual by design. It is not a governing body. It has no budget line for the January 7 event in public records, though the Altadena Town Council’s August treasurer report shows modest fire-relief funds flowing through community accounts. It cannot pass ordinances or allocate county resources.

What it can do is provide what Supervisor Barger’s office described as “rapid feedback” on land use, zoning, and rebuilding challenges — a direct channel between Altadena’s civic infrastructure and the county agencies that hold regulatory authority over this unincorporated community.

“Coalition for Altadena Recovery was formed, bringing together long-established local groups to provide rapid feedback to the supervisor on land use, zoning, and rebuilding challenges,” according to minutes from the Altadena Town Council’s August 19, 2025 meeting.

The eight member organizations each bring different constituencies to the table. The NAACP represents Altadena’s Black community. The Chamber of Commerce advocates for local businesses. Altadena Heritage and the Historical Society focus on preservation. Altadena WILD brings environmental and open-space concerns. The Town Council and ACONA serve as broad-based civic voices.

“CCAR is working with Supervisor Barger’s office to ensure that recovery efforts are systematic, methodical and community-driven,” according to a statement from the coalition. “The coalition collaborates with Altadena residents to incorporate their values and perspectives into the rebuilding of the community.”

Nic Arnzen, the newly installed chair of the Altadena Town Council and one of CCAR’s eight leaders, emphasized that the coalition deliberately avoids projecting a single message.

“We’re a group of eight leaders, but just like our town, we have very differing opinions and viewpoints,” Arnzen said. “I think what’s beautiful about CCAR is that we don’t push forward one single message. We recognize that not only are we made up of a group of eight very individual and intelligent forward-thinking members, we come from a town of the same.”

The Warnings They Received

Since January 8, 2025 — the day after the fire ignited — Altadena Town Council members have received counsel from leaders in other fire-ravaged communities: Paradise, California. Santa Rosa. Lahaina, Hawaii.

The message was sobering. Recovery, those out-of-town leaders said, strains even the closest-knit towns. Different groups feel overlooked. Neighbors on different timelines find it difficult to see past their own pain. Fractures emerge.

“Be ready for that,” Arnzen recalls being told. “Don’t feel any failure when that happens. Just try to figure out a way to get them back together.”

That advice has informed CCAR’s approach over the past year — and shapes the tone of the January 7 gathering.

“I’m hoping that what we can do on the seventh is let go of all those agendas, let go of all the politics, and let go of some of the pain and trauma by just being together,” Arnzen said. The gathering, he explained, is designed to allow residents to “walk up to that specific time when the fire started as a community.”

Veronica Jones, president of the Altadena Historical Society and another CCAR member, framed the anniversary in similar terms.

“We pause to remember the lives lost, homes destroyed, and resilience of our community,” Jones said. “Let this anniversary serve as a reminder of the courage and strength of Altadena’s residents and our shared commitment to recovery and rebuilding together.”

Four Priorities for 2026

While the January 7 event is intentionally mostly agenda-free, CCAR’s ongoing work is not.

Coalition members identified four major priorities the group is advancing as Altadena enters its second year of recovery:

A permanent memorial. Plans are advancing for a memorial site at the far end of Farnsworth Park — a physical marker honoring the 19 people who died and the thousands of structures lost. Finalization is underway, though details of the design have not been made public.

Renters. Unlike homeowners navigating insurance claims and rebuilding permits, displaced renters face an uncertain path back. The homes they occupied may never be rebuilt, and those that return to market may do so at prices far beyond what longtime residents can afford.

“Renters obviously don’t have ownership of property,” Arnzen said. “So they’re frightened that coming back will not only be difficult, but it won’t be possible with the new pricing.”

CCAR members have flagged the issue as one where renters’ concerns are valid and where county attention is urgently needed.

Business corridors and infrastructure. The fire devastated commercial areas that had long anchored Altadena’s local economy. CCAR is coordinating with the county’s Department of Economic Opportunity on a platform to connect displaced businesses with vacant commercial spaces, an effort to restore services that residents depended on.

Regulatory flexibility for rebuilding. County Counsel and Regional Planning are preparing an “Urgency Ordinance” to allow greater flexibility for “like-for-like” rebuilds — addressing zoning and setback constraints that could otherwise delay reconstruction for homeowners simply trying to restore what they had.

“We’re constantly given — it’s such a barrage of information,” Arnzen said of the weekly briefings CCAR members receive. “But I think our main focus is protecting the town during the rebuild.”

Unity Without Uniformity

Altadena is not a city. It has no mayor, no city council with legislative authority, no municipal budget. It is governed, ultimately, by Los Angeles County.

That structure places enormous weight on voluntary civic organizations to represent community interests. CCAR’s founding premise is that those organizations are more effective when they coordinate — even when they don’t fully agree.

“The county has encouraged the members of CCAR to not just bring in their own opinions or history of what they think is best for the town, but to actually tap into the resources they have to reach out to the community, the memberships that they have, and to get those varied opinions and present them even when they contradict each other,” Arnzen said.

The goal is not consensus for its own sake. It is ensuring that county officials hear the full range of community perspectives — including the tensions between them — so that policy decisions reflect Altadena’s complexity rather than a single faction’s priorities.

“Altadena is, if nothing else, unique, individual, and diverse,” Arnzen said. “As people approach their journey in a different way, I want to respect that some people were moving on just months after the fire to rebuild, to get things going, while others needed and still need additional time to really get their footing and deal with what just happened to us.”

What Remains the Same

One year after the fire, Arnzen says he has observed a shift in the community’s psychological posture — from the acute trauma of the early weeks to something more forward-looking, if still fragile.

“The shift to rebuild puts us in a different mindset,” Arnzen said. “It gets us on task and starts us actually looking in a hopeful way of what can be. It pulls us a bit out of the trauma and stress.”

But Arnzen is also quick to note what has not changed: the underlying solidarity that emerged in the fire’s immediate aftermath.

“The thing that has remained the same for me the weeks after the fire and to this date is that I’ve seen the community coming together,” Arnzen said. “County would never be expected to answer all of our problems. They would be expected to address issues that they can address, but they wouldn’t be expected necessarily to heal us.”

That healing, Arnzen suggests, is work the community must do for itself — together.

“It’s like a family where if somebody’s hurting, you don’t ignore it and decide, no, I’m hurting more than you are,” Arnzen said. “There’s not a competition. We have to go beyond that and recognize: how can we work through this together?”

“When I help you, I’m actually helping myself — because the community won’t be strong if part of the community is still in pain and forgotten.”

The Community Gathering & Remembrance will be held Wednesday, January 7, at 5 p.m. in the Grocery Outlet parking lot, 2270 Lake Ave., Altadena. The event is free and open to all.