Friday, July 24, 2026

When the Eaton Fire Struck, Zo Williams Was Looking for His Family. Now He Returns to Altadena’s Story

A KBLA host who spoke on air during the search for missing relatives rejoins the station’s recovery program to weigh what the disaster did to relationships

In the first days after the Eaton Fire, Zo Williams was not the seasoned relationship host his listeners knew. He was a family member, checking shelters and scanning lists of names, desperately looking for relatives he could not reach.

On Saturday, July 25, 2026, he returns to KBLA Talk 1580 this time as a guest on “Conversation Live: Altadena Rising” with James Farr, the station’s weekly program tracking the recovery of Altadena’s historically Black community after the January 2025 wildfire. Eaton Fire damage fell hardest on West Altadena, long a stronghold of Black homeownership, where whole blocks of family-owned homes were lost.

Williams first spoke about the fire on a special three-hour edition of KBLA’s morning program “First Things First” with Dominique DiPrima. The broadcast aired on January 15, 2025 eight days after the fire from just a few blocks away and outside the fire zone, and was co-produced by Farr. It documented the unfolding disaster through the voices of residents living it in real time.

On that broadcast, Williams described losses that reached across his extended family and spoke about searching shelters for relatives he had not been able to reach. The release calls those remarks one of the earliest radio accounts of the fire told from inside a family living through it.

Williams happens to be the hosts “The Voice of Reason” on KBLA Talk 1580. For more than two decades, he has led conversations on relationships, spirituality, self-awareness and culture. Saturday’s episode of Conversation Live turns those themes on the fire itself, examining how crisis reshapes families and what version of a person shows up in a relationship during a disaster.

“Conversation Live: Altadena Rising” airs weekly and, in the show’s words, serves as the “show of record” for Altadena’s recovery. Farr, a host, writer and filmmaker, co-produced the station’s three-hour remote broadcast from the fire zone in the disaster’s immediate aftermath.

The episode airs at 10:00 a.m. Pacific time Saturday, July 25, with a rebroadcast the release lists for 11:00 a.m. Sunday, July 26. The program is carried on 1580 AM and streamed at kbla1580.com. KBLA Talk 1580 is a Black-owned talk station broadcasting on 1580 AM at 50,000 watts, licensed to Santa Monica and operated by Tavis Smiley.

When Williams last spoke about the fire on the air, the questions were about names on a shelter list. On Saturday, the release says, the question is different: not what was lost, but who the fire introduced him to.