L.A. fires burned their block. For each, the disaster was just beginning
Story By Washington Post.
The Los Angeles wildfires leveled entire neighborhoods, but perhaps nowhere suffered more than west Altadena. This is an account of three families’ grueling recovery — the part of the story most people never see.
Thousands of others could understand the struggle. The pain, the uncertainty, the exhaustion.
“It’s visceral, it’s gutting, and people are never the same afterward,” said Jennifer Gray Thompson, who leads After the Fire, a nonprofit that advises communities recovering from wildfires. “People will heal, but that’s far off. Right now, it’s like walking through mud with cement shoes.”