Five of the nearly dozen people reported to have died in the fires raging around Los Angeles lived within blocks of each other, in a close-knit Altadena neighborhood near the eastern portion of the city.
The area abutted Angeles National Forest, and residents said many people had lived there for generations, handing down homes they bought decades ago and that they had meticulously kept up.
Two of the dead, a father and his son, who had cerebral palsy, had called for help evacuating, but none came. One of the victims was found near a garden hose he had been using to spray his house as the fire bore down.
At least 11 people total have been reported dead across Los Angeles County, according to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s office. Among them, six people died in the Eaton fire in the east, and five in the Palisades fire near the coast.
Here is what we know about the victims:
Anthony and Justin Mitchell
Anthony Mitchell lived with his sons Justin and Jordan, both in their thirties, in a family home handed down for two generations.
Justin had cerebral palsy, and Jordan cared for both his brother and his father, who was also experiencing health problems. But earlier in the week, Jordan had gone to the hospital with his own health issue, a case of sepsis, leaving the two of them alone.
Another son, Anthony Mitchell Jr., 46, said he got a call from his father at 5 a.m. on Wednesday, saying that he was waiting with Justin to be evacuated. Later that day, Mr. Mitchell called his daughter, Hajime White, who lives in Arkansas, and told her a fire had broken out across the street.
He said he was sure help would arrive soon. By 8 p.m. that night, he and Justin were both found dead.
“I felt the system let them down,” Mr. Mitchell Jr. said. “I think the system that handled the people who died up there let them down.”
Mr. Mitchell was a fixture in the community, his son said, always checking in with the neighborhood children to see how they were getting on in school and giving them advice.
“My dad was just one of those people,” Mr. Mitchell Jr. said. “You would meet him and he would make friends with you real quick.”
Mr. Mitchell worked in sales for Radio Shack before getting a degree to work as a respiratory therapist, his son said. But eventually he quit and went back to sales after seeing too many patients die.
His wife died in October, and his first wife, Mr. Mitchell Jr.’s mother, died just last month. He struggled with both deaths, his son said.
“My dad was going through a lot, but he always held on,” he said.
In his neighborhood, Mr. Mitchell was known for his skills on the grill, his son said. Any gathering on the block led to a request for Mr. Mitchell to work the barbecue. He always happily obliged.
Justin loved coloring, watching cartoons and reading books, his brother Anthony said.
“You couldn’t help but love him,” Mr. Mitchell Jr. said. “And if he thought you were sad, he’d be like ‘you’ll be okay!’”
Victor Shaw
Victor Shaw’s tiled-roof house sat on Monterosa Drive, a cul-de-sac near the edge of the forest.
After the evacuation call went out late Tuesday night, one of Mr. Shaw’s neighbors, Willie Jackson, 81, packed his car, grabbing whatever belongings he could from the home where he had lived since the 1970s and left. So did other neighbors.
But not Mr. Shaw, 66, who had lived on Monterosa beginning in childhood. He remained behind, doing what his father before him had always done — maintaining the family home.
“The house had a whole lot of significance for him,” said Mr. Jackson, a retired county employee. “His parents had always had it.”
Mr. Jackson moved to Monterosa Drive in the 1970s. When he got there, Mr. Shaw’s parents, Frank and Freddye Shaw, were already in the neighborhood. “In those days, the homes were costing $50,000,” Mr. Jackson said. “Now they’re over a million, $2 million.”
Mr. Jackson said Mr. Shaw’s father had taken meticulous care of the family’s home. “He used to always encourage me, you know, ‘We got to keep out neighborhood looking good,’” he said.
“He and I focused on maintaining our house,” he added. “He’d be out there sweeping and cleaning up. I’d be out there too.”
When Mr. Shaw’s parents died, they left the home in a trust to him and his sister, Shari Shaw.
Mr. Shaw, who Mr. Jackson said never married, drove a bloodmobile and later made contract deliveries. “He was hard working,” Mr. Jackson said. “He was a great neighbor, always, like his father, working, maintaining the yard.”
Shari Shaw evacuated and her brother stayed, saying he was determined to protect the house, according to news reports. She could not be reached on Thursday.
After the fire passed, Mr. Jackson’s son, William Jackson Jr., came to help his father survey the damage, and found a relative of Mr. Shaw’s walking up to the house to look for him.
They starting to call his name, “thinking maybe he’s injured, knocked unconscious from some debris, or something,” the younger Mr. Jackson said. They found him lying in his front yard clutching a garden hose, with a gutter pipe laid over his left arm. “He was out here trying to fight the fire by himself,” William Jackson said.
Rodney Nickerson
Rodney Nickerson, 82, also died, according to his family. He lived on a street that was just a short walk from Mr. Shaw’s home, although it is unclear if they knew one another.
Mr. Nickerson came from a multigenerational California family, his son, Eric Nickerson, said. His grandfather founded Golden State Mutual Life, an insurance company. A public-housing project in the southern Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts, Nickerson Gardens, was named for the grandfather.
Mr. Nickerson himself was a retired aerospace engineer for Lockheed Martin and an active deacon at his church, according to his son, Eric Nickerson.
Mr. Nickerson loved to fish, play the horses and watch the 49ers, his daughter-in-law, Elsa Nickerson, said in an interview. And he was deeply attached to his house, where he had raised his two children, and the neighborhood, where he had seen the cycle of generations.
His wife, Suzette, died in 2018, and he refused to give away her clothes, her jewelry or her cookbooks, Ms. Nickerson said.
As the fires raged, “we all tried to tell him to leave, but he thought, ‘Oh, it’s going to go around me,’” she said. His house burned to the ground, the car on the driveway was gutted and much of the water in the swimming pool evaporated in the intense heat, she said.
Mr. Nickerson’s daughter, Kimiko, told local news outlets that she found only her father’s bones in his bed.
Erliene Kelley
Erliene Kelley, who lived a few blocks away from Mr. Shaw and Mr. Nickerson, died in her home, according to her family.
She was a retired pharmacy technician at Rite Aid and longtime resident of the neighborhood, according to Rita and Terry Pyburn, a couple who lived on her block.
“She was so, so, so sweet,” said Mr. Pyburn. He often had brief chats with Ms. Kelley about gardening and local news, and often left small Christmas gifts for her and other neighbors in the tight-knit community.
“She was an angel,” Mr. Pyburn said. “That’s the perfect neighbor. When you see her, you have a smile.”
Mr. Pyburn added that “unfortunately, there was not good communication” about the threat to life. He and his wife had initially heard on his car radio that “everything east of Lake Street was evacuated, and over here on the west side we were fine.”
“So we were in the house and just stayed there, thinking we were okay,” Mr. Pyburn said. “Until we started smelling smoke.” He and his wife prepared to leave, and then the emergency alert arrived.
“It was panic. Everyone took off and no one thought to check on anybody,” Mr. Pyburn said, adding, “I think the notice came too late.”
The search for other victims
The chief of the Los Angeles County Fire Department, Anthony Marrone, said “human remains detection teams” would be going house to house, searching for others who might have died. Officials have said they might employ dogs to help.
On Thursday, fire was still smoldering in the rubble of the Shaw home. Four burned cars were in the driveway, and a garden hose was pulled out into the front yard.
A filing cabinet and chimney still stood, and a water heater billowed smoke. Collapsed drywall and melted piles littered the property with debris, some in piles as high as six feet.
The cul-de-sac where the house once stood had burned completely, as had much of the neighborhood. Just one house stood intact down the street.
“The fire that came through this canyon wiped out the entire Altadena community that’s been standing for 50, 60 years,” said Mr. Jackson, a retired Los Angeles County employee.
On Thursday afternoon, Willie Jackson returned to see what remained of the home that he, like Victor Shaw and his parents before him, had nurtured through the decades.
Almost nothing was left.
He plans to rebuild, “this time with all metal studs and I-beams, and fill the I-beams with concrete, so no matter how hot it gets, what kind of fire comes, it won’t crumble,” he said.
Anemona Hartocollis and Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs contributed reporting. Alain Delaquérière and Kitty Bennett contributed research.
