Wildfire Assessment
Mini-Report Series

The Eaton Canyon wildfires in Pasadena and Altadena reshaped far more than the landscape. They disrupted the economic and cultural backbone of a community where small businesses are not just storefronts — they are gathering spaces, informal crisis centers, cultural memory keepers, and the trusted first responders who step in long before government systems arrive.

Across nearly forty interviews with Black- and women-of-color–owned businesses, a single truth emerged: recovery is not linear, and it is not transactional. It is intimate, layered, and shaped by relationships — the kind built in barbershops, at food counters, in backyard pop-ups, and inside home-based micro-enterprises. These businesses held the line during the fires, even as they were losing their homes, revenue, and stability. They kept feeding people, gathering supplies, checking on neighbors, and keeping the community stitched together after the shock.

They were too inaccessible, too impersonal, too dependent on documentation people no longer had, and too quick to push loans on entrepreneurs already drowning in debt from COVID, inflation, and displacement. Many simply stopped applying for help because the process itself became another layer of trauma.

This series digs into what the community told us: what failed, what held, what is needed now, and what it will take to rebuild with dignity and equity. Each brief centers a different dimension of the recovery — from food businesses acting as cultural anchors, to small businesses serving as first responders, to secondary-impact losses that fall outside the burn zone but inside the economic ecosystem. Together, these pieces offer a clear view of both the human impact and the structural barriers shaping recovery.

They also trace a path forward. The solutions described here are not abstract; they reflect what businesses said would help, what community intermediaries already do well, and what funders need to consider if they want recovery dollars to actually reach the people most harmed by the fires. They point toward a model of recovery rooted in trust, accessible aid, long-term capital, and community-led decision-making.

This is not a traditional report. It is a series of focused briefs designed to be read, shared, and acted on — each one capturing a slice of what recovery really looks like when you begin with the people who lived through the fire and are still carrying its weight. The goal is simple: illuminate the truth, humanize the impact, and chart a path toward a recovery that strengthens the ecosystem instead of rebuilding the same vulnerabilities that made it fragile in the first place.

The community saved itself when the fires came. These briefs outline what it will take for the recovery to finally meet them where they are.