It has been three months since the worst wildfires in Southern California’s history killed 30 people and reduced entire neighbourhoods to ash. Many residents are rebuilding their lived in the area, but others are weighing up whether they can risk going through it all again. Correspondent Barbara Miller was one of the first on the scene when the emergency was unfolding. She has returned to reconnect with locals who have lost everything.
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00:00That's it?
00:06Yeah.
00:08Yeah.
00:10Wow.
00:12I don't even recognize this place.
00:14Right.
00:16I don't recognize it.
00:18I'll be honest and say that I didn't know how special this community was until the fires.
00:24I'll be honest and say that I didn't know how special this community was until the fires.
00:30You know, nobody sat me down and said like this is the place, you know, that black people were able to buy homes.
00:38It just felt like there weren't people like looking at me out of their windows like what if they don't belong here or why don't you go walk your dog somewhere else like it was I never got that feeling.
00:50It's all in hindsight of me like realizing like this was a really really special place.
00:56Realizing what you lost.
00:58Yeah, yeah and it's the home right and the memories, but it's the community.
01:10The fire began on the east side of Altadena along with Edgar McGregor's warning official evacuation orders were given there on the evening of January the 7th.
01:23But where the CPOs live on the west side, they weren't issued for another eight hours.
01:2918 people in Altadena died.
01:33Do you think it could have been prevented?
01:36Maybe not the fires. I don't think the fires could have been prevented but the deaths maybe.
01:4399.9% of the deaths were elderly people and it's because west of Lake Street was not evacuated until 3 a.m.
02:01Stephen also can't understand why fire crews seemed so slow to respond.
02:07Everybody wants to go straight to conspiracy theory but I'm not going to conspiracy theory.
02:13I'm just presenting the facts.
02:15I'm not coming up with these things in my mind.
02:18I'm telling you what I saw before the fire, during the fire, after.
02:23I didn't see fire trucks.
02:30I didn't see fire trucks.