The first thing you notice, before the blackened palm stumps and fenced-off lots, before the unpeopled quiet of a neighbourhood that still hasn’t quite returned to itself, is the bunny.
Or rather, what used to be a bunny.
It stands defiantly over the ruins of The Altadena Bunny Museum, as if to attention. This strange local wonder once held the Guinness World Record for the largest collection of rabbit-related items in one location, a labyrinthine warren containing more than 60,000 specimens. Today, its scorched remains are ringed by temporary fencing. Its sole survivor is charred down one flank; an American flag pokes forlornly out of the other.
Beyond it are more empty lots, dozens of them, their foundations scraped clean. It looks less like a Californian suburb than the blank starting map of RollerCoaster Tycoon, a world waiting to be built.
Only here, the world was built. And then, overnight, it wasn’t.
A year ago today, a fire ripped through Altadena.
It’s probably not the fire you’re thinking of. Not the Palisades inferno that dominated the news cycle for weeks because it licked at the edges of multimillion-dollar clifftop estates. Not the one that produced spectacular aerial footage for television editors and panicked quotes from residents with recognisable surnames.
This was the other fire, the Eaton Fire, which killed more people and destroyed more homes than the Palisades, yet has already been edged out of memory. The second most destructive wildfire in California’s recorded history, it burned with such speed and strangeness that even lifelong Angelenos struggled to understand what they were seeing.
On the morning of 7 January 2025, an uncommonly fierce Santa Ana wind was blowing through the mouth of Eaton Canyon, where the foothills sharpen into the San Gabriel Mountains and the chaparral grows dry and bristly. Halfway up the hill, a spark shot out from a power line into the 80mph gusts. Within minutes, the flame was running downhill, leaping from tree to tree.
By the time the sun rose, 19 people were dead. More than 9,000 buildings were gone. Homes, churches, schools, restaurants — entire streets turned to ash.
Steve Lubanski, the co-founder of the Bunny Museum, stands in the dust. He has the posture of a man still learning how to speak the language of loss. He is average height, with gentle, crinkly, hazel eyes. They are stained with sadness and fatigue.
“My wife and I spent 12 hours fighting the fire,” he tells me. “I was watching the flag in the park across the street, waiting to see if it changed direction. All our neighbours had evacuated and we were all alone. At 9pm, it turned east. Then the flames started moving towards us.”
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