Sanctuary Amid the Ashes

On Jan. 7, 2025, the Eaton Fire ignited in Eaton Canyon and ultimately scorched more than 14,000 acres across Altadena and Pasadena. The blaze claimed 19 lives and destroyed or damaged thousands of structures. Homes, hillsides, and houses of worship turned to ash. 

“One year ago, the Eaton Fire forever changed our community,” said Karen R. Lawrence, president of The Huntington. “The Huntington has always been a place of gathering and refuge—for people and for collections. In the year since, that role has taken on deeper meaning. As we look back and ahead, we see the powerful role institutions like The Huntington can play in preserving what is at risk, honoring what has been lost, and standing alongside our community in moments of crisis.” 

In the immediate aftermath, The Huntington established a disaster relief fund for impacted staff and collections, raising significant support within weeks. It also launched “Neighbors in Need,” which offered free afternoon admission to affected community members throughout January. Members of The Huntington community also opened their homes to staff and friends displaced by the fires until they could return home or find alternative housing. 

As the community continues to rebuild, The Huntington has found itself providing sanctuary in unexpected ways. The experiences of the past year—for collections and for people—offer lessons in endurance and recovery. 

Lesson 1: Fragile Things Can Endure 

When evacuation orders came for the Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center (PJTC), some clergy and congregants rushed not away—but into the sanctuary—as ashes fell across the parking lot. 

“There was no doubt in our minds that we had to rescue the Torah scrolls,” said Melissa Levy, the temple’s executive director. “Throughout the history of the Jewish people, the sacred texts have been a symbol of our resilience in shared faith.” Although Levy was evacuating her own family when the fire reached the temple grounds, she remained in constant contact with staff and lay leaders who rushed into the house of worship to save the scrolls. 

Thirteen Torahs were rescued, including a rare Persian scroll in an embossed silver case that was smuggled out of Iran during the country’s 1978 revolution. Hours after the Eaton Fire began, the Torahs arrived at The Huntington. Librarians and conservators lifted the scrolls from clergy members’ cars and carried them into climate-controlled labs. 

At the congregation’s request, The Huntington became a temporary caretaker for the scrolls while the temple is rebuilt. 

“Conservators understand disaster response for cultural collections,” said Holly Moore, the Lloyd E. Cotsen Head of Preservation and Conservation at the Library. “Recognizing threat is part of our training.” 

Moore remembers the smell of smoke clinging to the wrappings. “Our focus was on stabilizing and protecting the scrolls,” she said. “Placing them in a secure, climate-controlled space is standard conservation work—and it ensured they were safe while the community rebuilt.” 

Ruth Berman Harris, the temple cantor who leads the congregation in prayer through music, is deeply aware of the life force and fragility of the Torahs. “When we watched the scrolls being taken inside the Library, it felt as though our community itself was being held and given refuge,” she recalled. “As Jews, we are taught that Kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh—everyone is responsible for one another. For our PJTC community, that was the moment when I began to understand what it meant to let others help us.” 

For Randy Shulman, senior vice president for advancement and external relations at The Huntington and a PJTC congregant, the rescue carried a deeper meaning. “Tragedy is not new to us,” he said. “We turn for stability to the ongoing question of what it means to live a good life—what it takes to live honorably and sustainably. This is what we learn from the scrolls.”

The fire destroyed buildings, but it also upended the physical memory of neighborhoods—the houses, storefronts, and civic landmarks that give communities their shape.  

In the weeks after the fire, residents searching for architectural references turned to the Huntington Library’s Foss Designing & Building Company Collection and the Wallace Neff collection, both deep archives of plans, renderings, and project files documenting Southern California residential design. Ordinarily, digitizing such a wide range of items would take years. However, recognizing how urgently residents needed access, staff fast-tracked the process. Within weeks, more than 2,600 images—including original architectural drawings for homes and local landmarks in Altadena and Pasadena—were online, helping homeowners and researchers to begin to piece together what was lost. 

“The most complex research questions I’ve received this past year were related to the Altadena fires and requests for original drawings of homes that burned down,” said Erin Chase, associate curator of architecture and photography. “Often I was given only a home address, which isn’t enough to locate the drawings. But through advanced research, I was able to connect homeowners with original sets of plans for three homes that burned and one that was damaged. Many others used these heritage architectural drawings as inspiration for rebuilding in the beloved Altadena and Pasadena neighborhoods ravaged by the January fires.” 

Lesson 3: Recovery Can Take Root—in Gardens and Ponds 

The Eaton blaze burned within three miles of The Huntington, and although the flames did not reach the grounds, the combined threat of fire and wind gusts exceeding 90 mph tested The Huntington’s emergency preparedness. With safety protocols already in place and staff able to activate them quickly, losses were kept to a minimum. 

The hardest-hit areas included the Jungle Garden, North Vista, and Japanese Garden. Among the 24 trees lost were the largest and oldest remaining Sydney blue gum (Eucalyptus saligna), several century-old native oaks, and a mature Torrey pine (Pinus torreyana). The latter, one of the rarest pines in North America and found only in California, is considered critically endangered. About 60 additional trees suffered moderate to severe damage. Compared with December 2011’s massive windstorm, which caused nearly 300 tree losses, damage from this storm was far less severe—likely due to proactive tree-management policies. 

In the wake of these combined disasters, Huntington staff demonstrated the coordinated effort that is key to successful recovery. After rapid debris removal and cleanup, the gardens reopened within a week. For many people facing overwhelming personal losses,  the grounds became a quiet place of respite and healing—a shared space where resilience could take root. 

In the days after the fire, The Huntington also became a refuge for creatures.  

Working with Pasadena Humane, staff provided a home for 11 koi rescued after the Eaton Fire. Now living in the Lily Ponds, they are a small, shimmering reminder that recovery can be aquatic as well as terrestrial. 

Amid the losses, Tom Carruth, the E.L. & Ruth B. Shannon Curator of the Rose Collection, faced profound personal devastation: The fire destroyed his Altadena home and personal roses. Yet the Rose Garden he curates at The Huntington continued to bloom, offering visitors a living emblem of endurance: petals opening in the shadow of burned hillsides. 

Months after the fire, residents were astonished to see roses blooming in scorched neighborhood gardens and along rubble-strewn streets—a phenomenon some horticulturists attributed to ash enriching the soil. Among them were roses bred by Carruth himself. Although Carruth has found it painful to return to his destroyed Altadena home, neighbors reported that his walkway erupted in color, including the deep-magenta of Royal Celebration, the coral of Jump for Joy, and the peach-and-pink of Huntington’s 100th (developed for the institution’s centennial). Their unexpected survival offered a potent symbol: beauty persisting in the shadow of loss.  

At Nuccio’s Nurseries in Altadena, most of the family’s buildings were destroyed, but thousands of camellias and azaleas survived under shade structures. Soon after, the family donated more than 90 camellias to The Huntington for preservation.  

“We wanted to do this anyway… while the plants are still alive,” a Nuccio family member told the Los Angeles Times. 

Nicole Cavender, the Telleen/Jorgensen Director of the Botanical Gardens, said the gift carried particular weight. “Camellias have flourished on The Huntington’s grounds for nearly a century,” she noted. “To receive these plants after the fire was both a continuation of a long partnership and a reminder that gardens can help communities recover.” 

Lesson 4: Literature Can Guide Recovery 

Pasadena-born writer Octavia E. Butler envisioned futures marked by ecological collapse and rebuilt through community care. Her manuscripts and journals, preserved in the Library and among its most frequently accessed collections, took on renewed relevance in the fire’s aftermath.  

At Founders’ Day 2025—“Sowing Community: Living Octavia E. Butler’s Parables”—neighbors, scholars, and students gathered to reflect on her vision. Butler’s words, “All that you touch / You change,” carried new resonance.   

“The scholars and organizers brought together for this event shared that they had read Butler’s novels as a form of rehearsal for survival. In the wake of the Eaton Fire, Butler’s words offered language for mourning and inspiration for rebuilding,” said Karla Nielsen, senior curator of literary collections at The Huntington. “To preserve her papers at The Huntington is to preserve a vision of resilience.” 

At the event, actor and author LeVar Burton, a surprise guest, looked out at the audience and said, “Octavia is smiling, y’all.” Later he added, “This community—Pasadena, Altadena, the community that’s been created this evening in this room—these are the seeds of our survival. Relish the opportunity to be in community with one another. It is indeed the way forward.” 

One of the panelists was Nikki High, who in 2023 opened Octavia’s Bookshelf, a Pasadena bookstore dedicated to Butler. High spoke about how Butler’s speculative worlds made space for representation and resilience, and how her work continues to shape collective imagination in Butler’s hometown. 

In the days and months after the Eaton Fire, High also transformed Octavia’s Bookshelf into a mutual aid space, drawing directly on Butler’s Earthseed vision of community care. She organized supply drives for displaced neighbors and hosted reading groups for Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, creating a space where Butler’s ideas became practical tools for rebuilding. For many, it was one of the clearest demonstrations of how literature can shape real-world resilience.

In Pasadena and Altadena, art has long been more than display—it has been a means of connection and survival. In the mid-20th century, painter Charles White—a professor at Otis College of Art and Design, whose 1944 painting Soldier is on view at The Huntington—used his position to open doors for other artists, among them friend and ceramist Doyle Lane. 

After a tragic automobile accident resulted in the loss of one of Lane’s fingers, White encouraged him by commissioning a mural for his Altadena home and later recommending him for a mosaic mural at a Los Angeles school. Though Lane lived in nearby El Sereno, he spent many years selling his iconic weed pots, clay paintings, beads, and architectural commissions to firms and retail shops in Pasadena and Altadena. Lane’s Mutual Savings and Loan Mural, commissioned in 1964 for a Pasadena bank and now installed at The Huntington’s June and Merle Banta Education Center, remains a marker of that network of support—one that endured the fire’s aftermath. 

“The Huntington’s art collections have always been about more than display—they are about connection, community, and memory,” said Christina Nielsen, the Hannah and Russel Kully Director of the Art Museum. “In highlighting artists like Doyle Lane, we are honoring a legacy of resilience and creativity that continues to shape Southern California.” 

Coverage of Altadena after the Eaton Fire in the New York Times underscored how urgent it is to safeguard cultural history in a fire-prone state. The Huntington will contribute to that broader effort by presenting “Doyle Lane: Master of Clay” (Sept. 13, 2026–Feb. 22, 2027), an exhibition in the Chandler Wing and adjacent galleries exploring Lane’s role in California modern design and the studio ceramics movement. 

Lauren Cross, curator of the exhibition and Gail-Oxford Associate Curator of American Decorative Arts, has written that Black artists living and working in Pasadena—White, Lane, Betye Saar, Richmond Barthé, and others—embodied the principle of “lifting as we climb,” sustaining one another through networks of support and shared creativity. “Pasadena and Altadena were and continue to be a creative sanctuary for many Black artists it is a place to create, to thrive, and to be in community with one another. Preserving this legacy and memory is essential.”