'Great disillusionment' grips Eaton fire survivors

As crisis fades from spotlight, early urgency goes with it. People are left in limbo amid red tape, disputed payouts.

- BY COLLEEN SHALBY

PHOTOGRAPHS BY JASON ARMOND Los Angeles Times JOY CHEN VISITS the pickleball courts where the chat group began. It has grown to 8,500 participants.

Before anyone received an official alert about the Eaton fire, a message lit up a pickleball group chat.

“Everyone look up, there’s a vegetation fire on Canyon Close,” the message read. “If you're anywhere near Eaton Canyon, I'd evacuate.”

CHEN SHOWS A home that was saved by neighbors using buckets of water.

Over the next several days, the chat of about 50 people who met regularly at the Altadena Town & Country Club pinged with updates about where the fire was headed, pleas to evacuate, offerings of safe-havens and status updates on what was lost.

In the nearly 10 months since the fire, that group has morphed into a community of more than 8,500 people, which includes more than 3,000 who regularly communicate in a Discord group and vent their frustrations. The network, a majority of its participants from Altadena, has seen the adrenaline that pushed people at the beginning of the year wear off as a sense of dismay set in. Momentum has slowed as residents sink into awaiting game while they vie for permit approval, decide whether to return or grapple with new and ongoing unknowns.

Resident Ursula Hyman calls this time the "period of great disillusionment."

A recent AI analysis of the Discord chat found that distressed messages about financial pressures have increased. Joy Chen, executive director of the network, said that sentiment has shifted from defiance to despair.

"I'm in the [chat] every single day. I was blown away by the amount of grief and trauma that came pouring out of people," Chen said. "It's definitely on a different level now than it was in the early days after the fire."