After L.A.-area fires, immigrant workers warily carry out cleanups

Ash still clings to the windowsills ofthe gray home in Altadena, nine months after an inferno ripped the community apart.

- By CoLLEEN SHALBY

A WORKER wearing a hazmat suit cleans possessions after the Eaton fire. There are protocols they must follow to protect their health.

(Photographs by CARLIN STIEHL Los Angeles Times)

The couple who rents the house has moved 15 times with their newborn since January as their place of solace for the last decade has awaited testing and remediation to clear it of toxic material and debris.

Help has finally arrived. Wearing white hazmat suits that cover them from head to toe, gloves, respirator masks and goggles, a group of workers enters the residence.

When the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers completed its debris removal in Altadena after January's fire tore through the town, the task to clean what survived didn’t stop. Hundreds of smoke-damaged and ash-filled homes remained standing on streets where others burned.

These efforts to clean them have largely been carried out by immigrant workers who have risked not just their health while clearing homes of toxic material and debris but, with ongoing raids, the lives they have built in California.

They meticulously vacuum, and scrub the walls, windows, baseboards and floors, clearing every open surface and precious possession of reminders of the Eaton fire.

Ricardo Melo has overseen more than 100 cleanups in Altadena and 25 in Pacific Palisades. He works for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network and said those he supervises have emigrated from Mexico, Central America and South America. Despite fears of deportation, his teams have continued to show up.

Melo’s approach to the cleanup is two-pronged: The first is ensuring that the workers understand who lived here before the fire — in this case a family with a baby so that they will work diligently and with compassion.