Months after Eaton Fire, photographer gives hope — and rebuilding — a chance

I met Kevin Cooley two days after the Eaton Fire destroyed his family’s Altadena home. We spoke in his friend’s backyard in Pasadena, gray ash falling like snow.

Six months later, much has changed and much hasn’t for Cooley, an artist and photographer whose editorial work frequently puts him in close range to some of the world’s most destructive fires.

On this July afternoon six months later, unlike January, the air is crisp and clean in that same backyard, and we can hear children playing next door.

• Read the previous story: Kevin Cooley takes photos of wildfires for a living. This week, Eaton Fire destroyed his Altadena home

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Geraniums bursting through burnt wood after the Eaton Fire.

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Courtesy Kevin Cooley

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Amaryllis growing amidst burnt ruins on Manor Street in Altadena.

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Courtesy Kevin Cooley

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Once we settled on a date for a check in, Cooley asked to meet in this backyard again.

" I've been here a couple of times since then," Cooley said. "But seeing you here is bringing me right back to that day."

That January morning, he said he remembered having to explain to a customer service representative to cancel a delivery of a new dishwasher. The person on the other end was baffled.

" And I'm like, 'Well, the house isn't there anymore,'" Cooley said.

Those moments are happening less frequently. If anything, Cooley said people are slowly beginning to forget — and that's not always a bad thing.

" I don't want that to be the only way to think about me, you know," Cooley said. "It's hard because it's also like, I do want to talk about it at certain points."

An elm tree on Maiden Lane in Altadena.

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Courtesy Kevin Cooley

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A partially burned palm tree on Ganesha Street in Altadena.

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Courtesy Kevin Cooley

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Switching course

In the long recovery process ahead, Cooley said, decisions get made, unmade, remade. Cooley and his family have so far changed their minds about leaving Los Angeles altogether to give rebuilding a serious go. That is, only if everything else would fall into place.

"It's completely overwhelming. I feel like I'm asking people permission to rebuild," said Cooley, who's working with a firm to design a home that is more fire resistant. "I have to ask the bank if they're going to be OK with the plans. I have to ask my insurance if they'll give us our extended coverage."

Since the fire, he, his wife and their 10-year-old son have moved twice. They’re hoping to get a loan from the Small Business Administration to cover some of the expenses, but Cooley said it's been difficult to get his calls returned.

"If you would've told me six months in, there would just be these days of nothing but endless paperwork to deal with," Cooley said. "It's almost more traumatic than the actual fire to me."

Twin pines on Wapello Street in Altadena

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Courtesy Kevin Cooley

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A redwood tree in Altadena.

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Courtesy Kevin Cooley

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'Am I ever going to get to do my art again?'

Cooley's photographs of wildfires dot the pages of magazines and newspapers. After our interview in January, he went back out to shoot the Palisades Fire that very afternoon.

But it's taken time for him to return to making his own work. For the first months, he would drive to Altadena and sit in his car "kind of shell shocked," he said. " I just stopped doing all the photography."

That is, until he was finally able to get into a file cabinet where some of his work was stored. The metal enclosure survived the fire, though most of its contents were destroyed or altered.

"Basically it became a big oven," he said.

After finding a copy of a "Wired" magazine that featured his photo of smoke was all but destroyed in the Eaton Fire, Kevin Cooley started to take photos again.

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Courtesy Kevin Cooley

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Life finds a way

One thing he found inside was a copy of Wired magazine — he had taken the cover photograph, a studio image of smoke.

 "You could still make out the word 'Wired,' but the rest of it was charred," he said. "It all came full circle."

He staged those remnants in a studio and started shooting.

"All of a sudden I became very animated and inspired," Cooley said. "I found a way in to photograph Altadena in my way."

Since then, Cooley has been driving up to Altadena to take pictures of the community.

Today, the mountains, scalded and stripped clean by the Eaton Fire, are sprouting a layer of green.

"I would, you know, see the destruction of course," he said.

But he also saw rebirth — flowers sprouting from burnt foundations, leaves coming back on denuded trees.

"That is really inspiring just to see how these things that look like they've been dead for months are slowly finding a way back," Cooley said. "Life finds a way."

Poppies bloom on El Molino Avenue in Altadena.

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Courtesy Kevin Cooley

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