10,000 tiles and counting. Checking in with 'Save The Tiles' volunteers, one month later

Blackened jumbles of ash and metal. Burnt outlines of former homes.

For thousands of homeowners, that’s all that the Eaton Fire left behind when it tore through Altadena in early January.

For many, their chimneys were the only thing left standing.

Some of them were adorned with historic tiles, created over 100 years ago by artists like Ernest Batchelder or Claycraft’s Fred and George Robertson.

Ernest Batchelder's tiles are celebrated as one of L.A.'s major contributions to the arts and crafts movement.

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Julie Leopo

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LAist

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In early February I met Eric Garland, co-founder of Save The Tiles. He and a small group of volunteers had just begun their race against time to save as many tiles as they could from about 200 chimneys before the bulldozers came in.

• Read the first story here: The race to save historic Altadena fireplace tiles – because they're all that’s left

During that first week, Garland told me their big bottleneck was skilled labor. They only had one small team of workers, led by a single mason.

Volunteers with Save the Tiles remove Ernest Batchelder tiles from a fireplace in Altadena on Feb. 8, 2025.

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Julie Leopo

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LAist

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Now six teams of masons work seven days a week. Garland estimates they’ve recovered north of 10,000 tiles, “and we just finished our 77th rescue."

At this point, a new bottleneck has emerged: they’re running out of homeowner contacts.

And the clock keeps ticking, with Phase II of clean up well underway

“It’s been hard fought getting in touch with homeowners, and becoming incrementally harder to do,” Garland said.

During that first week it was easy. The first circle of people they got in touch with already knew their tiles were historic and that they wanted to preserve them, he said.

“The next concentric circle of contacts were people who saw the media attention, saw the social media posts, and reached out after that," he added. "On some streets a single person got in touch with us and then brought in every home around them.”

Now, Garland said, they’re stuck on the last concentric circle: “Older people, or people who left town completely.”

“These are the people we can’t reach on instagram. We don’t know their phone numbers,” he said. “How do you reach the unreachables?”

To reach them, the team has resorted to sending out postcards and hoping they somehow find their way to homeowners.

Garland said one letter did, to a woman named Felicia Ford.

“Although I prefer to refer to her as ‘Mrs. Ford’ because that’s how she signed her response,” he said.

Her mailbox was destroyed by the fire, but she collected her mail at the post office.

Ford, a single mother in her late 50s, had only purchased her home last year — becoming the third owner since Rodney King’s family lived there.

She told the Save The Tiles team that one of her koi fish is alive in her pond after the fire.

As it happens, her home was the one featured in the photo on the group’s GoFundMe, Garland said.

“Every single one of these chimneys carries a huge sprawling story of someone’s life,” he added.

The photograph from Save The Tiles’ GoFundMe page features Mrs. Ford’s fireplace amid a field of charred wood and brick.

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Save The Tiles

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The chase continues

The postcard campaign requires homeowners to proactively seek out their mail — a gamble Garland isn’t betting on.

In addition, he said, “we’re bringing flyers to community meetings. We’re leaving comments in the Q&A section on virtual town halls.”

But, Garland said, “I suspect the only thing that can really scale us to 200 is governmental cooperation.”

The Army Corps of Engineers is only bulldozing homes after homeowners sign off, he added.

“That means they have their contact info," he said. “We need to ask them: ‘Hey! You and your contractors are going to knock these chimneys down any day now. Can you please let those homeowners know we exist, and give us an opportunity to get in there?”

What’s next?

When Phase II is complete, and the group has saved every tile they could, they’ll begin the arduous process of cataloging and storing them.

All tiles will eventually be returned to their original owners, but Garland said in some cases it could be years before homeowners are ready for them.

“In the meantime,” he said, “one thing we’d love to do is a museum exhibition.”

“This is a unique moment in our history where this incredible private art will be in one place — and it represents a pretty complete history of that art form,” he added. After the Eaton Fire, “it’s charged with this deeply local story that resonates with everyone.”

With little effort, they’ve managed to lock in their dream list of collaborators.

“Every institution, museum, or historical society we were planning to cold call and beg for help, has parachuted in with support,” he said.

When Garland gathered this group of volunteers together, he never thought the project was going to get the kind of attention that it has.

“It grew from me and Stanley to 50 volunteers in 16 hours,” he said.

Before he knew it, their number of volunteers had grown to several hundred.

So, when will Save The Tiles be done?

“When the last home is rebuilt — and we hope to help reinstall the tiles there — by then, maybe, the project is done," he said. “But who knows? Maybe we’ll have more things we can do for our community.”