A year after Eaton Fire destruction, one lot becomes a garden
Altadena, Calif., wildfire survivor Missi Dowd-Figueroa has been planting sunflowers on the lot where her home once stood, using the work of growing to steady herself while her recovery continues. A year after the Eaton Fire destroyed her house, she remains among those still grappling with grief and few who have been able to rebuild so far.
Dowd-Figueroa, a registered nurse and mother of three, lost her 1898 farm-style house in the Eaton Fire, one of two deadly wildfires that tore through the Los Angeles area last January. “The Altadena I know and love is gone,” she said, describing what she lost in the fire. She added that everything burned down, including her dentist and pharmacy, while also saying, “there’s still something about Altadena that feels like Altadena now, even though there are no homes.”
For Dowd-Figueroa, staying meant trying to make the destroyed property useful again. She described her healing process as starting with tiny seeds—small acts she said grew into a flourishing garden on barren ground.
Her family had lived in the four-bedroom, three-bath house for 10 years, a length of time she said left the loss especially hard. For months, she drove to the empty lot and cried, and the emotional blow deepened when she realized that, along with her late grandmother’s artwork, her father’s ashes were gone forever. She said she spent “several days digging through the ashes just looking for his little urn,” but “I never found it.”
Dowd-Figueroa also described losing family photos, aside from those saved on her iPad, saying she felt the moment brought “a second grief.” She told of having “nothing from my father” and said, “I’ll never touch anything that he touched ever again.”
After cleanup crews removed the last debris from the 2,000-square-foot lot, she brought flower seeds and began planting. She said the seeds were mostly sunflowers, and she also included zinnias and cosmos.
In explaining why she started planting, Dowd-Figueroa said she was already going to the lot every day crying and asked herself why she was just sitting there. “I might as well do something that keeps me busy, and I enjoy,” she said, adding that “because the house I’m in now, I can’t have a garden.”
Sunflowers are sometimes discussed as a way to remove certain contaminants from soil, such as cadmium and other heavy metals, though experts debate how effective they are after a wildfire. Dowd-Figueroa said she hoped the sunflowers would help remove toxins from the property once she planned to rip them out by the roots and toss them after they died, being careful not to leave behind seeds.
Over several months, she said the garden flourished, blanketing a large swath of the lot with about 500 flowers in colors including bright orange and red, and yellow blooms with large heads. She said it felt healing to tend the space where she had lived the longest time in her life, and that butterflies, insects, and small animals began to appear. “I felt like I was helping nature come back a little bit,” she said.
Construction on a new home began in late September, aided in part by about $100,000 in donations through a fundraising site. By then, Dowd-Figueroa said the sunflowers—most of which bloom once and then die—were nearly all gone. She said she expects the new house to be completed as soon as mid-June, and that the progress has helped lift her spirits.
“Prior to this, I was just so depressed, like literally sobbed every day,” Dowd-Figueroa said. She added that with construction advancing, “It just feels like now there’s a place that exists. It will happen. We can do this.”
Associated Press reporter Dorany Pineda contributed from Los Angeles.