For years, Aurys Hernandez worked alongside her mother, who two decades ago started the family’s day care business in their home in Altadena, California. It only took hours for the wildfires that leveled entire Los Angeles area communities last week to consume their home, and their livelihood.
The blazes destroyed the remodeled garage where they had their licensed child care business. Gone is the brightly lit room where 12 to 15 children from mostly working-class families from Altadena and Pasadena played with multicolored toys and filled out worksheets. The photos of kids that adorned the walls are now cinders.
“In three hours, everything’s gone. Our house, our homes, our job, everything,” Hernandez, 45, told NBC News.
Along with mansions and wealthy enclaves, California’s still raging wildfires have charred and turned to ash communities of working-class families. The merciless flames left gardeners, caregivers, domestic workers, child care providers and others without the tools needed to do their jobs. The conflagration wiped out the businesses where they worked and the homes of many employers and clients.
Follow here for live updates on the California wildfires
“You have a tremendous number of Latinos who are the housekeepers,” said Julián Castro, CEO of Latino Community Foundation, a San Francisco-based philanthropic organization. “They are the gardeners. They are day laborers. They are street vendors, and their lives have been turned upside down. Their livelihoods have been cut off.”
The workers are a key part of the state’s economy, vital to homeowners and consumers. Now, many are out of work and face finding temporary shelter or rentals in an expensive housing market.
Hernandez fled her family’s smoke-filled four-bedroom home in the early hours of Jan. 8 with her two kids, her husband and her parents and only important papers and clothes for two days. They are now staying with a sister in Arcadia — 10 family members in a one-bedroom apartment, said Mariah Hernandez, her sister who has organized a GoFundMe for the family.
The family, first interviewed by Telemundo 52 Los Angeles, learned their house was rubble from video shown to them by a friend. Their hope now is to find an affordable home to rent, one where they can also resume their child care business, Mariah Hernandez said.
The absence of child care has also had a cascading affect for workers in the area, some of whom receive vouchers from the state to help cover costs. There are more than 20,000 home-based child care providers in Los Angeles County — 200 were in Altadena alone, said Blanca Gallegos, spokeswoman for Service Employees International Union Local 99.
It’s unclear how many of those businesses now lie in ruins.
“We know of 12 who have completely lost their homes and dozens more have sustained damage that prevents them from reopening their child care centers,” Gallegos said.
Short-term needs, long-term fears
Similar stories have played out across other industries that employ the working class.
Heberto Campos’ job as a landscaper provided a good life in Altadena for him, his wife and his two daughters, ages 15 and 9. He had worked as a dishwasher and a cook, cared for horses and trimmed trees, changing jobs and learning skills to increase his earnings as his family grew, he said.
The fire was some 20 feet to 25 feet from their rental home when they escaped.
“We left the house running,” said Campos, 40.
All that’s left now are concrete pillars — nothing of the $10,000 worth of tools and equipment he used for his landscaping business. He has no rental insurance.
After spending $850 for four nights in a hotel, Campos and his family are now sheltering at Iglesia del Nazareno in Pasadena, joining other families at the church. Their two dogs and pet birds are in a shelter, but the family’s chickens died in the fire.
His wife is ill from the smoke inhalation but he can’t afford the medicine she needs, he said. “I’m trying with other friends to find” work at homes or businesses that haven’t been damaged by the fire, Campos said.
The pastor at the church, Jose Cervantes, said the first fire refugees arrived at the church on Tuesday. The couple, who were members of the church, were then joined by three more people Wednesday morning.
“They had nothing,” Cervantes said.
After seeing flames in Altadena from a distance on the evening of Jan. 7, the church posted a notice online that it would be open for people who needed a place to sleep. As word spread, it became a shelter.
Several of those staying with him, particularly the single men, have lost jobs at restaurants and as gardeners, Cervantes said.
The church is providing meals and clothing. A local nonprofit is providing a taco truck that draws some 70 people. Cervantes said many who come have vouchers to pay for hotel stays, but the vouchers don’t pay for food.
The League of United Latin American Citizens has compiled and vetted a list of Latino families in need of help, and the list has grown from 54 to 500 families, said Juan Proaño, chief financial officer of LULAC, the nation’s oldest civil rights organization.
“Clearly there are a lot of Latinos that have been impacted, and folks don’t know about it,” Proaño said. “We are trying to uplift their stories and raise money to support them.”
Castro’s organization, the Latino Community Foundation, is releasing $1 million from its California Wildfire Relief Fund to community-based organizations focused on helping Latino workers and families. Groups that get the grants will provide cash assistance to fire victims as well as other needs, the organization said.
“We want to make sure the most vulnerable residents have their needs met,” Castro, who was housing secretary under President Barack Obama, said of philanthropic efforts. “But at the same time, only government has the resources to provide longer term housing needs that exist.”
Hugo Martinez, 46, lives in South L.A. and counts himself lucky to still have a place to live. But questions remain on how he will afford to pay rent for the home where he lives with his wife and three children, ages 13, 10 and 6.
Martinez lost his job as a jewelry maker for Bill Wall Leather when the Malibu house where the business was run caught fire and exploded. Part of the modified building was also used by physicians who had flammable medical materials on hand, Martinez said.
“Nine of us worked there, more or less, and now all of us are without work,” Martinez said. “We are all trying to figure out what to do.”
For now, he is living on his savings. He took on short-term unpaid work painting interiors because he said staying busy helps his mental health. He is doing the work with a friend who lost his job at a restaurant destroyed in the fire.
“The most important thing is my family and my children and I have my house,” he said. “Unfortunately, others have lost theirs.”
Fear of what comes next remains, however. “Housing is so incredibly expensive,” Martinez said, “and now its going to be more expensive.”
