July 2, 2025 • 35 mins
What does it take to rebuild - not just homes, but a whole community - after disaster?
When 90-mile-per-hour winds swept through Los Angeles County this January, fires devastated neighborhoods in Altadena and Pacific Palisades. In the aftermath, thousands of families faced the impossible: starting over. Among them was Andrew King, a high school principal who quickly became something more.
"Resilience is finding the inner strength to overcome, but it's also finding strength in community," Andrew tells us.
In this powerful conversation, Andrew recounts the night he tracked fire scanners from a hotel room while his children slept beside him. By morning, security alerts confirmed what he feared—his home was gone. Within 24 hours, he’d signed a new lease. Within weeks, he stepped away from his career to focus on his family and help neighbors navigate their own recovery.
Today, Andrew works with the Department of Angels, leading grassroots recovery efforts that fill the gaps left by systems not built for equity. From WhatsApp groups and block captain networks to face-to-face meetings in libraries, his work is a reminder that disasters may not discriminate, but recovery often does.
As the one-year mark approaches and temporary housing support expires, families face new decisions about whether they can afford to return—and what their communities will become.
But Andrew remains hopeful.
"When people say 'we’re not going to take it anymore,’ that gives me hope. No one’s doing this alone—people are trying to do it together."
🎧 Listen now to hear what true grassroots resilience sounds like—and what it looks like when ordinary people become leaders in extraordinary times.
📣 If this episode moved you, please:
- Share it with someone in your neighborhood, school, or city
- Comment to let us know what resonated
- Visit shared-ground.com to get involved or prepare your own community
This is how recovery begins. Together.
Shared Ground is produced by Sean Knierim and Allan Marks. Thanks to Cory Grabow, Kara Poltor, Corey Walles (from The Recording Studio) for your support in launching this effort.
For more stories of resilience & rebuilding, kindness & generosity: visit shared-ground.com and subscribe to Sean's substack. We invite you to share your own stories of resilience at the Shared Ground website - whether in response to the January fires in LA or other situations.
Follow us at seanknierim.substack.com, Instagram, or wherever you listen to podcasts (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, etc).
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Sean Knierim (00:07):
Thanks so much for joining us today.
We have a guest we've beenlooking forward to talking to
for a while.
Andrew King is here with us.
Andrew, who are you?
Whom are you bringing to usthis morning?
Andrew King (00:15):
My name is Andrew King.
Up until a couple months ago Iwas a high school principal and
now I am a member of theDepartment of Angels, which is a
nonprofit that is helping tocoordinate fire recovery in both
Palisades and Eaton.
I'm also a block captain inAltadena.
I am helping support withinsurance advocacy work.
I am a parent of two wonderfulchildren in Altadena and I'm
here just to kind of help thecommunity recover.
Thanks for being here, thankyou?
Allan Marks (00:37):
Yeah, wonderful.
I really appreciate you takingthe time.
Something we've been talking toa lot of folks about on the
podcast is resilience andobviously from working with
students, from your ownexperience as a parent and now
dealing with fire recovery,you're seeing different
situations, both personal andkind of systemic, where
resilience is important.
How would you define resilience?
Andrew King (00:57):
I think resilience is finding the inner strength
within in order to overcome, butI think it's also being able to
find the strength in communityand so, regardless of whatever
adversity or challenges youmight face because if it's
environmental, personal, fromthe community, resilience is
about finding wherever thatstrength needs to come from to
overcome so that you and therest of your community and loved
ones can overcome.
Allan Marks (01:17):
So for community, if you think about it, sometimes
it's like bottom-up communities, especially after disaster.
They might just respond in acertain way and come together
when they maybe were or weren'tbefore.
But you're also an educatorthat was running a big high
school, so leadership mightmatter as well.
How do those play off eachother?
Andrew King (01:33):
I think there are those leaders that may have
positional power already and arejust prone to step up because
they are already in that seat,and I think what we've seen
after the fires in bothcommunities is you also have a
lot of folks that have not seenthemselves as leaders before,
that have now stepped up asreluctant leaders, and so they
are putting themselves inpositions not necessarily of
power, but positions of support,because they see that there's a
(01:54):
need.
And so, whether you are a bornleader, a reluctant leader, what
we have come to see is that,you know, we have people
stepping up to help everyone,whether it's themselves or the
community that they have aroundthem.
Sean Knierim (02:04):
If we step back to the verb you used in defining
resilience finding strength inthese times that doesn't
necessarily mean you have thestrength, but a question I'd be
interested in there is it aconscious finding or is it a
discovery over time that youdon't go looking for?
So, in the resilience that youhave in mind, does one
consciously go looking for thatstrength in order to encounter
(02:26):
resilience, or can it happen toyou?
That's a great question andwhat I'm trying to figure out.
Even now, months on afterlosing our home, I'm still
trying to find that strength.
It feels like.
Andrew King (02:37):
Yeah, I think it's maybe akin to riding a bike.
Okay, Right, Like you, a bunchof folks you know who may have
experienced adversity over timeand when it happens to them
again, they are able to overcomebecause they've.
They've had it before.
Sean Knierim (02:51):
And that it is something challenging.
Andrew King (02:54):
Yeah and like, and sometimes it's easy, and other
times you have to find the willin order to overcome again.
And sometimes you have to findthe motivation or to ask
yourself to find the why aboutwhy it's even worthwhile to
overcome, Because it's also veryeasy just to say throw your
hands up and be like I don'twant to deal with this anymore.
And so I think the why behindovercoming is also really
important.
Allan Marks (03:13):
You really raise a good point with this idea of
throwing up your hands andsaying why bother?
Because there's four differentpeople that can come from very
different places and so the wayyou deal with it has to be
different.
So, for example, if I think Ihave no agency, whatever I do it
will just won't matter, thatcould be a reason to do it.
If I think, well, maybe what Ido could matter, but I just I
have no purpose, I don't haveany sense of direction or
meaning, or I don't have anyhope, those are all different
(03:34):
and they respond to differentsolutions, I think.
Andrew King (03:37):
I think that's right.
It depends on how much powerfeel like you have in any type
of situation.
Oftentimes, when you havestudents in a classroom when
they feel like they have nopower, those are the students
that are oftentimes the mostunwilling to learn, because they
have no agency in that space.
I think the same is true inpost-fire recovery.
You have folks that may have alot more positional power, may
have a lot more cultural andsocial capital in order to
(03:58):
navigate their own recovery, andyou have those that, for years
and decades, may have felt thatthe system is not designed for
them, and so they're justwondering to themselves is this
now the time I engage and try toaccrue that capital, or do I
just throw my hands up becausethis system was not designed for
me and so it really does dependon your individual circumstance
.
Sean Knierim (04:14):
So, andrew, as we're kicking into the
conversation on this podcast,we've talked to people who have
lost their homes and theirexperience coming through and
finding.
We've talked to people who havebeen around others that have,
and increasingly we're startingto talk to people from outside
communities coming in.
Can you talk through your ownpersonal journey, coming through
January, of what you yourselfencountered and those closest
(04:34):
into you?
Andrew King (04:35):
Yeah, for sure.
Sean Knierim (04:36):
And so.
Andrew King (04:38):
I lost my home in the Altadena fire in January,
along with 6,000 of my neighbors, same in the Palisades.
And for our story, I think,while we did lose our home, we
may have been just a little bitmore fortunate than others
because we didn't have thefleeing by night story that
unfortunately, many of ourneighbors do.
But for us in particular, weactually left at 10 am that
(04:59):
morning because we gotnotification from Southern
California Edison that they weregoing to shut off our power,
the winds were really strongthat night and they were worried
about electrical fires possibly.
And so, because we gotnotification from Southern
California Edison that they weregoing to shut off our power,
the winds were really strongthat night and they were worried
about electrical fires possibly.
And so because we have twoyoung kids, a six and an eight
year old, we thought toourselves well, let's go ahead
and go stay at a hotel, it'll bemuch easier, we'll get up in
the morning, go to school.
That just seems like a muchbetter solution for our children
.
At 6.30 PM that evening, whenthe fire started in Eaton Canyon
(05:22):
, I received a text message fromsomeone saying hey, did you
know a fire started Because Iknew how bad the winds were
going to be that night.
We had actually just leftdinner and we're walking back to
our hotel room when I got thattext message and I saw that
Eaton Fire had started.
I didn't tell my wife at thetime, but in the back of my head
I pretty much confirmed tomyself we're probably going to
lose our house tonight, becausewinds were projected 90 to 100
miles per hour.
(05:42):
I still had hope that maybe wewouldn't, but I had resigned
myself to the fact that that wasvery likely the case.
Sean Knierim (05:47):
How long did you carry that yourself before you
shared it with your wife.
Andrew King (05:51):
We listened to the fire scanners all night,
listening to the responders, theincident commands on the
scanner radio.
Sean Knierim (05:58):
Were all four of you.
Andrew King (05:59):
In the same room my wife and I were, while our
children slept in the kitchenarea in the pull-out couch.
And so, while we're listening tofirefighters and incident
command like talking back andforth about fires erupting all
across Altadena, my wife and Iwere just listening.
I was trying to document wherethe fires were on a Google map
that we were sharing across theneighborhood to kind of let
people know what was going on.
And at about 5.15 that morningI got a notification from
(06:22):
SimpliSafe telling me that therewas a front door access and
then there was motion sensors inthe hallway, the back hallway,
the back door, and the optimistin me thought to myself oh well,
maybe the firefighters arethere to save our home.
And then, at about 530, westopped receiving notifications
and I turned to my wife and Isaid I think we lost the house.
Sean Knierim (06:40):
At 442.
That morning I got a call fromADT, which we had lost contact
with anything in the house,telling us that a window blew
out.
Then another window blew outthat was 20 feet over the ground
, but the ADT folks didn't knowthat the fire was happening.
It was a really interesting wayto find that your house likely
just burned, yeah.
Andrew King (06:57):
Who knew what.
And for the longest timeactually, I kept those
notifications on my phonebecause I just couldn't just
like clear it.
And then, unfortunately, oneday I was letting my kids play
with my phone and they clearedit and, oh no, I lost it, but I
mean kids did for you what youcouldn't do for yourself.
Absolutely, it's actually verytrue I it felt like I just
needed to have that, as dark asit might have been to be like,
as a reminder.
(07:17):
But I think a different storyfor us also that doesn't
necessarily resonate with a lotof folks, is about an hour after
we lost our home.
I looked at my wife and I saidwe need to find a place to live.
At 6.30 AM you were quick At6.30 AM we called our realtor
who had just had a baby and so Iknew he was going to be awake.
I'm going to say we need aplace to live.
We just lost our home and so by4 PM that afternoon the next
(07:39):
day we signed a two-year leaseon an apartment, sight unseen,
because we were first on thatlist and the second list we were
number 13 and we knew weweren't going to get it.
Allan Marks (07:49):
Wow, that kind of foresight is not luck.
Now, losing your home iscertainly bad luck.
How much do you thinkresilience depends on planning,
or foresight, or awareness ofbroader context?
You said you're listening toscanners, you're looking, you
know what the winds are going.
Sean Knierim (08:07):
How much have you been riding that bike in the
past and knew what to do?
Yeah, Readiness.
Andrew King (08:08):
I guess I'll call it you have to prepare for these
types of things.
I mean, like, if we assume thatthese are just ingrained things
, then there's an assumptionthat it can't be taught.
And I think this is the onething I always impress upon
educators too is, you know,there's will and there's skill,
and those are really importantelements.
But if it's just will, thenyou're just born with it and I
think there's a problem withthat.
(08:29):
When you start from thatpremise that things are just
will, I think that's problematicbecause then there's no
optimism, there's no opportunityfor growth.
But if it's skill which I dofirmly believe a lot of this can
be skill then it's about justexposure.
And for folks that haven't hadto deal with disaster, folks
haven't had to deal with anytype of adversity, I do think
sometimes it's hard.
I mean, I was a high schoolprincipal during COVID and I had
to do crisis management prettyquickly.
(08:50):
I remember March 13th when wehad to notify our community that
we were closing schools andthen knowing every week was
something different until youhad to be quick on your feet If
you've ever had to be kicked outof your apartment or your home
because your landlord decided to, you know, close shop on you
and gave you no 10 days notice.
You know what it's like to haveto think quick on your feet,
and so if you haven't had thatexperience, no, that's a muscle
that you haven't exercised orever been exposed to.
Sean Knierim (09:12):
Your reflections are kind of weaving into my own
reflections of thinking of whathappened.
So, andrew, as you came throughthat process and you were
thinking on your feet and youwere taking care of your family
and you were thinking about thecommunity that you were leading
at the school, you made somedecisions pretty quickly that
really changed what you're doingin the world Maybe not the
service you're providing tocommunities, but how you're
(09:33):
providing them.
What did you go through then inthe coming months after you
guys got into that apartment?
Andrew King (09:38):
No, I didn't return to work for about three weeks
after the fire, because I reallytook it upon myself and my
family to start figuring outrecovery and the school had
burnt down too.
No, our school did not burndown, it did not burn down.
So I worked at a small downtownpublic charter in downtown Los
Angeles Alliance Dr Algamo andHigh School Got it.
If you guys are listening,shout out to you guys.
But fortunately our school wasnot impacted.
(10:00):
They were impacted by the smokeden all across Los Angeles, and
so the quality of the air wasjust terrible and it's a school
of you know, bungalows and solike the air was definitely
permeating to the classrooms,but I fortunately did not have
to oversee a school that burneddown, which is in and of itself
a terrible tragedy.
I didn't go back to workinitially because, one, I had to
deal with my own recovery, buttwo, because we had worked so
hard to build a competent teamto lead that school that I had
(10:23):
the fortune of being able tostep back and let my school run
itself, because there were suchgreat leaders and great teachers
to do the work that needed tobe done.
But when I did finally comeback, I came back at a time that
was already very tumultuous,and not to get political about
this, but I serve a populationof students that are
under-resourced, predominantlyimmigrant families, and the
(10:44):
current presidentialadministration really made it
difficult and hard for thesefamilies to feel confident, feel
safe about their place in oursociety.
And so when I came back, I wasdealing with a lot of that
anxiety the families werefeeling, and then I was going
home and then having to dealwith my own recovery and helping
my neighbors navigate their ownrecovery and the well of energy
(11:04):
that I had.
This was draining, and I feltlike every time I was going into
work I was distracted and Icouldn't be there 100% for them.
And so I remember deciding formyself.
One day I was sitting in myoffice and then another person
came in and I just knew I wasn'tgiving them 100% of my
attention and this was the mostimportant conversation to them
at the moment, and I couldn't dothat to them.
I couldn't make 450 studentssecond fiddle to my own recovery
(11:27):
and someone needed to make thema priority, because their
livelihood is just as importantas my own.
And so I remember sitting downat the kitchen table that
evening and I looked at my wifeand I said I need to know if
it's okay if I step back fromthis job, which is a very scary
premise, because I need toprovide for a family.
We just lost our home.
We need income in order tofigure out rebuilding.
But my wife is a wonderfulperson and she looked at me and
(11:49):
she said if that's what youreally need, then okay.
And I'm going to tell you thatlifted so much weight off my
shoulders because it meant thatI can focus on my family.
And the one thing that wealways try to impress upon
people is like work is important.
The work that you do isimportant, especially if you
work is important.
The work that you do isimportant, especially if you
work in nonprofits.
The people that you serve areimportant, but you also have to
be there for your family, and soI've always tried to model that
(12:10):
, and so the community.
When I announced, they wereobviously heartbroken, but they
were also understanding thedecision I had to make to
prioritize my family first.
Sean Knierim (12:16):
So what if you think back in the prior years or
through your lifetime thatenabled you to make this
decision?
And again, quite quickly, whatprepared you to be able to have
this ability to reflect, to makea decision, to know whom to
turn to for support, but then tocarry through with it?
You made a bunch of decisionsin times of pressure that seem
(12:36):
to be based on really solidwisdom and support.
Where's that coming from inyour background, andrew?
Andrew King (12:42):
Andrew- I think I have just been fortunate in my
life.
I feel like I had a really goodeducation growing up.
I went to a great college thatreally helped me feel confident
choices that I made.
I felt like I had the technicalknowledge to kind of understand
what was happening around me.
But I think also like I had astrong system of supports from
my family.
My wife was there, my parents,my siblings are there, my
(13:04):
friends are there.
But even in this moment withthis fire, I think what also
helped me recover so much fasterI think most others is I had my
neighbors there.
When you are suffering from atragedy on your own, it's really
hard to see if peopleunderstand you and are giving
you empathy or just sympathy,and the sympathy can be really
frustrating.
The empathy because they'vebeen through it also almost
(13:25):
gives you strength because youdon't have to re-explain.
You can just say like thissucks.
And they say, yeah, I know, andyou believe them.
Yeah, because they can putthemselves in your shoes,
exactly Because they'reliterally in the same shoes,
right, right?
Allan Marks (13:36):
Yeah.
Andrew King (13:37):
So I think that has helped me a lot.
Also, and I think the otherpart is, you know I talk about
this idea of reluctant leaders.
I wasn't reluctant because Idid feel like I was in a
position to be able to help, butI did look around, you know,
talking to my neighbors thefollowing day and them like
trying to figure out what to donext.
And then you know we find outthe disaster recovery center
gets put up, there's all theseopportunities for like money
(13:57):
coming around, and I see peoplelike sending text messages, like
oh, there's money here andthere's money here and they're
giving out food here.
I also knew that there wereseveral of my neighbors that
were not getting any of thosetext messages.
They were not on social mediaand I had to do something.
I couldn't just be that a skillthat was provided to you I had
to and you're saying that withconviction.
Allan Marks (14:34):
I believe you that you feel like you had to when
does that?
Sean Knierim (14:35):
Actually, I believe you that you had to.
Allan Marks (14:36):
I'll go further.
I think that really is part ofthe wiring, Not that it's not
taught.
I mean empathy can absolutelybe taught.
Andrew King (14:41):
I'd be interested in knowing what you think.
I think there's an element oflike being a moralist being a
humanist.
I think there's an element oflike being a moralist being a
humanist.
And if you don't do something,and you know that there are
going to be consequences, if youdon't and you still choose not
to, then I firmly believe thatyou are responsible for that.
Allan Marks (14:53):
It's a choice.
It's a choice.
Well, go further than that,though, because there are some
things I suspect that you mightdo, regardless of knowing
whether there's consequences,because it's the right thing to
do yeah, I think that's a fairpoint.
Andrew King (15:03):
Like I don't do it because I might get in trouble.
I also do it because I'm ahumanist and I just want to put
as much good out there in theworld as I can.
I want to help people becausepeople deserve to be helped.
No one deserves to go through arecovery alone.
No one deserves to have to dealwith the mess of this and feel
helpless.
So if I can help because Isomehow have an answer 100%, I'm
going to step up.
Allan Marks (15:21):
Let me ask you a question.
I want to go back to AltBecause a lot of people
listening to this.
We have listeners from all overthe world, as it turns out,
which is kind of a happydiscovery.
Not everybody knows aboutAltadena or understands the
distinction between Altadena andthe Palisades or between either
one of them and other parts ofLos Angeles, which is a
metropolitan area of over 15million people.
Tell us about Altadena beforethe fire.
Andrew King (15:39):
The community that's been lost, I think,
geographically first.
One way to help people figureout where Altadena is is if
you've ever seen the Rose Parade.
That's in Pasadena and north ofPasadena is Altadena.
Altadena is this wonderful,eclectic, quiet but lovely
community that's next to theFoothill Mountains.
You have a very diversecommunity of folks with a
(15:59):
historic Black community that'sbeen strong and resilient over
the last several decades.
You have a lot of folks comingin that are trying to avoid the
hustle and bustle of Los Angeles.
You know, still want to beconnected as close as they can
and people that just help eachother.
You know we have a strong buynothing community.
You have a strong community ofyou know, people that ride
horses.
There's a lady with like llamasand peacocks and you have bears
(16:22):
that periodically enter theneighborhood and it's just fun,
and so like it's, it's a lovelyplace, it's weird and it's just
fun, and so, like it's, it's alovely place, it's weird and
it's I don't know, it's, it'sfun, it's a fun place to be.
Allan Marks (16:31):
Where do you see it 20 years from now?
I guess either where you expectit to be and where you want it
to be, if that's different.
Andrew King (16:36):
Yeah, it's.
It's always interestingquestion, right?
Because there's all of thesetension points about
(17:08):
no-transcript is the case.
In 20 years I hope that mychildren can still grow up in
Altadena.
I hope they all have friendsthere.
I hope they're going to thehigh schools in the area.
I hope that we have a richcommunity that can celebrate the
togetherness that we've reallybuilt upon over the last several
years.
I think it'll continue to be aspecial place, but it will be
(17:30):
different.
Allan Marks (17:30):
And have the kids been able to keep in touch with
the friends that they had before, or is it starting to be more
scattered?
Andrew King (17:36):
A couple of things.
One is a lot of the kids beforethe school year ended opted to
continue going to the schoolbecause it was too hard to both
lose your house, lose yourneighborhood and lose your
school community, and so a lotof them have come back Now.
Whether or not they're going toreturn after the school year or
when in the fall, that remainsto be seen, and I do have a lot
(17:57):
of concerns about that In my ownchildren.
We actually pulled our kids outfor a week when the schools
reopened because we were reallyconcerned about air quality,
because our kids' elementaryschool survived, but it is
immediately outside the burnscar and you have the debris
trucks moving in, and so wepulled them out.
But then I really struggled withthis idea of so they lost their
house, lost their neighborhood.
(18:17):
They're going to lose theirschool community too.
I didn't sit right with me andso we made a choice.
I have my own concerns abouthealth long-term, but like we
made a choice at that moment.
But fortunately you know, likethey still have a lot of friends
there, the community offamilies are really strong
because they've all made thechoice to come back.
And then we also have the Boysand Girls Club of Pasadena,
who's been just incredible toour kids.
Sean Knierim (18:36):
So let's talk about building that community
you hope to see in the nextdecade.
So you chose to move on fromthis role as principal and then
you took a job at the Departmentof Angels.
Can you tell us about what isthe Department of Angels and
what's the role you're doing forthem?
Andrew King (18:49):
Andrew, the Department of Angels was started
in about February by theSpiegel Family Fund and
California Community Foundation,and it was designed to be able
to help coordinate the firerecovery and ensure that
recovery was being led by thecommunity and not having
recovery done to them.
A really common refrain I heara lot is that disasters do not
discriminate but recovery does,and so how do we ensure?
(19:10):
Say that one more time.
Sean Knierim (19:12):
That's pretty powerful.
That's a very important pointand I think this is core to how
your organization was designedby trying to figure out where
the gaps are and where the needsare.
Andrew King (19:20):
Disasters do not discriminate, but recovery does,
and I think that is importantbecause we're talking about
allocation of resources.
Who does that go to In disaster?
Sometimes it's who you know andthat, while it is nice to have
friends, that is in and ofitself sometimes discriminatory
because it doesn't go to thepeople that may need it and it's
inequitable.
So what the Department ofAngels and us are trying to do
is just ensure that we are Goingto the community, finding the
(19:45):
community-based organizationsthat are serving those
communities and reallyplatforming them.
We're trying to determine whatare the issues that these
survivors are experiencing andconnecting them with
philanthropy, connecting themwith government officials so
that their voices are helpingdirect this recovery.
Because two things one I'vesaid it before and I'll say it
again no one should be goingthrough this recovery alone.
And then, two, we should bedoing this recovery together.
Allan Marks (20:06):
And how do you do the outreach to those who say
aren't on social media or notyou know as connected?
Andrew King (20:27):
no-transcript that you could create trusted folks
that would be informed and helpconnect people that needed it to
other resources.
And so, in my own role, I'm ablock captain for my street as
part of an Altadena blockcaptain group called Altogether,
and so what I've done over thelast several months is,
initially, after the fire, Ionly had the neighbors that I
(20:50):
knew on my WhatsApp thread, andthen over the course of the next
couple of months a couple ofweeks really we really tried to
get everyone on that streetplugged into our WhatsApp.
In fact, just yesterday we hadanother member finally join our
WhatsApp group after somepushing and prodding, and so
that is where I will shareinformation about mortgage, I
will share about insurance, Iwill share about how AI can be
(21:12):
used to do personal propertyitemization, but really it's
that face-to-face work.
And for folks that are not onsocial media, then I'll do
things like go meet them at thelibrary and I was like what do
you need?
Allan Marks (21:21):
So libraries, by the way, have emerged as a just
absolutely critical piece ofthis, not just for the recovery
but just kind of communitybuilding and resilience in areas
which have not been directlyimpacted by the fires across
Southern California.
Andrew King (21:33):
Yeah, I mean they're trusted.
They're generally free to usethem for community spaces.
They have internet connectivityfor people who would like that,
and I think that I mean they'requiet spaces to talk, and so,
like I've definitely and theyhave kind people who work and
are focused on hospitality andwelcoming people into the space.
Allan Marks (21:48):
Yeah, and phenomenal wide range of
resources.
Andrew King (21:49):
It's not just books on the shelf, and they have
somewhat built in childcare inthat, like my kids can go read a
book or color a page while I'mhelping a neighbor, and so
that's actually helped me a lotalso.
Sean Knierim (21:58):
Or so I can just stare out a window for five
minutes and know the kids areover there and safe, absolutely.
Andrew King (22:04):
Because it's a community right and it's a
community space, and so that'sdefinitely been helpful.
And so this digital divide isreal, and it's not necessarily
just for elderly folks.
You have a lot of people thatjust are not connected to the
internet or not connected tosocial media, and they're
falling through the cracks.
And so when you have a strongblock captain model, the idea is
I can go through my list andsay who have I not heard from in
the last two weeks?
And I'm going to call themdirectly and say hey, how are
(22:26):
you doing today?
Do you need anything?
Because we have a very strongcommunity on WhatsApp and we
have a very strong community onDiscord, but it's overwhelming.
It is very much informationthrough a fire hose.
And so how do you take thatinformation and distill it for
folks and at the moment at whichthey're ready for a specific
type of information?
Because there are still peopletoday that, depending on how far
(22:46):
they are, are just starting therecovery today, and some of us
are much further along than that, but this is what they're ready
for.
Sean Knierim (22:52):
So I have a question on community.
So block captains are workingwith those that own the homes or
that are coming back and have aconsistent connection.
How are you working, eitherDepartment of Angels or as a
block captain in Altadena, withthe rental community, those that
may or may not be coming back,that have a different connection
to physically or at least anownership to these communities,
(23:13):
but had that same connection tothe humans in the schools and
the people in the markets?
So what are you doing with therental community?
Some of the block captains arerenters.
Andrew King (23:21):
So the idea it's very geographic versus like
based on home ownership status.
And so you have folks that arenot necessarily just talking
about how do we rebuild ourhomes, but they're talking about
how do I navigate a landlordthat's not being supportive?
How do I navigate smoke and ashremediation?
Where do I get temporary relief?
How do I navigate FEMA and thedisaster recovery center?
And so what you really do haveis geographic communities that
(23:44):
are helping each other.
That's not.
That can be just a blockcaptain that's for an entire
group of renters in one buildingor on one street.
But I think what we've alsofound is that there are still,
to this day, like a lot of gapsin the block captaining model
that we're trying to overcome,because we are trying to make
sure that we get to as close to100% reach as possible.
Sean Knierim (24:03):
I'm hearing a lot of talk about wanting to rebuild
the community that was therebefore, and then you go through
the process of figuring out whatthat actually means and who.
But in those communitiesthere's a good percentage of
those that were part of thecommunity in December or January
5th who might not ever moveback Right.
They've already had to go.
Secure housing elsewhere,secure school elsewhere.
(24:24):
The places for them to rentmight not actually be
constructed for years to come,so it's going to be a different
crew coming through.
Allan Marks (24:31):
And that's not all fire, of course, because if you
think of any community NowAltadena was a relatively stable
community actually, but there'sa lot of communities If you
waited five years or seven years, whatever the timeline might be
, for example, for physicalreconstruction, if you had not
had a fire, and you look at anycommunity and you look five or
seven years out, there's a lotof new people that have come in
and a lot of people that wentaway or passed away, and that's
natural.
Andrew King (24:52):
I think that's something you can expect anyway.
But I know the signal bell thatI keep kind of ringing really
loudly, especially with thisidea of being able to return,
whether you're a tenant, whetheryou are a homeowner is.
There's this very specific linein a lot of people's insurance
policies loss of use,alternative living expenses or
fair rental value, if you haveCalifornia Fair Plan.
(25:13):
What this means is, if you aredisplaced from your home, your
insurance if you have insurancewill typically pay for you to
live somewhere else temporarily.
Now, renter's insurance, by theway, is a little bit different.
Allan Marks (25:23):
Yes, for sure, quite different.
Andrew King (25:26):
Yes, unfortunately if you are a renter, you may not
have temporary living expenses.
Some policies may have it, butit's a rider and it's pretty
expensive.
Allan Marks (25:33):
And it's rare for people to actually buy it and
it's time limited.
Andrew King (25:35):
Yes.
So for ALE or LOU or FRV,whatever you want to call it,
the one thing that people havenot really of mine to look into
is the fact of one.
There's two things it's eithercapped at a dollar value and or
it's also capped at time.
The time component is usuallytwo years plus.
You can extend it every sixmonths and I feel pretty
confident that insurance willlikely continue doing that,
because there's a writer in mostof them that say something like
(25:58):
if there's a disaster andyou're making good faith, we'll
keep on extending over sixmonths.
But the one thing that really isbound is your actual coverage,
and what I'm really concernedabout and I've done some
informal data you know, like ina surveying of my neighbors in
Altadena is how much time do youhave before you're going to run
out of loss of use?
And the biggest concern that Ihave is and I guess, about the
anniversary of the fire.
(26:19):
You're going to have a lot offolks that are going to run out
of loss of use and now will beresponsible for paying rent and
their mortgage and they're goingto have to make a choice about
whether or not it is affordableto rebuild, and then you will
have this massive influx offolks trying to find either
temporary housing or justleaving both communities
entirely, and that's somethingthat I think is really far down
the line until people don't see.
But I'm really concerned aboutthat.
Sean Knierim (26:39):
And we're closer to that every single day.
We are absolutely gettingcloser, andrew, as you're
thinking about this opportunityright now, because one way to
look at this, andrew, as you'rethinking about this opportunity
right now, because one way tolook at this, there's an
opportunity to conceive of thetype of community that we want
to inhabit in these twogeographic spaces in the wider
LA region no-transcript have alot of community groups that
(27:11):
have kind of reached across thecounty.
Andrew King (27:13):
These are not twin fires, but they're sister fires
and the experiences really docarry across both and so as many
opportunities as we can find toadvocate together whether it's
for insurance, whether it's forunlocking federal dollars,
whether it's for streamliningthe rebuild process, collective
purchasing I think those are thethings that both communities
will absolutely benefit from ifwe work together, and there's no
(27:35):
sense of arguing about liketheir community versus my
community.
I think that we are one LosAngeles, and the more that we
can do together, the more thatwe're all going to be able to
come back home sooner.
Allan Marks (27:43):
So over the time period of recovery and
rebuilding we will have morefires in other areas, kind of
unavoidably.
I think you mentioned thatcollaboration between, say,
altadena and Pacific Palisadesacross the county.
Are there other things that arealso possible to do to make
other communities more fireresilient, more fire prepared or
able to deal with the immediatecrisis situation where people
(28:05):
need to reach out for assistanceor lessons learned from this
last?
Andrew King (28:08):
one.
It's actually reallyinteresting that you asked that,
because this is also not likethe first fire we've experienced
and it feels like, oh my gosh,there's a fire.
I'm like, well, we've had fireslast year and the year before
that Bullseye fire.
Allan Marks (28:18):
Huge, yeah right, my family was affected.
Andrew King (28:20):
Yeah, and so like it's shocking to me that it
continues to feel like this isthe first time for everyone.
But I will say some of thelessons that you can take if you
have not been impacted yet.
But again, it's likely going tohappen on the fire in the
future.
That's going to impact thecommunity.
Because number one don't waitfor the fire.
I think there's a lot of folksthat respond after day zero and
then they're trying to figureout how to do the recovery.
So, before day one, get to knowyour neighbors.
(28:41):
You need to get on the samepage, form some type of block
captain group, just to get toknow each other, create a
WhatsApp group, get on a Discord, whatever you need to, because
that communication and thattrust system is going to be
crucial to that recovery.
I think that's going to beimportant.
There's like monetary thingsthat are going to require you to
like fire hard in your home.
But if you have the capacity topay for upgrades to fire-harden
(29:04):
your home, absolutely do that.
There's things called Zone Zero, where you can remove
combustible things around yourhome to prevent your home from
actually burning, but that don'tcost money.
And then you like to exceedtime too.
Allan Marks (29:13):
So I remember after the Northridge earthquake there
was a flurry of people thatthey hadn't already bolted their
home, who did earthquakebolting to make sure that when
the ground shifts your housedoesn't fall off its foundation,
because we have a lot of raisedfoundation construction here
for single-family homes, woodframe, and we didn't see the
same move to fire hardened homesin areas people think are
remote.
So this idea of like a wire landurban interface, the WUI right,
(29:33):
probably a little out of date,because if you're going to get
100 mile an hour winds, thepossibility of an ignition in an
area adjacent to the urbancenter, it really is going to be
an urban fire that's going topush further in.
So obviously insurancecompanies have noticed this.
You look at premiums orinsurability, but I think that
the idea that you need to lookat your roofing material, you
need to look at rain gutters,you need to look at ways where
embers could get either into theattics or underneath, you know,
(29:55):
crawl space, those are allthings that I'm not seeing.
The same sense of.
Of course you would have to dothat that we see with earthquake
preparedness.
I wonder why.
Andrew King (30:03):
I mean, I think right now all the organizations
are still trying to figure outlike what the actual standards
need to be.
So like there are standards outthere but they're not
standardized for everyone.
And there's questions aboutlike.
Oh well, if I am in high fire,severity zone one versus two,
like my property literally iscut in half between the red zone
and the orange zone, so I'mlike which one do I follow?
My garage is much more prone tofire than my house, I guess.
(30:25):
Of course, if one of themcatches fire, they're going to
too.
And so I think there's still alack of clarity on like what.
Because the other part is we'realready going through recovery.
You don't want to imposeexpectations oh, here's what the
recovery needs to be becauseyou want some flexibility of
what the recovery needs to be.
But you also need to balancethat with how do you prevent a
future disaster like this againin the future?
And so there are standards outthere.
You can look it up on your own.
(30:46):
Ibhs has some really greatrecommendations for it, but
again, the biggest-.
Sean Knierim (30:50):
And.
Andrew King (30:50):
IBHS can you break that acronym down?
Oh my God, I think it's likeInternational Building Housing
Standards.
I think it's IBHS say.
Allan Marks (30:56):
Yeah, and the state of California has put out some
statewide guidelines forbuilding codes.
That and some localities arealso doing the same thing, Big
cities like LA of course arething.
Sean Knierim (31:11):
Big cities like LA , of course, are looking at it.
They're called, like chapter 7a, building standards or
something Exactly.
Can I ask?
This is another definitionquestion We've been talking
about rebuilding and you alsotalked about recovery.
How do you see those asdistinct efforts?
Because if I'm thinking aboutinsurability standards for my
rebuild, I'm kind of thinkingrebuilding.
What's the difference betweenrecovery and rebuilding in your
mind?
Andrew King (31:23):
Rebuild I feel is like what are you literally
going to put on your property,Like the nails and the wood and
the stucco and the concrete.
I think that's more of atechnical vision of like what is
that I'm going to put on myhome?
The recovery to me is Is thecommunity going to come back?
Are there going to be schools?
What is the infrastructure?
Are there going to bebusinesses?
Because I think rebuild is veryspecific to a family or a home
(31:46):
or individual and I thinkrecovery, in my mind at least,
is more community facing who isgoing to be there?
What is it going to look likewhen we're back?
I think the reason why a lot offolks are still trying to
decide if they want to rebuildis because they want to know
what they're rebuilding back to.
Allan Marks (31:57):
What is going to be there?
Well, and part of that and youmentioned businesses, and I
think not as much attention ispaid as maybe could or should be
to small business districts,especially in towns like
Altadena, but not just there,where, if the merchants aren't
there, if there aren't the jobsthat they provide as well, that
community looks very, verydifferent.
Andrew King (32:15):
The businesses are struggling now because you set
up a shop, because you had12,000 homes that would, you
know, every so often come and,you know, patronize your
business, and now they're gone,and so you're hoping that maybe
these Army Corps folks will stopby and eat at your restaurant.
But how do you do that wheneveryone's been displaced in
this diaspora, and so I thinkthere is absolutely a need to
care for them.
I think there are a lot ofdifferent solutions about
(32:38):
helping keep them afloat overthe next several years.
I know I try my best, becausemy kids still go to school in
Altadena and they go to the Boysand Girls Club up there.
Allan Marks (32:49):
You know we try to stop by some businesses whenever
we can, but that can only go sofar.
And then how do you, tied tothat, how do you deal with the
issues, both economic and social, around gentrification?
Of course, you saw this withnot just where you live, but
also a lot of the studentpopulation that you're dealing
with in the communities thatthey are coming from.
Andrew King (33:01):
Yeah, I think this idea of gentrification is really
interesting.
Right, because gentrificationis not always inherently a bad
thing, in that, you know, peopleof color communities also want
to benefit from like betterschools and better
infrastructure and betterbusinesses and public safety and
public safety.
I think those are all goodthings, and so we put this
called gentrification.
I feel like it's a term I don'toften like to use, because the
idea is do we just want to makethe community better?
(33:22):
Absolutely, everyone wants tobenefit from it.
Now, do you have folks coming inand maybe displacing?
I think that's a differentconversation.
I think that's happening rightnow, with developers coming in
and buying properties.
But I think there's also thisthing that we can't control,
which is this notion right nowof without there being a funding
solution to help families keeptheir properties as long as
possible.
(33:42):
They don't have a choice but tosell, and I'm not going to
fault them for it.
They need to be able to recoverbecause they don't have
insurance or they'reunderinsured, and that is a
choice every individual familyneeds to resolve and figure out
for themselves, and I will helpthem as best I can.
But if there is no systemicsolution for it, then, yeah,
we're going to continue seeingdevelopers coming in, investors
coming in buying property anddisplacing folks that want to
live there but can't.
Sean Knierim (34:03):
So, andrew, as you think about your personal
experience over the last months,your community experience and
then the job that you have now,looking even on the systems
level, where are you findinghope?
Where are the places of hopethat are keeping you going?
Andrew King (34:16):
I think every time I have a conversation where
someone feels like they're goingto get a little bit more money
from insurance, or they found anew writer in their policy they
did not realize before, or adocument that I put out there
has helped someone realize ooh,this itemization process, while
terrible, is not as bad as Ithought it was and therefore I
can get started on it.
I think everyone taking one stepat a time further towards
(34:38):
recovery and rebuilding, I thinkgives me hope.
If it just felt like everythingwas completely stagnant and no
one was moving forward, I thinkthat would be really difficult
for me.
But also when you have thesecommunity groups like Altogether
, who meet and now they say,okay, we're ready to talk about
rebuilding commercial propertiesand re-envisioning what this
community could be, or you havefolks banding together they say
like, yeah, we're not going totake it anymore and we're going
to go ahead and step up and doit together, I think that gives
(34:59):
me hope, because then it meansgenuinely that no one is doing
it alone, that people are tryingto do it together and that
really gives me the fire to keepfighting, because we helped
bring these people together andwe continue to bring people
together so that we get backsooner.
Sean Knierim (35:12):
Thank you for joining us, Andrew, thanks for
the work you're doing to helpbring this hope to folks like my
family and others that aregoing through this, and thanks
for being in our lives, man.
I appreciate that you trustedus enough to come on today with
us.
Allan Marks (35:24):
Yeah, yeah, really best of luck.
I'm so glad with the workyou're doing.
It's just critically important,so thank you.
Thank you for talking about itand sharing your experience,
yeah.
Sean Knierim (35:31):
This has been another episode of Shared Ground
.
Thanks for joining us and welook forward to having more such
conversations moving into thefuture.
Thanks very much.
This has been another episodeof Shared Ground, a podcast
about resilience and community.
Allan Marks (35:45):
Follow us on your favorite platform or learn more
at wwwshared-ground.
com.
That's www.
shared-ground.
com.
Thanks so much for joining us today.
We have a guest we've beenlooking forward to talking to
for a while.
Andrew King is here with us.
Andrew, who are you?
Whom are you bringing to usthis morning?
Andrew King (00:15):
My name is Andrew King.
Up until a couple months ago Iwas a high school principal and
now I am a member of theDepartment of Angels, which is a
nonprofit that is helping tocoordinate fire recovery in both
Palisades and Eaton.
I'm also a block captain inAltadena.
I am helping support withinsurance advocacy work.
I am a parent of two wonderfulchildren in Altadena and I'm
here just to kind of help thecommunity recover.
Thanks for being here, thankyou?
Allan Marks (00:37):
Yeah, wonderful.
I really appreciate you takingthe time.
Something we've been talking toa lot of folks about on the
podcast is resilience andobviously from working with
students, from your ownexperience as a parent and now
dealing with fire recovery,you're seeing different
situations, both personal andkind of systemic, where
resilience is important.
How would you define resilience?
Andrew King (00:57):
I think resilience is finding the inner strength
within in order to overcome, butI think it's also being able to
find the strength in communityand so, regardless of whatever
adversity or challenges youmight face because if it's
environmental, personal, fromthe community, resilience is
about finding wherever thatstrength needs to come from to
overcome so that you and therest of your community and loved
ones can overcome.
Allan Marks (01:17):
So for community, if you think about it, sometimes
it's like bottom-up communities, especially after disaster.
They might just respond in acertain way and come together
when they maybe were or weren'tbefore.
But you're also an educatorthat was running a big high
school, so leadership mightmatter as well.
How do those play off eachother?
Andrew King (01:33):
I think there are those leaders that may have
positional power already and arejust prone to step up because
they are already in that seat,and I think what we've seen
after the fires in bothcommunities is you also have a
lot of folks that have not seenthemselves as leaders before,
that have now stepped up asreluctant leaders, and so they
are putting themselves inpositions not necessarily of
power, but positions of support,because they see that there's a
(01:54):
need.
And so, whether you are a bornleader, a reluctant leader, what
we have come to see is that,you know, we have people
stepping up to help everyone,whether it's themselves or the
community that they have aroundthem.
Sean Knierim (02:04):
If we step back to the verb you used in defining
resilience finding strength inthese times that doesn't
necessarily mean you have thestrength, but a question I'd be
interested in there is it aconscious finding or is it a
discovery over time that youdon't go looking for?
So, in the resilience that youhave in mind, does one
consciously go looking for thatstrength in order to encounter
(02:26):
resilience, or can it happen toyou?
That's a great question andwhat I'm trying to figure out.
Even now, months on afterlosing our home, I'm still
trying to find that strength.
It feels like.
Andrew King (02:37):
Yeah, I think it's maybe akin to riding a bike.
Okay, Right, Like you, a bunchof folks you know who may have
experienced adversity over timeand when it happens to them
again, they are able to overcomebecause they've.
They've had it before.
Sean Knierim (02:51):
And that it is something challenging.
Andrew King (02:54):
Yeah and like, and sometimes it's easy, and other
times you have to find the willin order to overcome again.
And sometimes you have to findthe motivation or to ask
yourself to find the why aboutwhy it's even worthwhile to
overcome, Because it's also veryeasy just to say throw your
hands up and be like I don'twant to deal with this anymore.
And so I think the why behindovercoming is also really
important.
Allan Marks (03:13):
You really raise a good point with this idea of
throwing up your hands andsaying why bother?
Because there's four differentpeople that can come from very
different places and so the wayyou deal with it has to be
different.
So, for example, if I think Ihave no agency, whatever I do it
will just won't matter, thatcould be a reason to do it.
If I think, well, maybe what Ido could matter, but I just I
have no purpose, I don't haveany sense of direction or
meaning, or I don't have anyhope, those are all different
(03:34):
and they respond to differentsolutions, I think.
Andrew King (03:37):
I think that's right.
It depends on how much powerfeel like you have in any type
of situation.
Oftentimes, when you havestudents in a classroom when
they feel like they have nopower, those are the students
that are oftentimes the mostunwilling to learn, because they
have no agency in that space.
I think the same is true inpost-fire recovery.
You have folks that may have alot more positional power, may
have a lot more cultural andsocial capital in order to
(03:58):
navigate their own recovery, andyou have those that, for years
and decades, may have felt thatthe system is not designed for
them, and so they're justwondering to themselves is this
now the time I engage and try toaccrue that capital, or do I
just throw my hands up becausethis system was not designed for
me and so it really does dependon your individual circumstance
.
Sean Knierim (04:14):
So, andrew, as we're kicking into the
conversation on this podcast,we've talked to people who have
lost their homes and theirexperience coming through and
finding.
We've talked to people who havebeen around others that have,
and increasingly we're startingto talk to people from outside
communities coming in.
Can you talk through your ownpersonal journey, coming through
January, of what you yourselfencountered and those closest
(04:34):
into you?
Andrew King (04:35):
Yeah, for sure.
Sean Knierim (04:36):
And so.
Andrew King (04:38):
I lost my home in the Altadena fire in January,
along with 6,000 of my neighbors, same in the Palisades.
And for our story, I think,while we did lose our home, we
may have been just a little bitmore fortunate than others
because we didn't have thefleeing by night story that
unfortunately, many of ourneighbors do.
But for us in particular, weactually left at 10 am that
(04:59):
morning because we gotnotification from Southern
California Edison that they weregoing to shut off our power,
the winds were really strongthat night and they were worried
about electrical fires possibly.
And so, because we gotnotification from Southern
California Edison that they weregoing to shut off our power,
the winds were really strongthat night and they were worried
about electrical fires possibly.
And so because we have twoyoung kids, a six and an eight
year old, we thought toourselves well, let's go ahead
and go stay at a hotel, it'll bemuch easier, we'll get up in
the morning, go to school.
That just seems like a muchbetter solution for our children
.
At 6.30 PM that evening, whenthe fire started in Eaton Canyon
(05:22):
, I received a text message fromsomeone saying hey, did you
know a fire started Because Iknew how bad the winds were
going to be that night.
We had actually just leftdinner and we're walking back to
our hotel room when I got thattext message and I saw that
Eaton Fire had started.
I didn't tell my wife at thetime, but in the back of my head
I pretty much confirmed tomyself we're probably going to
lose our house tonight, becausewinds were projected 90 to 100
miles per hour.
(05:42):
I still had hope that maybe wewouldn't, but I had resigned
myself to the fact that that wasvery likely the case.
Sean Knierim (05:47):
How long did you carry that yourself before you
shared it with your wife.
Andrew King (05:51):
We listened to the fire scanners all night,
listening to the responders, theincident commands on the
scanner radio.
Sean Knierim (05:58):
Were all four of you.
Andrew King (05:59):
In the same room my wife and I were, while our
children slept in the kitchenarea in the pull-out couch.
And so, while we're listening tofirefighters and incident
command like talking back andforth about fires erupting all
across Altadena, my wife and Iwere just listening.
I was trying to document wherethe fires were on a Google map
that we were sharing across theneighborhood to kind of let
people know what was going on.
And at about 5.15 that morningI got a notification from
(06:22):
SimpliSafe telling me that therewas a front door access and
then there was motion sensors inthe hallway, the back hallway,
the back door, and the optimistin me thought to myself oh well,
maybe the firefighters arethere to save our home.
And then, at about 530, westopped receiving notifications
and I turned to my wife and Isaid I think we lost the house.
Sean Knierim (06:40):
At 442.
That morning I got a call fromADT, which we had lost contact
with anything in the house,telling us that a window blew
out.
Then another window blew outthat was 20 feet over the ground
, but the ADT folks didn't knowthat the fire was happening.
It was a really interesting wayto find that your house likely
just burned, yeah.
Andrew King (06:57):
Who knew what.
And for the longest timeactually, I kept those
notifications on my phonebecause I just couldn't just
like clear it.
And then, unfortunately, oneday I was letting my kids play
with my phone and they clearedit and, oh no, I lost it, but I
mean kids did for you what youcouldn't do for yourself.
Absolutely, it's actually verytrue I it felt like I just
needed to have that, as dark asit might have been to be like,
as a reminder.
(07:17):
But I think a different storyfor us also that doesn't
necessarily resonate with a lotof folks, is about an hour after
we lost our home.
I looked at my wife and I saidwe need to find a place to live.
At 6.30 AM you were quick At6.30 AM we called our realtor
who had just had a baby and so Iknew he was going to be awake.
I'm going to say we need aplace to live.
We just lost our home and so by4 PM that afternoon the next
(07:39):
day we signed a two-year leaseon an apartment, sight unseen,
because we were first on thatlist and the second list we were
number 13 and we knew weweren't going to get it.
Allan Marks (07:49):
Wow, that kind of foresight is not luck.
Now, losing your home iscertainly bad luck.
How much do you thinkresilience depends on planning,
or foresight, or awareness ofbroader context?
You said you're listening toscanners, you're looking, you
know what the winds are going.
Sean Knierim (08:07):
How much have you been riding that bike in the
past and knew what to do?
Yeah, Readiness.
Andrew King (08:08):
I guess I'll call it you have to prepare for these
types of things.
I mean, like, if we assume thatthese are just ingrained things
, then there's an assumptionthat it can't be taught.
And I think this is the onething I always impress upon
educators too is, you know,there's will and there's skill,
and those are really importantelements.
But if it's just will, thenyou're just born with it and I
think there's a problem withthat.
(08:29):
When you start from thatpremise that things are just
will, I think that's problematicbecause then there's no
optimism, there's no opportunityfor growth.
But if it's skill which I dofirmly believe a lot of this can
be skill then it's about justexposure.
And for folks that haven't hadto deal with disaster, folks
haven't had to deal with anytype of adversity, I do think
sometimes it's hard.
I mean, I was a high schoolprincipal during COVID and I had
to do crisis management prettyquickly.
(08:50):
I remember March 13th when wehad to notify our community that
we were closing schools andthen knowing every week was
something different until youhad to be quick on your feet If
you've ever had to be kicked outof your apartment or your home
because your landlord decided to, you know, close shop on you
and gave you no 10 days notice.
You know what it's like to haveto think quick on your feet,
and so if you haven't had thatexperience, no, that's a muscle
that you haven't exercised orever been exposed to.
Sean Knierim (09:12):
Your reflections are kind of weaving into my own
reflections of thinking of whathappened.
So, andrew, as you came throughthat process and you were
thinking on your feet and youwere taking care of your family
and you were thinking about thecommunity that you were leading
at the school, you made somedecisions pretty quickly that
really changed what you're doingin the world Maybe not the
service you're providing tocommunities, but how you're
(09:33):
providing them.
What did you go through then inthe coming months after you
guys got into that apartment?
Andrew King (09:38):
No, I didn't return to work for about three weeks
after the fire, because I reallytook it upon myself and my
family to start figuring outrecovery and the school had
burnt down too.
No, our school did not burndown, it did not burn down.
So I worked at a small downtownpublic charter in downtown Los
Angeles Alliance Dr Algamo andHigh School Got it.
If you guys are listening,shout out to you guys.
But fortunately our school wasnot impacted.
(10:00):
They were impacted by the smokeden all across Los Angeles, and
so the quality of the air wasjust terrible and it's a school
of you know, bungalows and solike the air was definitely
permeating to the classrooms,but I fortunately did not have
to oversee a school that burneddown, which is in and of itself
a terrible tragedy.
I didn't go back to workinitially because, one, I had to
deal with my own recovery, buttwo, because we had worked so
hard to build a competent teamto lead that school that I had
(10:23):
the fortune of being able tostep back and let my school run
itself, because there were suchgreat leaders and great teachers
to do the work that needed tobe done.
But when I did finally comeback, I came back at a time that
was already very tumultuous,and not to get political about
this, but I serve a populationof students that are
under-resourced, predominantlyimmigrant families, and the
(10:44):
current presidentialadministration really made it
difficult and hard for thesefamilies to feel confident, feel
safe about their place in oursociety.
And so when I came back, I wasdealing with a lot of that
anxiety the families werefeeling, and then I was going
home and then having to dealwith my own recovery and helping
my neighbors navigate their ownrecovery and the well of energy
(11:04):
that I had.
This was draining, and I feltlike every time I was going into
work I was distracted and Icouldn't be there 100% for them.
And so I remember deciding formyself.
One day I was sitting in myoffice and then another person
came in and I just knew I wasn'tgiving them 100% of my
attention and this was the mostimportant conversation to them
at the moment, and I couldn't dothat to them.
I couldn't make 450 studentssecond fiddle to my own recovery
(11:27):
and someone needed to make thema priority, because their
livelihood is just as importantas my own.
And so I remember sitting downat the kitchen table that
evening and I looked at my wifeand I said I need to know if
it's okay if I step back fromthis job, which is a very scary
premise, because I need toprovide for a family.
We just lost our home.
We need income in order tofigure out rebuilding.
But my wife is a wonderfulperson and she looked at me and
(11:49):
she said if that's what youreally need, then okay.
And I'm going to tell you thatlifted so much weight off my
shoulders because it meant thatI can focus on my family.
And the one thing that wealways try to impress upon
people is like work is important.
The work that you do isimportant, especially if you
work is important.
The work that you do isimportant, especially if you
work in nonprofits.
The people that you serve areimportant, but you also have to
be there for your family, and soI've always tried to model that
(12:10):
, and so the community.
When I announced, they wereobviously heartbroken, but they
were also understanding thedecision I had to make to
prioritize my family first.
Sean Knierim (12:16):
So what if you think back in the prior years or
through your lifetime thatenabled you to make this
decision?
And again, quite quickly, whatprepared you to be able to have
this ability to reflect, to makea decision, to know whom to
turn to for support, but then tocarry through with it?
You made a bunch of decisionsin times of pressure that seem
(12:36):
to be based on really solidwisdom and support.
Where's that coming from inyour background, andrew?
Andrew King (12:42):
Andrew- I think I have just been fortunate in my
life.
I feel like I had a really goodeducation growing up.
I went to a great college thatreally helped me feel confident
choices that I made.
I felt like I had the technicalknowledge to kind of understand
what was happening around me.
But I think also like I had astrong system of supports from
my family.
My wife was there, my parents,my siblings are there, my
(13:04):
friends are there.
But even in this moment withthis fire, I think what also
helped me recover so much fasterI think most others is I had my
neighbors there.
When you are suffering from atragedy on your own, it's really
hard to see if peopleunderstand you and are giving
you empathy or just sympathy,and the sympathy can be really
frustrating.
The empathy because they'vebeen through it also almost
(13:25):
gives you strength because youdon't have to re-explain.
You can just say like thissucks.
And they say, yeah, I know, andyou believe them.
Yeah, because they can putthemselves in your shoes,
exactly Because they'reliterally in the same shoes,
right, right?
Allan Marks (13:36):
Yeah.
Andrew King (13:37):
So I think that has helped me a lot.
Also, and I think the otherpart is, you know I talk about
this idea of reluctant leaders.
I wasn't reluctant because Idid feel like I was in a
position to be able to help, butI did look around, you know,
talking to my neighbors thefollowing day and them like
trying to figure out what to donext.
And then you know we find outthe disaster recovery center
gets put up, there's all theseopportunities for like money
(13:57):
coming around, and I see peoplelike sending text messages, like
oh, there's money here andthere's money here and they're
giving out food here.
I also knew that there wereseveral of my neighbors that
were not getting any of thosetext messages.
They were not on social mediaand I had to do something.
I couldn't just be that a skillthat was provided to you I had
to and you're saying that withconviction.
Allan Marks (14:34):
I believe you that you feel like you had to when
does that?
Sean Knierim (14:35):
Actually, I believe you that you had to.
Allan Marks (14:36):
I'll go further.
I think that really is part ofthe wiring, Not that it's not
taught.
I mean empathy can absolutelybe taught.
Andrew King (14:41):
I'd be interested in knowing what you think.
I think there's an element oflike being a moralist being a
humanist.
I think there's an element oflike being a moralist being a
humanist.
And if you don't do something,and you know that there are
going to be consequences, if youdon't and you still choose not
to, then I firmly believe thatyou are responsible for that.
Allan Marks (14:53):
It's a choice.
It's a choice.
Well, go further than that,though, because there are some
things I suspect that you mightdo, regardless of knowing
whether there's consequences,because it's the right thing to
do yeah, I think that's a fairpoint.
Andrew King (15:03):
Like I don't do it because I might get in trouble.
I also do it because I'm ahumanist and I just want to put
as much good out there in theworld as I can.
I want to help people becausepeople deserve to be helped.
No one deserves to go through arecovery alone.
No one deserves to have to dealwith the mess of this and feel
helpless.
So if I can help because Isomehow have an answer 100%, I'm
going to step up.
Allan Marks (15:21):
Let me ask you a question.
I want to go back to AltBecause a lot of people
listening to this.
We have listeners from all overthe world, as it turns out,
which is kind of a happydiscovery.
Not everybody knows aboutAltadena or understands the
distinction between Altadena andthe Palisades or between either
one of them and other parts ofLos Angeles, which is a
metropolitan area of over 15million people.
Tell us about Altadena beforethe fire.
Andrew King (15:39):
The community that's been lost, I think,
geographically first.
One way to help people figureout where Altadena is is if
you've ever seen the Rose Parade.
That's in Pasadena and north ofPasadena is Altadena.
Altadena is this wonderful,eclectic, quiet but lovely
community that's next to theFoothill Mountains.
You have a very diversecommunity of folks with a
(15:59):
historic Black community that'sbeen strong and resilient over
the last several decades.
You have a lot of folks comingin that are trying to avoid the
hustle and bustle of Los Angeles.
You know, still want to beconnected as close as they can
and people that just help eachother.
You know we have a strong buynothing community.
You have a strong community ofyou know, people that ride
horses.
There's a lady with like llamasand peacocks and you have bears
(16:22):
that periodically enter theneighborhood and it's just fun,
and so like it's, it's a lovelyplace, it's weird and it's just
fun, and so, like it's, it's alovely place, it's weird and
it's I don't know, it's, it'sfun, it's a fun place to be.
Allan Marks (16:31):
Where do you see it 20 years from now?
I guess either where you expectit to be and where you want it
to be, if that's different.
Andrew King (16:36):
Yeah, it's.
It's always interestingquestion, right?
Because there's all of thesetension points about
(17:08):
no-transcript is the case.
In 20 years I hope that mychildren can still grow up in
Altadena.
I hope they all have friendsthere.
I hope they're going to thehigh schools in the area.
I hope that we have a richcommunity that can celebrate the
togetherness that we've reallybuilt upon over the last several
years.
I think it'll continue to be aspecial place, but it will be
(17:30):
different.
Allan Marks (17:30):
And have the kids been able to keep in touch with
the friends that they had before, or is it starting to be more
scattered?
Andrew King (17:36):
A couple of things.
One is a lot of the kids beforethe school year ended opted to
continue going to the schoolbecause it was too hard to both
lose your house, lose yourneighborhood and lose your
school community, and so a lotof them have come back Now.
Whether or not they're going toreturn after the school year or
when in the fall, that remainsto be seen, and I do have a lot
(17:57):
of concerns about that In my ownchildren.
We actually pulled our kids outfor a week when the schools
reopened because we were reallyconcerned about air quality,
because our kids' elementaryschool survived, but it is
immediately outside the burnscar and you have the debris
trucks moving in, and so wepulled them out.
But then I really struggled withthis idea of so they lost their
house, lost their neighborhood.
(18:17):
They're going to lose theirschool community too.
I didn't sit right with me andso we made a choice.
I have my own concerns abouthealth long-term, but like we
made a choice at that moment.
But fortunately you know, likethey still have a lot of friends
there, the community offamilies are really strong
because they've all made thechoice to come back.
And then we also have the Boysand Girls Club of Pasadena,
who's been just incredible toour kids.
Sean Knierim (18:36):
So let's talk about building that community
you hope to see in the nextdecade.
So you chose to move on fromthis role as principal and then
you took a job at the Departmentof Angels.
Can you tell us about what isthe Department of Angels and
what's the role you're doing forthem?
Andrew King (18:49):
Andrew, the Department of Angels was started
in about February by theSpiegel Family Fund and
California Community Foundation,and it was designed to be able
to help coordinate the firerecovery and ensure that
recovery was being led by thecommunity and not having
recovery done to them.
A really common refrain I heara lot is that disasters do not
discriminate but recovery does,and so how do we ensure?
(19:10):
Say that one more time.
Sean Knierim (19:12):
That's pretty powerful.
That's a very important pointand I think this is core to how
your organization was designedby trying to figure out where
the gaps are and where the needsare.
Andrew King (19:20):
Disasters do not discriminate, but recovery does,
and I think that is importantbecause we're talking about
allocation of resources.
Who does that go to In disaster?
Sometimes it's who you know andthat, while it is nice to have
friends, that is in and ofitself sometimes discriminatory
because it doesn't go to thepeople that may need it and it's
inequitable.
So what the Department ofAngels and us are trying to do
is just ensure that we are Goingto the community, finding the
(19:45):
community-based organizationsthat are serving those
communities and reallyplatforming them.
We're trying to determine whatare the issues that these
survivors are experiencing andconnecting them with
philanthropy, connecting themwith government officials so
that their voices are helpingdirect this recovery.
Because two things one I'vesaid it before and I'll say it
again no one should be goingthrough this recovery alone.
And then, two, we should bedoing this recovery together.
Allan Marks (20:06):
And how do you do the outreach to those who say
aren't on social media or notyou know as connected?
Andrew King (20:27):
no-transcript that you could create trusted folks
that would be informed and helpconnect people that needed it to
other resources.
And so, in my own role, I'm ablock captain for my street as
part of an Altadena blockcaptain group called Altogether,
and so what I've done over thelast several months is,
initially, after the fire, Ionly had the neighbors that I
(20:50):
knew on my WhatsApp thread, andthen over the course of the next
couple of months a couple ofweeks really we really tried to
get everyone on that streetplugged into our WhatsApp.
In fact, just yesterday we hadanother member finally join our
WhatsApp group after somepushing and prodding, and so
that is where I will shareinformation about mortgage, I
will share about insurance, Iwill share about how AI can be
(21:12):
used to do personal propertyitemization, but really it's
that face-to-face work.
And for folks that are not onsocial media, then I'll do
things like go meet them at thelibrary and I was like what do
you need?
Allan Marks (21:21):
So libraries, by the way, have emerged as a just
absolutely critical piece ofthis, not just for the recovery
but just kind of communitybuilding and resilience in areas
which have not been directlyimpacted by the fires across
Southern California.
Andrew King (21:33):
Yeah, I mean they're trusted.
They're generally free to usethem for community spaces.
They have internet connectivityfor people who would like that,
and I think that I mean they'requiet spaces to talk, and so,
like I've definitely and theyhave kind people who work and
are focused on hospitality andwelcoming people into the space.
Allan Marks (21:48):
Yeah, and phenomenal wide range of
resources.
Andrew King (21:49):
It's not just books on the shelf, and they have
somewhat built in childcare inthat, like my kids can go read a
book or color a page while I'mhelping a neighbor, and so
that's actually helped me a lotalso.
Sean Knierim (21:58):
Or so I can just stare out a window for five
minutes and know the kids areover there and safe, absolutely.
Andrew King (22:04):
Because it's a community right and it's a
community space, and so that'sdefinitely been helpful.
And so this digital divide isreal, and it's not necessarily
just for elderly folks.
You have a lot of people thatjust are not connected to the
internet or not connected tosocial media, and they're
falling through the cracks.
And so when you have a strongblock captain model, the idea is
I can go through my list andsay who have I not heard from in
the last two weeks?
And I'm going to call themdirectly and say hey, how are
(22:26):
you doing today?
Do you need anything?
Because we have a very strongcommunity on WhatsApp and we
have a very strong community onDiscord, but it's overwhelming.
It is very much informationthrough a fire hose.
And so how do you take thatinformation and distill it for
folks and at the moment at whichthey're ready for a specific
type of information?
Because there are still peopletoday that, depending on how far
(22:46):
they are, are just starting therecovery today, and some of us
are much further along than that, but this is what they're ready
for.
Sean Knierim (22:52):
So I have a question on community.
So block captains are workingwith those that own the homes or
that are coming back and have aconsistent connection.
How are you working, eitherDepartment of Angels or as a
block captain in Altadena, withthe rental community, those that
may or may not be coming back,that have a different connection
to physically or at least anownership to these communities,
(23:13):
but had that same connection tothe humans in the schools and
the people in the markets?
So what are you doing with therental community?
Some of the block captains arerenters.
Andrew King (23:21):
So the idea it's very geographic versus like
based on home ownership status.
And so you have folks that arenot necessarily just talking
about how do we rebuild ourhomes, but they're talking about
how do I navigate a landlordthat's not being supportive?
How do I navigate smoke and ashremediation?
Where do I get temporary relief?
How do I navigate FEMA and thedisaster recovery center?
And so what you really do haveis geographic communities that
(23:44):
are helping each other.
That's not.
That can be just a blockcaptain that's for an entire
group of renters in one buildingor on one street.
But I think what we've alsofound is that there are still,
to this day, like a lot of gapsin the block captaining model
that we're trying to overcome,because we are trying to make
sure that we get to as close to100% reach as possible.
Sean Knierim (24:03):
I'm hearing a lot of talk about wanting to rebuild
the community that was therebefore, and then you go through
the process of figuring out whatthat actually means and who.
But in those communitiesthere's a good percentage of
those that were part of thecommunity in December or January
5th who might not ever moveback Right.
They've already had to go.
Secure housing elsewhere,secure school elsewhere.
(24:24):
The places for them to rentmight not actually be
constructed for years to come,so it's going to be a different
crew coming through.
Allan Marks (24:31):
And that's not all fire, of course, because if you
think of any community NowAltadena was a relatively stable
community actually, but there'sa lot of communities If you
waited five years or seven years, whatever the timeline might be
, for example, for physicalreconstruction, if you had not
had a fire, and you look at anycommunity and you look five or
seven years out, there's a lotof new people that have come in
and a lot of people that wentaway or passed away, and that's
natural.
Andrew King (24:52):
I think that's something you can expect anyway.
But I know the signal bell thatI keep kind of ringing really
loudly, especially with thisidea of being able to return,
whether you're a tenant, whetheryou are a homeowner is.
There's this very specific linein a lot of people's insurance
policies loss of use,alternative living expenses or
fair rental value, if you haveCalifornia Fair Plan.
(25:13):
What this means is, if you aredisplaced from your home, your
insurance if you have insurancewill typically pay for you to
live somewhere else temporarily.
Now, renter's insurance, by theway, is a little bit different.
Allan Marks (25:23):
Yes, for sure, quite different.
Andrew King (25:26):
Yes, unfortunately if you are a renter, you may not
have temporary living expenses.
Some policies may have it, butit's a rider and it's pretty
expensive.
Allan Marks (25:33):
And it's rare for people to actually buy it and
it's time limited.
Andrew King (25:35):
Yes.
So for ALE or LOU or FRV,whatever you want to call it,
the one thing that people havenot really of mine to look into
is the fact of one.
There's two things it's eithercapped at a dollar value and or
it's also capped at time.
The time component is usuallytwo years plus.
You can extend it every sixmonths and I feel pretty
confident that insurance willlikely continue doing that,
because there's a writer in mostof them that say something like
(25:58):
if there's a disaster andyou're making good faith, we'll
keep on extending over sixmonths.
But the one thing that really isbound is your actual coverage,
and what I'm really concernedabout and I've done some
informal data you know, like ina surveying of my neighbors in
Altadena is how much time do youhave before you're going to run
out of loss of use?
And the biggest concern that Ihave is and I guess, about the
anniversary of the fire.
(26:19):
You're going to have a lot offolks that are going to run out
of loss of use and now will beresponsible for paying rent and
their mortgage and they're goingto have to make a choice about
whether or not it is affordableto rebuild, and then you will
have this massive influx offolks trying to find either
temporary housing or justleaving both communities
entirely, and that's somethingthat I think is really far down
the line until people don't see.
But I'm really concerned aboutthat.
Sean Knierim (26:39):
And we're closer to that every single day.
We are absolutely gettingcloser, andrew, as you're
thinking about this opportunityright now, because one way to
look at this, andrew, as you'rethinking about this opportunity
right now, because one way tolook at this, there's an
opportunity to conceive of thetype of community that we want
to inhabit in these twogeographic spaces in the wider
LA region no-transcript have alot of community groups that
(27:11):
have kind of reached across thecounty.
Andrew King (27:13):
These are not twin fires, but they're sister fires
and the experiences really docarry across both and so as many
opportunities as we can find toadvocate together whether it's
for insurance, whether it's forunlocking federal dollars,
whether it's for streamliningthe rebuild process, collective
purchasing I think those are thethings that both communities
will absolutely benefit from ifwe work together, and there's no
(27:35):
sense of arguing about liketheir community versus my
community.
I think that we are one LosAngeles, and the more that we
can do together, the more thatwe're all going to be able to
come back home sooner.
Allan Marks (27:43):
So over the time period of recovery and
rebuilding we will have morefires in other areas, kind of
unavoidably.
I think you mentioned thatcollaboration between, say,
altadena and Pacific Palisadesacross the county.
Are there other things that arealso possible to do to make
other communities more fireresilient, more fire prepared or
able to deal with the immediatecrisis situation where people
(28:05):
need to reach out for assistanceor lessons learned from this
last?
Andrew King (28:08):
one.
It's actually reallyinteresting that you asked that,
because this is also not likethe first fire we've experienced
and it feels like, oh my gosh,there's a fire.
I'm like, well, we've had fireslast year and the year before
that Bullseye fire.
Allan Marks (28:18):
Huge, yeah right, my family was affected.
Andrew King (28:20):
Yeah, and so like it's shocking to me that it
continues to feel like this isthe first time for everyone.
But I will say some of thelessons that you can take if you
have not been impacted yet.
But again, it's likely going tohappen on the fire in the
future.
That's going to impact thecommunity.
Because number one don't waitfor the fire.
I think there's a lot of folksthat respond after day zero and
then they're trying to figureout how to do the recovery.
So, before day one, get to knowyour neighbors.
(28:41):
You need to get on the samepage, form some type of block
captain group, just to get toknow each other, create a
WhatsApp group, get on a Discord, whatever you need to, because
that communication and thattrust system is going to be
crucial to that recovery.
I think that's going to beimportant.
There's like monetary thingsthat are going to require you to
like fire hard in your home.
But if you have the capacity topay for upgrades to fire-harden
(29:04):
your home, absolutely do that.
There's things called Zone Zero, where you can remove
combustible things around yourhome to prevent your home from
actually burning, but that don'tcost money.
And then you like to exceedtime too.
Allan Marks (29:13):
So I remember after the Northridge earthquake there
was a flurry of people thatthey hadn't already bolted their
home, who did earthquakebolting to make sure that when
the ground shifts your housedoesn't fall off its foundation,
because we have a lot of raisedfoundation construction here
for single-family homes, woodframe, and we didn't see the
same move to fire hardened homesin areas people think are
remote.
So this idea of like a wire landurban interface, the WUI right,
(29:33):
probably a little out of date,because if you're going to get
100 mile an hour winds, thepossibility of an ignition in an
area adjacent to the urbancenter, it really is going to be
an urban fire that's going topush further in.
So obviously insurancecompanies have noticed this.
You look at premiums orinsurability, but I think that
the idea that you need to lookat your roofing material, you
need to look at rain gutters,you need to look at ways where
embers could get either into theattics or underneath, you know,
(29:55):
crawl space, those are allthings that I'm not seeing.
The same sense of.
Of course you would have to dothat that we see with earthquake
preparedness.
I wonder why.
Andrew King (30:03):
I mean, I think right now all the organizations
are still trying to figure outlike what the actual standards
need to be.
So like there are standards outthere but they're not
standardized for everyone.
And there's questions aboutlike.
Oh well, if I am in high fire,severity zone one versus two,
like my property literally iscut in half between the red zone
and the orange zone, so I'mlike which one do I follow?
My garage is much more prone tofire than my house, I guess.
(30:25):
Of course, if one of themcatches fire, they're going to
too.
And so I think there's still alack of clarity on like what.
Because the other part is we'realready going through recovery.
You don't want to imposeexpectations oh, here's what the
recovery needs to be becauseyou want some flexibility of
what the recovery needs to be.
But you also need to balancethat with how do you prevent a
future disaster like this againin the future?
And so there are standards outthere.
You can look it up on your own.
(30:46):
Ibhs has some really greatrecommendations for it, but
again, the biggest-.
Sean Knierim (30:50):
And.
Andrew King (30:50):
IBHS can you break that acronym down?
Oh my God, I think it's likeInternational Building Housing
Standards.
I think it's IBHS say.
Allan Marks (30:56):
Yeah, and the state of California has put out some
statewide guidelines forbuilding codes.
That and some localities arealso doing the same thing, Big
cities like LA of course arething.
Sean Knierim (31:11):
Big cities like LA , of course, are looking at it.
They're called, like chapter 7a, building standards or
something Exactly.
Can I ask?
This is another definitionquestion We've been talking
about rebuilding and you alsotalked about recovery.
How do you see those asdistinct efforts?
Because if I'm thinking aboutinsurability standards for my
rebuild, I'm kind of thinkingrebuilding.
What's the difference betweenrecovery and rebuilding in your
mind?
Andrew King (31:23):
Rebuild I feel is like what are you literally
going to put on your property,Like the nails and the wood and
the stucco and the concrete.
I think that's more of atechnical vision of like what is
that I'm going to put on myhome?
The recovery to me is Is thecommunity going to come back?
Are there going to be schools?
What is the infrastructure?
Are there going to bebusinesses?
Because I think rebuild is veryspecific to a family or a home
(31:46):
or individual and I thinkrecovery, in my mind at least,
is more community facing who isgoing to be there?
What is it going to look likewhen we're back?
I think the reason why a lot offolks are still trying to
decide if they want to rebuildis because they want to know
what they're rebuilding back to.
Allan Marks (31:57):
What is going to be there?
Well, and part of that and youmentioned businesses, and I
think not as much attention ispaid as maybe could or should be
to small business districts,especially in towns like
Altadena, but not just there,where, if the merchants aren't
there, if there aren't the jobsthat they provide as well, that
community looks very, verydifferent.
Andrew King (32:15):
The businesses are struggling now because you set
up a shop, because you had12,000 homes that would, you
know, every so often come and,you know, patronize your
business, and now they're gone,and so you're hoping that maybe
these Army Corps folks will stopby and eat at your restaurant.
But how do you do that wheneveryone's been displaced in
this diaspora, and so I thinkthere is absolutely a need to
care for them.
I think there are a lot ofdifferent solutions about
(32:38):
helping keep them afloat overthe next several years.
I know I try my best, becausemy kids still go to school in
Altadena and they go to the Boysand Girls Club up there.
Allan Marks (32:49):
You know we try to stop by some businesses whenever
we can, but that can only go sofar.
And then how do you, tied tothat, how do you deal with the
issues, both economic and social, around gentrification?
Of course, you saw this withnot just where you live, but
also a lot of the studentpopulation that you're dealing
with in the communities thatthey are coming from.
Andrew King (33:01):
Yeah, I think this idea of gentrification is really
interesting.
Right, because gentrificationis not always inherently a bad
thing, in that, you know, peopleof color communities also want
to benefit from like betterschools and better
infrastructure and betterbusinesses and public safety and
public safety.
I think those are all goodthings, and so we put this
called gentrification.
I feel like it's a term I don'toften like to use, because the
idea is do we just want to makethe community better?
(33:22):
Absolutely, everyone wants tobenefit from it.
Now, do you have folks coming inand maybe displacing?
I think that's a differentconversation.
I think that's happening rightnow, with developers coming in
and buying properties.
But I think there's also thisthing that we can't control,
which is this notion right nowof without there being a funding
solution to help families keeptheir properties as long as
possible.
(33:42):
They don't have a choice but tosell, and I'm not going to
fault them for it.
They need to be able to recoverbecause they don't have
insurance or they'reunderinsured, and that is a
choice every individual familyneeds to resolve and figure out
for themselves, and I will helpthem as best I can.
But if there is no systemicsolution for it, then, yeah,
we're going to continue seeingdevelopers coming in, investors
coming in buying property anddisplacing folks that want to
live there but can't.
Sean Knierim (34:03):
So, andrew, as you think about your personal
experience over the last months,your community experience and
then the job that you have now,looking even on the systems
level, where are you findinghope?
Where are the places of hopethat are keeping you going?
Andrew King (34:16):
I think every time I have a conversation where
someone feels like they're goingto get a little bit more money
from insurance, or they found anew writer in their policy they
did not realize before, or adocument that I put out there
has helped someone realize ooh,this itemization process, while
terrible, is not as bad as Ithought it was and therefore I
can get started on it.
I think everyone taking one stepat a time further towards
(34:38):
recovery and rebuilding, I thinkgives me hope.
If it just felt like everythingwas completely stagnant and no
one was moving forward, I thinkthat would be really difficult
for me.
But also when you have thesecommunity groups like Altogether
, who meet and now they say,okay, we're ready to talk about
rebuilding commercial propertiesand re-envisioning what this
community could be, or you havefolks banding together they say
like, yeah, we're not going totake it anymore and we're going
to go ahead and step up and doit together, I think that gives
(34:59):
me hope, because then it meansgenuinely that no one is doing
it alone, that people are tryingto do it together and that
really gives me the fire to keepfighting, because we helped
bring these people together andwe continue to bring people
together so that we get backsooner.
Sean Knierim (35:12):
Thank you for joining us, Andrew, thanks for
the work you're doing to helpbring this hope to folks like my
family and others that aregoing through this, and thanks
for being in our lives, man.
I appreciate that you trustedus enough to come on today with
us.
Allan Marks (35:24):
Yeah, yeah, really best of luck.
I'm so glad with the workyou're doing.
It's just critically important,so thank you.
Thank you for talking about itand sharing your experience,
yeah.
Sean Knierim (35:31):
This has been another episode of Shared Ground
.
Thanks for joining us and welook forward to having more such
conversations moving into thefuture.
Thanks very much.
This has been another episodeof Shared Ground, a podcast
about resilience and community.
Allan Marks (35:45):
Follow us on your favorite platform or learn more
at wwwshared-ground.
com.
That's www.
shared-ground.
com.
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