What's it like remediating a home after a wildfire? Eaton Fire survivors shared their experiences

A collage of two photos shows the process of home remediation after a fire.(David Rodriguez / LAist)Rhea Borja and her husband, Eric Wee, bought their home in Altadena in 2022. After the January 2025 Eaton Fire, it still stood, in a pocket of other homes that also survived.At first, that was a relief. As many fire survivors have found, though, remediating smoke damage has been nearly as daunting as rebuilding a home that burned.That has been true for Borja and Wee too. They’ve been living in Northern California since the fire, while they work to get their home cleared of the toxic remnants of the smoke.The Eaton Fire destroyed 9,414 structures, including homes and businesses. For the thousands of structures were left standing, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed laws in September setting new rules for smoke damage cleanup.What has that looked like in practice? Three Eaton Fire survivors spoke with LAist recently about the challenges they’ve faced.Remediation challengesRhea Borja stands in her driveway just a month or so before the January 2025 fire. All of the houses behind her across the street burned down, including all the trees and greenery.(Rhea Borja)On the blocks around Borja’s home, the frames of homes being rebuilt are taking shape. But her home has stood empty for 22 months.“It has been an enormous test of patience,” she said.Her home has gone through four remediations. The lead test results after the most recent remediation cleared EPA standards. Since then, Borja has had a new HVAC system installed.Next up, re-insulating the attic.She’s hoping to be back in Altadena early next year but recognizes there’s still a lot to do, including remediating the front and back yards. She’ll have to pay for those projects out of pocket.“I miss Altadena. I miss Los Angeles. I miss being by the San Gabriel Mountains,” Borja said. “So I just feel kind of removed from the area, and sometimes it almost just seems like a dream.”Simon Perry and his partner have two properties in Altadena that still require remediation.One is their home right outside of the fire zone, and the other is a rental property right in the middle of it.At Perry’s home of 15 years, the contamination was off the charts.“To give you an indication of how badly contaminated it is, the attic crawl space tested at 3,391 units of lead,” Perry said. “So there's 50 times the safe level of lead in the crawl space of the attic.”Perry had intended to retire the week of the Eaton Fire. He postponed that while he dealt with the fire’s aftermath — spending hours itemizing personal items, then throwing them away.By the end of September, he and his partner moved for the fourth time since the fire.Before that move, their temporary home was “full of cardboard boxes and boxes full of stuff, you know, because everything is in transition and has been in transition for 20 months,” he said.A return homeAfter 19 months of being displaced, Susan Mohini Kane, husband Bernard Kane and their cat returned to Altadena.Being displaced was unsettling, but Kane said she learned a lot.“More things happened every day that I didn't expect,” Kane said. “They ended up, basically, having to tear our house down.”The walls of the Kane home were removed and then replaced. They filled and hauled bags of fire-damaged goods out of their home.Now that she’s back, Kane is excited to return to her work as a voice teacher, singer and songwriter.Susan Mohini Kane and her husband Bernard Kane are happy to be back in their home after 19 months of remediation and repairs after the Eaton Fire.(David Rodriguez/LAist)She wants people who didn’t experience the wildfire to know what people are still going through nearly two years later.“We're still here. We're still suffering. We're still needing so much help,” she said.