LA Cops Ticket Eaton Fire Victims Living In RV Outside Burned Home

The Eaton fire tore through the Los Angeles area last year, killing 19 people, and destroying over 4,300 homes. The bulk of the destruction happened in the town of Altadena, where residents have been pushed into RVs as they rebuild their lives. One family thought they were well within their rights up until last week when they received two tickets for street parking the family RVs outside of what was once their home. Now, LA is scrambling to find a solution that protects both fire victims and city streets. 

CBS News spoke with the Collins family of western Altadena, a majority Black neighborhood that got its evacuation notices hours after the whiter neighbors to the east. The Collinses have been trying to rebuild their home of 60 years since the fire, but according to another CBS piece the work has been on hold while a dispute with a contractor is sorted out. In the meantime, the family has received two tickets demanding that the RV be moved from the street onto their property — both during the month of February. 

While the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors did make it possible for victims of the Eaton Fire to live in recreational vehicles parked fully on their lots while rebuilding, the Collinses have their home-outside-of-home parked on the street. However, moving the RV into an active construction zone is pretty tricky, a problem the Board Of Supervisors acknowledged in its motion Tuesday to investigate temporarily suspending certain public rights-of-way ordinances in Altadena to allow for RV parking. Because while the Collins were able to get press attention to their plight, they certainly are not alone as Pasadena Now points out: 

Moving the trailer onto his lawn, Derrick Collins told CBS LA, would require tearing down fences and repositioning storage pods — an added expense he had not anticipated. His home renovation and insurance funds have been stalled since late last year because of a legal dispute with a contractor, CBS LA reported.

"I feel like this is just an extra expense and I'll have to pull something out of my hat," Collins said, according to CBS LA. "I wasn't planning on it."

The Collins family is not alone. Dozens of RVs have appeared on Altadena streets since the fire, which killed 19 people and destroyed more than 9,000 structures across more than 14,000 acres, according to CBS LA and Cal Fire.

The Los Angeles Sheriff's Department also issued a statement saying it was complying with "existing county and state parking regulations." A city council member told CBS that the town had issued no directive to suddenly crack down on temporary housing for those displaced by the fire, but LASD said in its statement that officers responded to citizen complaints and simply wrote their tickets in line with the ordinances on the books. LA County Parking Enforcement did give the Collins family, who appear to be owners of a sweet 1954 Chevrolet 3100 pickup in addition to their RV, a small extension to what appears to be an informal post-fire RV parking grace period. They have two weeks to sort out a new location for the RV, since the house simply won't be livable by then. Should the legislative wrangling of the LA County Board fail, the Altadena Town Council is working on procuring funds from nonprofits to help the Collins move the RV directly on to the property. 

The added stress of needing to move their temporary lodging certainly isn't helping the Collinses with the matter of fixing what's left of their actual family home. These Altadena residents have already been worn down by the fire, by dealing with insurance and contractors, and by the inconvenience and indignity of being forced to live in an RV parked on their own curb for over a year at this point. They don't need this added hassle at all.