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Emergency response is usually rare for William Lovell, who works for the LA County Department of Public Works in the Road Department as a Tree Trimmer Working Supervisor – a position he has held for five and a half years during his nine years with the county. But the tree trimming skills of Lovell and his six-man crew were urgently required when huge windstorms overtook the greater Los Angeles area while massive infernos raged through Pacific Palisades, Sylmar, and particularly Altadena with the Eaton fire.
“When the fires started, it was during the windstorm,” Lovell explained. “In our area, we had emergency calls for wind-damaged trees or trees blown down from the wind. The seventh of January was when we got the call of these trees being knocked down. We were in East LA up by the City Terrace area. While we were there, the ashes started raining down from the Eaton fires. You could smell the burntness and it was slightly hard to breathe. We were in East LA most of the night waiting for Southern California Edison to de-energize and clear the service line to the homes. We couldn’t touch them until Edison touched them. That’s just our policy. We were being safe about it. We were there all night long until the morning. It was raining ash all night long. Roughly at 7 o’clock, the sun came out. You could see ash covering all the vehicles and the ground.”
Lovell and his crew then were directed to work in Temple City, in lower east Altadena, and near Baldwin Park area to help another LA County DPW Road Department crew handle all the wind damage caused by falling trees.
“We were cutting them up, removing the trees, and cutting the limbs if they were in the walkways or roadways,” Lovell described. “That was Saturday until Monday, just doing storm damage. The following weekend was when we got our orders to help out with the Eaton fire clean-up. That’s when they had it under control. It broke my heart. I feel for the people here because you could see the devastation of all the houses burned down. And you could see the remnants of what was left behind. You could see burnt cars in the driveway, lawn furniture – what was left of it. The one thing I noticed was the chimneys were the only thing standing from the homes. Being who we are, we were cleaning up all the trees that were burnt and could threaten the residents. We were cleaning that up or removing them completely.”
Lovell and his co-workers encountered what he described as a “surreal” scene filled with broad devastation and merciless destruction that he had never yet witnessed during his 32 years total in the tree-trimming business.
“The fire was no respecter of property,” Lovell said. “I’ve seen stores destroyed, churches destroyed, schools destroyed, parks destroyed, homes destroyed. The fire consumed whatever it could. It’s surreal. In the flash of a fire, it’s just gone. One minute they have a home, the next minute they don’t.”
Lovell’s job required him to maintain his professionalism while also managing the unavoidable sentiments stirred up by such an ordeal.
“It’s mixed emotion,” he said. “I’ve got to do my job. I’ve got to do what I’ve got to do on my part. To see this and interact with some of the residents that did lose these homes – it makes you want to cry. I’ve never experienced anything of this magnitude. It could be me as easy as it was them. You can never put yourself in their shoes about what happened and what they feel, but you do know in the back of your mind that it could be you. I try to be as compassionate as possible to let them know that I’m so sorry that this happened. The bottom line is – you can’t help but grieve with them.”