Our Story
On January 7, 2025, the Eaton Fire changed everything overnight, families lost homes, schools, businesses, and the sense of certainty that comes with simply knowing where you'll sleep tomorrow.
But the emergency phase is only the beginning. Long after the smoke clears, recovery continues, and it's rarely simple. Survivors are navigating insurance gaps, rising building costs, rebuilding delays, housing instability, financial strain, emotional trauma, environmental concerns, confusing contractor decisions, and government systems that were never designed to be easy.
No one should have to figure all of that out alone.
That's why the Eaton Fire Collaborative (EFC) exists.
We are a survivor-centered, member-based long-term recovery collaborative helping communities impacted by the Eaton Fire navigate recovery, rebuild with dignity, and strengthen long-term resilience together.
Our Mission
To coordinate survivor-informed, community-powered recovery by connecting impacted households and neighborhoods to the resources, advocacy, partnerships, and support needed to return home safely, equitably, and resiliently.
"We are survivors helping survivors"
is how EFC built and led in significant part by the very people it serves.
Meet Our Team
The Eaton Fire Collaborative's staff works every day to coordinate recovery efforts, strengthen partnerships, and support survivors as they navigate the long-term recovery process. Together, our team provides leadership across disaster case management, resource coordination, communications, data and evaluation, administration, and community engagement; working alongside our Board, committees, and member organizations to advance a survivor-centered recovery.
Meet Our Board
The Eaton Fire Collaborative is guided by a dedicated network of leaders working together to coordinate recovery and rebuilding efforts across our region. Our Long-Term Recovery Group Board, elected by the membership, provides governance, alignment, and ensures transparency and accountability across the EFC and all of our initiatives.
EFC + LTRG, Explained
You may hear us use two names EFC and LTRG. Here's what they mean, and how they fit together.
The Eaton Fire Collaborative (EFC)
Is the coordinated recovery ecosystem serving Altadena, Pasadena, Sierra Madre, and surrounding communities impacted by the Eaton Fire. We bring together nonprofits, government agencies, philanthropy, grassroots groups, rebuilding professionals, advocates, businesses, volunteers, and survivor leaders to work toward the same goal.
The Long-Term Recovery Group (LTRG)
Is housed within EFC. It's the official recovery structure responsible for aligning organizations, services, resources, funding pathways, rebuilding efforts, and survivor support systems throughout the recovery process. Think of it this way: EFC is the community and the coordination. The LTRG is the engine room that makes that coordination official, structured, and accountable. Our LTRG structure was modeled on the recovery frameworks used after the Camp Fire in Paradise, California, and the Maui wildfires- proven approaches- adapted for our own community.
How We Got Here
EFC began as a donation-sorting effort at Pasadena City College, organized by community leaders with generations of roots in Altadena, in the days right after the fire. From that first table of donated supplies, it grew by the March 2025 Rose Bowl launch, with EFC roughly 80 organizations strong. As the coalition grew, the members came together to form the community's official Long-Term Recovery Group (LTRG), electing board members from among survivors, nonprofit partners, and longtime community leaders to organize and oversee long-term recovery in the years ahead.
EFC is led in significant part by the very people it serves, survivors sitting alongside longtime community leaders and nonprofit partners. By the October 2025 opening of the Collaboratory, our community hub, the EFC had grown to more than 200 member organizations.
This community's recovery has moved quickly, not because of any one organization, including us, but because the area already had decades of trust, deep multi-generational roots, and neighbors who knew each other well enough to show up when it mattered most.
That history matters. In the mid-20th century, Altadena was one of the few communities in Los Angeles County exempt from the racially restrictive housing covenants that locked Black families out of homeownership elsewhere. In 1960, the community was about 95% white; by 1980, its Black population had grown to roughly 43%. Independent analyses put Black homeownership in Altadena today between 70% and 81%. Nearly double the national average. Altadena has long been a multiracial, multi-generational community, and that legacy is part of why neighbors trusted each other enough to organize fast.
Altadena already had a dense nonprofit infrastructure in place before the fire, including more than 400 registered nonprofits. EFC's task was never to build a network from nothing. It was to organize a network that was largely already there.
The EFC was built to bring coordination and support to what can otherwise feel like an overwhelming maze. We align organizations, reduce duplication, strengthen communication, close gaps, and help families find trusted pathways to support so that no one has to start from zero and no one has to do it alone.
Recovery isn't only about rebuilding homes. It's about rebuilding lives, restoring stability, supporting emotional well-being, strengthening community systems, preserving culture and identity, and helping families regain long-term security.
We Believe Recovery Works Best When it Is:
We exist to help every survivor who wants to come home find a pathway back, with dignity and the support of their community.
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SURVIVOR-INFORMED
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COMMUNITY-LED
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TRAUMA-INFORMED
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COLLABORATIVE
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TRANSPARENT
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ACCESSIBLE
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EQUITY-CENTERED
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ROOTED IN TRUST
FAQs
The Eaton Fire Collaborative (EFC) is the coordinated recovery network serving communities affected by the Eaton Fire, and the Long-Term Recovery Group (LTRG) is the official recovery structure housed within it. EFC is the community and the coordination, and the LTRG is the engine room that makes that coordination official, structured and accountable.
The Eaton Fire Collaborative began as a donation-sorting effort at Pasadena City College in the days after the January 7, 2025 Eaton Fire, organized by community leaders with generations of roots in Altadena, and grew into the region's long-term recovery collaborative.
The Eaton Fire Collaborative's mission is to coordinate survivor-informed, community-powered recovery by connecting households and neighborhoods affected by the Eaton Fire to the resources, advocacy, partnerships and support they need to return home safely, equitably and resiliently.
The Eaton Fire Collaborative is governed by a Long-Term Recovery Group Board elected by its membership, and its staff leads disaster case management, resource coordination, communications, data and evaluation, administration and community engagement. Its LTRG structure is modeled on the recovery frameworks used after the Camp Fire in Paradise and the Maui wildfires.