‘This shouldn’t be the end’: Altadena woman fears her grandmother is among Eaton fire victims

Briana Navarro reached for her cellphone and called her grandmother for a third time, hoping she’d pick up and Navarro would hear her tender voice.

But like each time before, the phone rang, the generic voice greeting kicked in and Navarro would hang up.

“No luck,” she said, dismayed. “I wish I could hear her voice on that voicemail.”

It has been more than 48 hours since Navarro last heard from her 83-year-old grandmother, Erliene Kelley. When the Eaton fire began to spread in the nearby canyons Tuesday night, Navarro said her grandmother did not want to evacuate because previous fires had never reached the house in Altadena.

“She was adamant about staying,” she said. “My husband kept asking her if she was sure, if she didn’t want to come with us.”

She said her father, who lives 10 minutes away, tried to get her grandmother to leave too, but she again refused to leave.

Kelley spent her life turning her home into a sanctuary after moving to California from Monmouth, Ill. She and her late husband, Howard, bought the blue, three-bed, one-bath house in the late 1960s. They raised two kids there, and enjoyed watching their grandchildren and great-grandchildren grow while celebrating holidays, birthdays and anniversaries.

A retired pharmacist, Kelley was known for keeping her home clean, dusting every corner of the house, decorating it with family photos and knickknacks that gave the house a cozy, welcoming feel.

“She loved taking care of her garden,” Navarro said. “She was always watering the grass and buying new furniture and decorations.”

Five years after Howard’s death, Navarro said, she and her husband and two kids moved in with her grandmother, who was known to always volunteer at community events.

“She knew everybody in the city,” she said. “If you go anywhere with her, she’s stopping about five times to speak to someone. She was really sweet.”

On Tuesday night the family was home. Navarro was in the kitchen cooking when through the kitchen window she saw smoke rising in the distance. Navarro picked up her cellphone, checked social media and saw a fire had erupted in Eaton Canyon, located more than two miles east of their location.

An hour later, as the fire spread, Navarro and husband began packing and placing things in their car. After failing to persuade her grandmother to leave, Navarro left the area with her family around 9 p.m.

On the way out, Navarro said, she got a text from her father, asking if there was still power in the area. She told him yes then asked him to check on grandma.

“He went up there, talked to her for a little bit,” Navarro said. “I guess my dad had gone outside and stared at the fire for 10 to 15 minutes and saw that it looked small and felt safe leaving my grandmother there.”

Navarro said her father left the house around 11 p.m. after his Pasadena neighborhood received evacuation orders.

She and her father kept in contact with her grandmother through texts.

California

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Ten people have died and more than 9,000 structures have been damaged or destroyed. Experts say L.A. is not out of danger yet and the fires may be the costliest wildfire disaster in U.S. history.

Jan. 9, 2025

At 1:22 a.m., her grandmother had responded to an earlier text from Navarro in which she had asked how things were going at the house.

“In the living room looking out,” she wrote. “I’m going to take a picture.”

Navarro said she never sent the photo. Two minutes later, she responded to her grandmother:

“If anything, call my dad, be safe, hopefully it doesn’t spread in that direction, did they cut the power out?”

But the message never went through. Navarro assumed there was no power and therefore no service. She stayed up listening to police scanners, checking social media, anything that would hint that her street was in trouble. She said there was one post on the social media platform X about a house on fire that was within walking distance of her grandmother’s house, but because the winds were sporadic she didn’t think the fires were jumping from house to house.

She said she stayed up and fell asleep around 5 a.m.

When she woke an hour later, she told her father, who was in the Inland Empire, to go to the house and check on grandma. It took more than two hours for him to reach the neighborhood due to roadblocks and fallen utility poles. When he reached the house at 3287 Tonia Ave., he saw all the homes had been reduced to charred rubble.

“The was literally nothing left,” she said. “The only reason he [recognized] our house is because we had an old car in the front — a blue 88 Cadillac Coupe DeVille.”

She would later find out from her father that he had received one last text from her grandmother at 3:30 a.m. Wednesday telling him that she was going to be evacuated.

“Initially, I assumed that maybe it started to get unsafe and she might have left or went to a friend’s house,” she said. “I still had hope.”

After learning about her grandmother’s last text, Navarro then thought her grandmother had been taken to a shelter. She began calling around, but her grandmother was not registered at any of the shelters or local hospitals. She also reached out to an aunt in Texas to ask if her grandmother’s friends had connected with her. No luck.

Later that day, she said her mom called to tell her about a social media post on X by LA Fire Alerts that her uncle had located. The post had Navarro’s grandmother’s address and said that a person was trapped inside the burning home.

“She just broke down, she knew that my grandma most likely didn’t make it out,” she said. “And that kind of confirmed it for me as well.”

Navarro said law enforcement officials have not confirmed that her grandmother is among the five who were killed by the Eaton fire. She said authorities plan to search the rubble for human remains.

Navarro wished she could have pushed the issue about evacuating with her grandmother.

“It’s such a heavy feeling,” she said. “In hindsight, all we keep thinking is, what could I have done differently?”

She said losing her grandmother has been devastating. And losing the home just adds to the loss she and her family has suffered. She said she has created a GoFundMe account so that her family can buy groceries and clothes as they try to get back to some state of normalcy. But as her grandmother remains missing, that has been difficult.

Navarro said she finds herself going through waves of denial and hope.

“When we first saw the [post] saying that someone was trapped inside, it was kind of a confirmation for us, we all broke down,” she said. “And then you think about it and you’re like, wait, it’s not confirmed yet, let’s still hold on to hope, let’s keep calling around, let’s text her, let’s see if anyone’s heard from her, but then it hits you again.”

“We should still be having another conversation; that couldn’t have been the last time I seen her or the last time I talked to her.”