Despite their own Eaton fire losses, Pasadena-area day laborers step up to clean their town, and help each other

By Amancai Biraben, Correspondent

With thin social security and uncertain prospects, Los Angeles-area day laborers are taking the Eaton fire’s damage into their own hands.

The Pasadena Community Job Center, which connects day laborers to jobs throughout the community, has been spearheading clean-up efforts for four days.

Leading dozens of community volunteers, day laborers have been working in parks and neighborhoods to remove brush, fallen tree branches and debris that the Santa Ana winds swept up.

Pablo Alvarado, co-executive director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, says the past few days have shown the community the “beating heart” of the labor force made up largely of immigrants.

“It’s the immigrant workers who are going to clean up,” he said Saturday, as crews fanned out to clean up in the wind-ravaged city. “What we are doing during and what we have done after the disaster shows the very essence of immigrants,” Alvarado said.

Hundreds of local volunteers have shown up to the days-long clean-up that has no end in site. They have been diverted into various groups led by day laborers who’ve seen the fires affect their day-to-day lives.

César Saucedo, a day laborer certified by OSHA to work in natural disasters, saw at least seven of his clients’ homes perish in the fires.

“This is the first disaster I am living. I feel motivated to help because of my training, and it’s the moment to do it,” Saucedo said.

An immigrant from Michoacán, Mexico, he was driven to help out the community that once employed him. He hopes that by returning the community to normalcy, he will be able to find new clients.

Still, Saucedo laments the lacking safety net for undocumented workers and fears the path ahead. For the past two years, he has advocated for the Excluded Workers Program in Sacramento, which would have provided unemployment benefits to non-citizen workers.

“Undocumented immigrants also pay taxes, so we have the right in moments like these to receive unemployment benefits,” Saucedo said. “If I buy shoes, I pay taxes. If I buy a shirt, I pay taxes. But the government will never return that money to the people, it just stays in the IRS.”

In one case, a woman came in saying her apartment complex had burned down.

“She said she’d lost everything, and not only that but my employer’s house burned down. So, I don’t have a home and I don’t have a job,” Alvarado said.

There is no escaping the precarious conditions day laborers face regularly as they clean-up after the fires. Roberto Morales is another lead volunteer who is concerned about the chemicals released by the fires through demolished homes.

“There are homes here that are more than 100 years old that were built with asbestos and paint carrying lead. For all the houses that fell, removing the asbestos and fiberglass can cause cancer,” Morales said.

He says that following the fires he helped remove debris in a house that lost its roof, which exposed him to fiberglass.

Morales, originally from Nicaragua, has fought fires and other natural disasters as part of the national guard in his homeland. This is his first time leading those efforts in the U.S.

Despite the risks, Morales plans to continue the clean-up for as long as it takes. With experience as a handyman, he’s lost at least seven clients to the fires. He plans to find new employers by learning new skills and offering new trades.

“I’ll need to reorient my labor, learn to raise homes and construction. I don’t have time to begin study and the need is great,” Morales said.