As wildfires raged just miles away, Steven Otero watched ash rain down on every item in his tent on Skid Row. Even his food and water weren’t safe from the toxic deluge.
“I put out a cup of water, and it was filled with ash in just minutes,” he said.
Although Otero said he has no underlying health issues or respiratory illnesses, he had difficulty breathing by the third day of the fires, which erupted Jan. 7 in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles and the nearby city of Altadena, killing at least 47 people and destroying 16,255 homes.
“It felt like the short-of-breathness you have when you finish a swim and you’re getting out of the pool,” he said.
While many Angelenos protected themselves from the fires’ unhealthy effects by staying inside, wearing masks and drinking bottled water, unhoused people on Skid Row do not have those options, they said.
NBC Los Angeles found that many Skid Row residents rely on fire hydrants, which they tap illegally, as their water source.
Nonprofit initiatives, like Water Drop LA and the Refresh Spot, are trying to fill the void by providing clean drinking water and N95 masks to people living on Skid Row.
Sade Kammen, an organizer with Water Drop, said Skid Row’s 3,791 residents have access to only nine public water fountains, and many of them are often broken. Since it began in 2020, Water Drop has delivered 2,200 gallons of water to Skid Row a week for 236 straight weeks, she said.
“We bring over 100,000 gallons of water a year that wouldn’t be there otherwise,” Kammen said.
On Sunday, when Los Angeles got its first rain of the year, Water Drop volunteers gathered in a University of Southern California parking lot in the pouring rain to unload water bottles from U-Haul trucks and pack them into volunteers’ cars.
“I’ve been on my route for years now,” volunteer Claire Beltramo said. “I’m friends with the people on my streets.”
As volunteers drove up and down South Central Avenue, some homeless people waited on street corners for Beltramo’s car. They asked for masks, snacks and feminine hygiene products, as well as water.
Some of the worst air quality in the city was downtown during the fires, said Kathryn Prociv, a senior meteorologist for NBC News.
“For several days after the fires broke out, the highest levels of AQI pollutants sat over downtown L.A.,” Prociv said, referring to the air quality index.
Hurricane-force winds that fueled the wildfires also destroyed many residents’ tents, said Samson Tafolo, an organizer with the Sidewalk Project, a homeless services organization.
“The winds have been terrible,” Tafolo said. “They’ve been breaking down everyone’s tents.”
His group and others have been setting up cots at supply distribution centers to temporarily house those who lost their tents or needed to escape the smoke.
Los Angeles County health officials issued “do not drink” or “do not boil” notices for communities near the Palisades and Eaton fires because cancer-causing chemicals could have entered the municipal water system.
Water from fire hydrants is not always potable, Kammen said, and unhoused people often cannot afford to buy bottled water.
“Especially right now, when all of Los Angeles is wary about their water quality, people should not have to drink hydrant water,” she said.
The Refresh Spot, an initiative of the social services organization Homeless Health Care Los Angeles, provides 24/7 access to showers, restrooms, laundry facilities and drinking water, and it has also been handing out masks and encouraging people to spend time inside.
Stephany Campos, who oversees the program, said that because of the drier-than-usual winter months and water quality concerns, she has already seen people tap into fire hydrants. She said places like the Refresh Spot and mobile efforts like Water Drop fill some of the water needs on Skid Row, but “we need more accessible, well-maintained fountains on every corner.”
For now, Water Drop LA volunteers will continue to drive into the community each Sunday, Kammen said.
“Any time there’s a weather deviation, unsheltered people are in crisis mode,” she said. “But people have lost so much because of the winds and the fires.”
