CORE Provides Smoke Remediation in the Pacific Palisades
Lena didn’t think it would take this long to return home. Six months after the Palisades Fires erupted and forced her to flee from her apartment n the Casa Gateway affordable housing community for senior citizens, she still wasn’t back.
Of course, after the first responders put out the blaze, Lena, like so many other residents, returned to the apartment community to assess the damage. Things didn’t look too bad, at least to the human eye. But that didn’t mean they were safe. While the flames had spared her building in the complex, dangerous smoke and ash had permeated nearly every inch of the building’s interior, including her unit.
She could smell the smoke; it was everywhere. In an attempt to reclaim some normalcy, Lena tried spending the night a few times, but only when wearing an N-95 mask to keep the particulates out. She quickly realized that it was no way to live, mainly because she didn’t know what the smoke and ash left behind, from lead to asbestos.
For many, the fear of moving back home is great. There is still much that is unknown about the long-term health effects associated with the fires and the toxic debris left in their wake. For months, Lena lived with her daughter. While she appreciated having a place to stay, it wasn’t home. She needed her own space.
However, when she considered cleaning her own home and hiring a skilled team to remediate the smoke, she had sticker shock. She didn’t have the tens of thousands of dollars to ensure that her home would be clean again, and she, like many others in the building, didn’t have insurance that would cover the cost.
Luckily, the city became aware of the issue and contacted local organizations to determine if they could undertake the work. One of those was Change Reaction, which connected with CORE, which jumped at the chance to help people like Lena in the Palisades. Since February, CORE, in partnership with the Fire Poppy Project, All Hands and Hearts, and NDLON, has cleaned 100 homes in Altadena.
The Change Reaction provided critical funds to source trained experts who cleaned the entire building’s attic space and insulation from harmful smoke damage. Because of Change Reaction’s generosity in completing this difficult first step, CORE, along with All Hands and Hearts, and NDLON’s specially trained staff, were able to go unit by unit to perform smoke remediation.
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The teams enter and carefully scrub all hard surfaces, including floors and walls, to remove the residual smoke damage. It only takes a quick look at the sponges after being used to see how much comes off these surfaces, leaving them smudged black. Additionally, the teams use HEPA filter vacuums on all the additional surfaces, ensuring that small particulates are cleaned up and filtered out of the units.
At Casa Gateway, Lena’s unit was one of the first that the team worked on. “I’m just so happy that I can come back home, you have no idea,” Lena said only a few days after first being back in her home. As she walked around her belongings, she mentioned the smell, or more specifically, the lack of it. She knows her unit is clean, and it is safe. She is home.
To celebrate the culmination of this work, which involved cleaning and remediation of 50 total housing units, CORE held a formal welcome-home celebration for the Casa Gateway residents on September 29, 2025. The festivities included speeches from Councilmember Traci Park and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass.
This work would not be possible without a community of partners and donors that are dedicated to supporting the community. Critical funding for remediation work was provided by CORE, The Change Reaction, All Hands and Hearts, SoCal Fire Fund, and Fire Aid.
Exterior landscaping services were generously funded through the Department of Angels and the California Community Foundation. Our operational partners included NDLON and All Hands and Hearts, whose teams remediated the housing units. And our generous partners at Saatva provided luxury mattresses to ensure that residents have a comfortable place to rest.
This vital work, which has often gone unreported and unsupported, is crucial in helping people return to their homes. If you would like to support this ongoing work, please visit our LA Fires Response Page.