When the Eaton Fire swept through Altadena, Begonia De Salvo was scrambling to find shelter for her husband, two children and five pets. She said work was the last thing on her mind, fearing her house would be reduced to ashes.
As he scrambled to find a hotel room, De Salvo forgot to call in sick from his job as a court interpreter. According to emails reviewed by The Times, he was threatened with discipline by court officials despite telling his supervisor he was under an order to leave.
The next morning, L.A. County's courthouses tried to conduct business as usual, even as the devastating fire burned from the Pacific Palisades to the San Gabriel Mountains.
Lawyers at the Pasadena courthouse that opened near the Altadena inferno were sick and had to walk off the job, according to the head of the union that represents rank-and-file lawyers. Downtown, jurors panicked when eviction notices were missing when they couldn't check their phones in court. Some defendants who lost their homes or were forced to flee the inferno faced the threat of arrest for missing court, prosecutors said.
Last week's decision to keep the courthouse doors open has been met with frustration and disappointment by the legal community.
Ryan Erlich, president of the Assn. Deputy district attorneys recalled that during the Dodgers' World Series celebration last year, cases sometimes referred to as CCB were dismissed in LA's major criminal court.
“We closed CCB for a parade and opened Pasadena Courthouse in the middle of a catastrophic natural disaster?” Ehrlich said. “I don't understand that, and neither do a lot of people who work in this court.”
LA County Superior Court spokesman Rob Oftring said courts have a “constitutional duty to ensure timely access to justice,” and noted that court employees are designated as disaster service workers under state law.
The Dodgers' parade stop on Nov. 1 was necessitated by road closures in the area, Oftring said, noting that all other courts were open that day. Since the fires began, he wrote in an email, “Court leadership has been coordinating with local and state emergency officials to adjust court operations and actively monitor the evolving situation.”
He said the court had “distributed N95 masks to all staff and judges and temporarily closed the affected courts”.
The Sylmar Juvenile Court was closed for two days because of the Kenneth Fire, and the Hollywood Courthouse was closed for a short time, including the Sunset Fire, which threatened to burn down the Walk of Fame. Pasadena's courthouse closed on January 9, but not the day before, when the immediate effects of the Eaton fire were felt. Hollywood Court has been subject to an eviction order at any time since last week, Oftring said.
The morning after the Eaton fire, the interior of the Pasadena courthouse smelled like a “tinderbox” and was unsafe to work in, Ehrlich said.
“It's immediately windy and two miles shy of the fire and evacuation zone. It created an immediate environmental concern,” he said. “We had deputies who, as soon as they arrived at the courthouse, started to develop headaches, eye irritation and other symptoms of being in an unhealthy environment.”
Ehrlich said several prosecutors and defense attorneys left early due to illness. He estimates that 1 in every 10 prosecutors in his union lives in a fire evacuation zone, and many more lost their homes in the fire. At least a dozen judges were unavailable because their homes were burned, and several public defenders called for their evacuation.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department was unable to transport more than a half-dozen people from the county's Castaic Jail complex to Newhall and Antelope Valley courthouses on Jan. 8 due to road closures, and even defendants in the jail felt the effects.
At the downtown LA courthouse, a strong smell of smoke hung in the courtrooms throughout the sprawling 19-story structure. Deputy Public Defender Nicole Jones said many of her clients are caught between the legal system and the flames.
Jones pointed to several examples of clients who forgot their court dates or were unable to make it to town immediately after a fire, leading to bench warrants for their arrest. Later in the week, judges mercifully quashed the arrest warrants, but some lawyers still pushed for their bail to be revoked.
In one case, Jones said, a prosecutor tried to revoke a defendant's bail on a probation violation because the defendant was now living in a hotel — something he was forced to do after the Eaton Fire engulfed his Altadena home.
“They're on food lines every day. They don't have anything,” said Jones, who was forced to evacuate for several days because of the Eaton fire. “It seemed like a punishment for this family to not have stable housing at this time.”
Jones, who said he was speaking as a member of the Public Defender's Association, declined to identify any of his clients for fear it would negatively affect their criminal cases. The union called for all courts to be closed last week, a move Jones said he disagreed with, but said he believed some court officials and prosecutors should be more flexible given the inferno in the hills.
“There should have been more tenderness,” he said. “Any DA's objection to having warrants or us dealing with any of them is absurd.”
Diego Cartagena, head of the legal aid organization Bet Tzedek, said a formal court shutdown would have been incredibly problematic for clients seeking guardianship of a child with urgent medical needs or seeking domestic violence restraining orders.
“This is a fundamental access-justice issue for the communities we serve,” he said.
Cartagena added that the court could improve remote access to the public so that victims of future disasters could appear remotely on video platforms such as Microsoft Teams or WebX, which the district used during the Covid-19 pandemic.
On January 8, Christina Hsu drove from her residence in the San Gabriel Valley to downtown criminal court for jury duty. The Eaton fire was burning a few miles north of his home, and he feared it might advance into his home while he was in court and unable to get an evacuation alert.
“When a wildfire is raging, something has to be done so we can take care of our own survival needs,” Hsu said. “I don't think it would benefit the court if people were concerned about evacuating their homes.”
Judge Mildred Escobedo acknowledged the extreme circumstances for Hsu and other potential jurors, saying she had her phone out to monitor evacuation orders and understood some would have to do the same. Once the trial begins, he said, jurors must leave their phones behind while court is in session.
In the afternoon, Hsu was struck from the jury and went home. As she approached, her phone rang with an evacuation alert.
“How do they expect people to pay attention to the case when we don't know if we should leave?” she asked.
Now is not the time for a major review of the court's handling of a disaster. In 2021, Cal/OSHA fined the court $25,000 for several health and safety violations After three court interpreters and public defenders died from the virus during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The state oversight panel found that the courts failed to properly report that an employee had been hospitalized with Covid-19, failed to implement an illness and injury prevention program and failed to correct unsanitary practices, including a lack of Covid-19 prevention training. Interpreters.
Di Salvo, the vice president of the Interpreters' Union, said he was shocked to receive an email the day after the fire saying he was topping up his wages while trying to find out how much damage his house had sustained.
“Please note that many employees affected by the fire were also able to call as needed, and we appreciate their perseverance during such a difficult time,” read an email from Di Salvo's supervisor.
The CEO's office granted “special leave” that would have prevented employees like Di Salvo from losing pay last weekend, records show. However, he described the actions of the court's leadership as “heartless”.
“What did you want me to do? It's a disaster. We were in a state of emergency,” he said. “What kind of person has no compassion and tries to punish you for it?”