Turning Altadena fire into civil right crusade: Was discrimination against Black residents at play?

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A prominent civil rights attorney who represented the families of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Trayvon Martin announced he’s gathering evidence for a possible federal discrimination lawsuit against Los Angeles County over its response to the Eaton fire.Attorney Ben Crump has joined the growing ranks of officials and community leaders concerned that the county’s response in Altadena’s historically Black neighborhoods during the Eaton fire was lacking compared with that for the whiter communities threatened by the blaze.

The announcement comes weeks after the California attorney general opened a civil rights probe into the county’s fire preparations and response, focusing on potential disparities in historically Black west Altadena.That section of town received evacuation alerts hours after flames threatened the area, and much later than wealthier, whiter areas of the unincorporated town.

Crump said he suspected the investigation would find racism at the root of the botched response to the fire, which decimated west Altadena.He did not specify when he planned to sue.“We are fighting to not have Altadena become California’s Katrina, where you have all those Black citizens and their generational wealth that they were passing on to their children just lost and never regained,” Crump said at a news conference in Los Angeles on Thursday.

California Residents of west Altadena are escalating calls for answers and accountability a year after officials failed to issue their community timely evacuation alerts and deploy needed firefighting resources.Crump is known for representing relatives of victims of high-profile police brutality cases.He is also playing a role in some of the major non-police litigation underway in the county, including representing victims of sex abuse in the county’s juvenile halls and roughly 600 victims of the Eaton fire.Crump said Thursday he...