On a weekday evening at the Pasadena Community Job Center, Jesse Carrillo helps a man pull on a full-body plastic jumpsuit, followed by a respirator mask. Carrillo is teaching a class of 20 immigrant day laborers how to use personal protective gear before entering a home to clean ash and soot.
“We want to make sure that when we walk into a customer's house, we're safe,” Carrillo lectures. “There's a lot of hazards.”
As workers clear burn sites and clean smoke-damaged homes, they could be exposed to ash and soot that contains asbestos, lead, and hazardous chemicals. To determine the exact danger, each work site would need to be tested, but as a general rule, anyone within 500 feet of a burned structure could be exposed to dangerous ash, according to a February warning issued by the LA County Department of Public Health.
A large workforce is needed to clean up fire-affected neighborhoods in Altadena and Pacific Palisades, and some of the people taking these risky jobs are immigrant day laborers – a workforce that can be vulnerable to exploitation, and with many stressed about President Donald Trump’s mass deportation plans.
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At the Pasadena Job Center training, Maria Zamorano says she wanted to complete safety training before accepting any fire cleanup jobs. She has a small housekeeping business and says the sheer number of homes involved makes the work feel dangerous.
“I can't put the life of my friends, my workers, in danger,” she tells KCRW in Spanish.
That’s why the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON) is using its operation at the Pasadena Community Job Center to teach the workers it supports how to stay safe.
In January, they brought an instructor in to take 175 workers through OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) certification to work on disaster sites.
Now, through a partnership with the mutual-aid organization Fire Poppy Project, NDLON is training workers on home remediation — the process of cleaning a smoke-damaged house or apartment to make it habitable. The curriculum includes the importance of wearing protective gear even when the exact risk level is unknown.
“‘Es mejor prevenir que la mentar,’ or ‘better safe than sorry,’” says Pablo Alvarado, the co-executive director of NDLON.
Alvarado raises the health impacts from the 9/11 cleanup as a worst-case scenario. He knew day laborers who participated in New York City and later died from illnesses related to the work — a lesson he hopes both employers and workers in Los Angeles take seriously.
“I cannot conceive [of] the idea of seeing people that I know telling me in five or 10 years, ‘I have cancer because I went in without the proper PPE,’” says Alvarado.
Cesar Saucedo shares a photo of himself wearing the type of personal protective gear that is suggested for most fire cleanup jobs during a safety training at the Pasadena Community Job Center. Photo by Megan Jamerson/KCRW.
The California Division of Occupational Safety and Health requires most employers – including homeowners – to inform workers about risks and provide safety gear. All workers, including those who are undocumented, are covered by these laws, says Kevin Riley, director of UCLA’s Labor Occupational Safety and Health Program.
“But for a lot of reasons, it can also be really hard for those workers to exercise their rights or to speak up if those rights are being violated in some way,” he says.
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Riley adds that the sheer size of LA’s fire disaster also makes it difficult for the government to monitor how safely things are being done. And with thousands of property owners anxious to get things cleaned up and rebuilt, they can mount pressure on officials for the clean to move quickly, which could lead to shortcuts on safety.
“We do know how to keep people safe,” says Riley. “We may just not have the political will or the social will.”
A lot of immigrant day laborers really need the work so they might accept a job even if it isn’t safe, says Alvarado. He knows families who lost homes and jobs in the fires, and are staying in friends’ garages and at shelters.
“We're weathering the fires,” says Alvarado. “And at the same time, there is the fear that immigration agents might come knocking down on the door.”
Alvarado says despite legitimate fears about deportation, LA’s immigrants have stood together with the broader community during the fire crisis — from organizing cleanup brigades, to providing free supplies and food to anyone in need.
“There’s one fact that’s undeniable,” says Alvarado. “Without immigrants, both documented and undocumented, Los Angeles cannot be rebuilt.”