Flames still raged in the Los Angeles area when Matt Schodorf lined up at the county planning department to kick off the rebuilding of his coffee shop, Café de Leche. The shop formerly sat on Altadena’s Lake Avenue but had been reduced to ash and rubble mere days before.
Many of its neighbors suffered the same fate as the Eaton fire bore down on the small community, just one of many fires that blazed across Southern California in January. 
Three months later, Schodorf and other property owners along Altadena’s commercial thoroughfare still want to rebuild to get their lives back on track.