SGV Connect 134: Chris Greenspon Interviews Tamika Adams-Furniss

CG: Tell us about your neighborhood that you've come to know, and - I'm guessing from how wonderfully decorated your apartment is - that you love?
TAF: Oh, yeah, I've been converted. I guess I'm obsessed with where I live. I live in a bungalow house. Some really cool history about my house. It's over 100 years old. I was built in like 1919, and it's actually the largest bungalow community in Southern California, and one of the oldest, if you want to look it up, it's Bowen Court, and it's a series of 30 bungalow houses corralled together in a cul de sac. And I lived in the neighborhood for about two years, and I would go on walks and would happen upon it, like through, you'd see it through these, like, really verdant gates, and you're like, Oh, my God, what is this little place tucked away, this little beautiful gem, this little corner of of the block, and, yeah, there was a posting, and I jumped on the listing in 48 hours and got the place in the middle of 2021 so my husband and I really wanted more green space compared to where we were living, and we literally moved less than a block away from our old place to get into the Bowen Court area. But yeah, it's a bunch of young couples and old hippies, and it's a great little neighborhood. Everybody cares about each other. There's a lot of mutual aid. We are pretty active in the tenants union, as far as using our collective action with one another, and that seems to be a theme that has been in the neighborhood for the last three years, and then especially with the fires. So yeah, it's been really nice to be a part of a community who cares a lot about mutual aid.
CG: Yeah, and I'm gonna share with the listeners just the tidbit more background on you. I know you because we actually went to the same junior college and you were a budding news hound then. And what are you doing right now? Exactly? Are you freelancing?
TAF: I'm freelancing, and I actually am going to start with the Park Service. I actually got a job as a park ranger, literally, last week. So, yeah, I'm going to be doing both, just because you can't keep me from going outside all the time, so I figured I'd turn it into a job.
CG: So, um, yeah, not to rub any salt in the wounds or anything. But then you kind of... all those things converged on you recently, your news life and your park life and your home life, yeah, what happened with evacuation take us through that?
TAF: Oh my God. So we had the wind warnings, and so that was something that, you know, oh, the Santa Anas, everybody kind of hems and haws as we all get those warnings. But I hadn't even told my husband. I was like, you know, we should really be mindful of the wind. I have a really extensive, like succulent and like native plant garden, so I was like, oh, anything that we can kind of keep safe. Let's prep that way. About 630 on Tuesday night, I get some pretty intense text messages from neighbors and friends being like, Hey, I think there's a house fire not too far from where you are. And I'm like, oh, that's odd. They're like, yeah, it looks like really close to neighborhoods. You should, you know, check your, you know, check your X [app], or check whatever government websites to just see if it's like downed power lines near you, or something like that, if it felt like it was like the seeds of something, I'm like, Okay, well, maybe something's happening in the neighborhood. And then within the span of an hour and a half it turned into, you know. Know, literally, the whole hill was on fire, and so my husband was sending me pictures, sort of as it was unfolding. Like, hey, you know, it's getting closer. I think you need to, like, leave work. You need to come home. I think we need to pack bags, because this is turning into something really serious. And by 830 that night, we were already like, I can even I'm going to show you. I think I could show you with my pictures, on my, hold on, damn it, I'll just send you the pictures. But he was like, I think if we are going to evacuate, we should tape up the windows and the fireplace, because if there's ash or anything comes through, we want to make sure that, like nothing gets into the house, if the house remains untouched. So we were basically, kind of just sharing information with people like as it was unfolding, we have friends that live off of Washington, friends that live off of Woodbury, which are basically like the two kind of like, what eventually became like, where the burn scar ends. They were telling us, you need to download this app called watch duty. You need to, you know, be like they were sharing, like, almost like, crowd sourced information, just being like, it's jumped to this neighborhood. These people are getting out. So it was more like we had no government, like, really, like response other than occasional, like, direct, almost like the, I don't know, just like, evacuation notices were just so sparse and, like, we had only the information that other people were able to give to us. So we stayed up most the night, and then, as the winds died, down at around 4am I kind of woke up in a panic, and then that's when we got like, not even 15 minutes later, we got our evacuation order to get out. So something we sort of went to bed thinking would blow over like escalated in the night, and then we literally had to get out that Tuesday or Wednesday morning, I should say, and the surreal feeling of fleeing our home with an orange and red sky behind us knowing that we might not be able to ever come home, and then the irony of being in LA morning traffic to get out of our home, like, yeah, it was insane. I was like, why are people going to work? Don't they know the world is ending? So we ended up staying with Zach's cousin in San Pedro, just because it still felt like LA County. And, you know, we were right next to the water, so the air quality wasn't bad, and they have a ton of space, and we were able to hunker down with them until our evacuation order got lifted on Saturday of that week. So we were able to come home and kind of survey like, what mutual aid stuff had been established with World Central Kitchen, and, you know, what the city was able to do at that point? Like, you know, I don't know, it was like things were sort of, the response was sort of being met in more real time, as opposed to just reacting to the fire. It was like reacting to the people that were being affected by the fire too. So, yeah, we were able to come home on that Saturday and start cleaning up and sort of observing the damage from that point. I don't know if that was, like, really long and extensive, 
CG: Not to sound flippant, but it was riveting.
TAF: Hahaha
CG: It's good radio.
TAF: I know, right.
CG: But anyway, I'm curious, when did you - I'm sure it was like a instantaneous non thought - but did you start realizing that you were going to take it upon yourself to help other people? Because I got the idea to interview you because I saw on social media that you had been out delivering homemade air filters.
TAF: Yeah, I felt pretty helpless on Wednesday of that week. So we had just gotten to Zach's cousin's house in San Pedro, or we had just gotten to where our like, where we were evacuating to and I was sitting on the couch just watching people's houses burn and seeing embers just fly off of one house to another, crying and being like, there's the feeling of powerlessness in that moment and just basically waiting if by chance, our house was going to make it or not. And so as a producer, I was like, What can I do? What can I do for my immediate situation, and what could I do beyond that. So for ourselves, I did a little bit of research on like, what does what does fire remediation look like? What are the tools and the things that need people need immediately to get into their homes, if they have a home to go back to. And so when I was looking through a couple of like research papers, there were paper there were studies that were done after the Hawaii fires. There were some studies that were done after the fires of Washington State in the last couple years, they were experiencing pretty substantial wildfire, and had to have like studies on remediation, because when can people go back home? And so the thing that I kept seeing over and over again was the invisible threat that's in the air after the wildfire. And that kind of just kept reoccurring in my mind over and over again, and keeping in touch with friends, being like, oh, you know, there's going to be ash all over everything, this and that. And I'm like, Yeah, but there's also pollutants in the air overall, yeah, there's this debris that we can see, but what are we breathing in? So that kind of was like the little germ of the idea for me being like, well, I need to get I need to get us something to that allows us to breathe. So in that search, I was starting to notice that one people just didn't have air purifiers at all. It was kind of a some people had sourced them during the pandemic, because it like, made your home cleaner in some way. And, you know, so I had something left over from that time, but, yeah, I was like, talking to other people, and nobody had these things. It's like, how is that, you know, something that you should have in your home, just as a basic resource. So I started sourcing them, just trying to see, like, can I get them through Lowe's or Home Depot or Amazon? And I'm like, I can't wait. There's no either. There's no physical person that can make this delivery, because it's unsafe for them. They're they're out of stock, and it's going to take weeks for these things to get to people, and so we have to make them so on. There were several resources that had been, say shared. There had been several resources that had been shared on social media of Corsi Rosenthal boxes, and sort of what, what it took, what are the supplies? So I had coordinated with friends in either Santa Barbara, San Diego and Palm Springs, and I think other folks had sort of caught wind of the Corsi Rosenthal box, which is basically these 20 inch box fans affixed with 20 inch air filters. You make it into a cube, or you could even just do one of the filters on one of the sides of the box fan. And it's enough. It's enough to clean the air in your home. It's enough to help it be, you know, livable, especially if you're, you know, especially if you're a person in like, some sort of sensitive health group, it's enough to make it livable for you. So that sparked the idea I started, you know, having these long conversations with people, okay, let's raise some money. Let's source them, as many as we can. You know, can you buy 50 of the fans? Do you see, you know, do you see enough filters where you're at? Buy me 20 rolls of duct tape I can reimburse you so much of it was just like guerilla organizing and like just being able to be responsive to people and just happening to know people out of the area that were willing to also help. Because I think it was that shared feeling of powerlessness, like I can't. Like, who do I give money to? How can I open my home to someone? Everybody was trying to be helpful in some capacity and wanting to be responsive.
CG: And how do you get what you need in a panic buying situation?
TAF: Exactly. And so I had friends who lived who live like, even closer to the burn scar that are like a half mile away, and they had built their own Corsi Rosenthal box. And mind you, they had to drive all the way out to Inglewood to find their supplies, and this is as the fires were still burning in that same week. So you know, people throughout the basin are like building them because there's fallout happening, because the winds are still going. So it really took having to having to organize in areas far distant from us. So either incorporating San Bernardino County, Santa Barbara County and San Diego County, really sourcing those materials and building them and distributing them out here.
CG: How many do you think you delivered?
TAF: Me personally, it's 56. And I know that I was partnering with organizations that were up to about like 2500 and that was throughout LA County.
CG: Did you feel like you were risking your own health by doing so?
TAF: No, it felt good to be useful. I do know that there were risks of being outside, especially as that first weekend, we only had 15% containment, so there was a lot of ash and debris in the air, but I was masked the entire time, even in the car, as I was driving around this area to hand deliver the fans or hand deliver the purifiers. But I didn't feel I didn't feel like I was putting myself at risk at all. I felt more like I was responding to a moment where other people were at risk, and that felt like a worthy endeavor, if you know, if I had to do something that was marginally unsafe, people closer to the burn were even more dire straits. So it felt, I felt it just felt like meeting the moment, I guess, but not dangerous.
CG: Do you feel like the experience changed you in any way?
TAF: Yes, absolutely. I feel more in my community. If that makes sense, I feel more connected. I mean,  trauma bonding  feels like a flippant phrase we use often, but I also feel like it's true to this situation and moment, but it's also a moment to show, show an act of kindness. I had so many people trying to give me money for these things too. And I was like, just donate it to the Pasadena Humane Society. Donate it to, you know, folks like, there's so many gofundmes of folks who've, like, actually lost their houses. There were so many spreadsheets going around for black and brown families who had lost their homes. And I was like, I will share this link with you. Give those people money. I don't need this money. I'm just doing this because I want to, and selfishly, I just want to feel better about the situation and not be like sitting at home feeling like, I don't know, feeling purposeless. So I was like, this, this interaction is this interaction feeds me. So give that money to somebody else. Yeah. So I feel, I feel good. And honestly, it feels it like, feels like it motivated me to get back to work in a public service mission. I mean, having come from public radio and seeing the decline of support for those things and journalism overall, I felt like kind of a little bit afloat and weirdly not rooted to anything public serving or public service. So doing this very direct thing in the moment it, I think it re inspired me to seek out those opportunities. So, yeah, with working now for the the parks department, I feel like all of those things are sort of coalescing again together. And you know, the universe is like, Hey, you can do more too, in this other thing.
CG: Okay, and to go out with what's on your mind now, for what's needed in your community, going forward.
TAF: Renter protections, for sure. I'm actually going to attend tonight. I'm going to attend the Pasadena Renter's association or rental board. I'm going to attend that meeting tonight, because already, we're starting to see landlords trying to encroach on protections for displaced tenants or displaced residents. We're starting to see them put in suggestions of like, oh well, we don't want to have any more relocation fees. We're seeing rent gouging even now within Pasadena. What little you know rental capacity we do have throughout the city is being completely like exploited, and I'm sure throughout the throughout the city, that's happening. But, um, yeah, we're gonna have a pizza party at my house, and a couple people in our bungalow court are gonna attend the tenants union meeting, and, yeah, we're gonna see if we can continue to show up and raise a little hell, I guess,
CG: And the real pizza will be the community you made along the way. Tamika, thanks for coming on, SGV Connect, and thank you for recording this interview for us.
TAF: Basically did the whole thing. I know I was telling my husband, Zach, I was like, it feels funny to have produced myself. That's fun. But anyways, thank you so much for your time, and let's get to work everybody.