It’s been three months since the Eaton Fire sparked a blaze in the historic community of Altadena, which boasts roots of distinguished African Americans such as baseball Hall of Famer, Jackie Robinson, esteemed author Octavia Butler, and award-winning actor Sidney Poitier. While recovery efforts have been put in place by city officials, including the restoration of power lines and debris removal, many entrepreneurs remain in the balance of what to do next as their businesses lie in rubble. As angst and more dilemmas rise from the ashes, Shelene Hearring, proud black belt, owner, and instructor of Two Dragons Martial Arts, knows that starting over is easier said than done.

“When am I gonna wake up from this nightmare?” she ponders. “It hasn't been easy. It's like the slate gets wiped clean, but then how do you get up? How do you proceed? What do you do when there's nothing? Even if there is something, you can't come back to it.”

For nearly 17 years, Two Dragons Martial Arts stood on the corner of Lake Avenue and East  Mariposa Street in the heart of Altadena as an alternative to street life for at-risk youth in Pasadena, established by her late husband, Steve Hearring. Then, one day after the Eaton Fire steered down the San Gabriel Mountains, its edifice was reduced to rubble, and its memories, along with charred wreckage, rest where thousands of children came over the years to be cultivated through Tai Chi. 

“There was an unbelievable wind. It felt like a hurricane, a tornado or something,” Shelene remembers the night of the Eaton Fire while teaching a class. After deciding to end the lesson early, she went outside to assess what was happening.

“I came out the back door, turned around, then looked up, and the whole mountain was in flames. The fire was roaring, and I was in shock. I was like, 'We gotta go now!” she recounts.

“I saw the biggest embers I’ve seen in my life. They were like big fireballs blowing through the street everywhere, and there were people outside with water hoses on their houses. It looked like a war zone. People were panicked and in stress.”

While she did not receive an evacuation notification, she and her family fled by car for safety.

Later that evening, while watching local news coverage of the crisis unfold before her eyes,

she learned that the studio had been burned to a crisp

“I watched the whole thing go down on TV,” she remembers. “But we were safe.”

While speaking to Shelene, she was reminded of the haunting trauma from that horrific night due to the day’s strong winds before this was published. She also admitted to having her first bout with high blood pressure while at an evacuation center after the fire. For her, this aftershock of hypertension was something she believed was far-fetched.

“I said, ‘I'm good, I'm good. I'm the martial arts master. I know how to breathe. I've taught tai chi for almost 40 years, and I've been doing martial arts for almost over 50 years. I'm okay.’ But the truth is, the mind controls a lot of what we think, and the mind works, even if you’re not working.”

She says her journey forward involves mastering her health and “understanding how delicate that is.”

“The central nervous system is very powerful, and it connects to everything in the whole body, so different things trigger [it],” she adds.

Even so, her stress continues to inflate as she navigates an unstable living environment, from temporarily staying with family to acquiring a hotel for the past month after her home near the studio was burned down in a fire.

On the same day of the blaze, another devastating fire, the Palisades Fire, erupted miles away near Malibu along one of California’s most iconic highways, the Pacific Coast Highway, affluent neighborhoods, and the Getty Center museum. 

Still, Shelene believes that Altadena –rich in prominence and integrity and known as one of the first cities in California where Black people became homeowners due to the 1968 Fair Housing Act– has been overlooked.

“I feel like we got forgotten,” she says, adding, “more can be done” to reduce the mounds of red tape some residents and business owners face.

“An overhaul is needed, more organization, less of ‘how many times you can chase a wheel to figure out how to get something?’”

Now, her biggest concern is for those most vulnerable, including senior citizens and the up-and-coming generation.

“We have so many seniors here that were impacted. How do they navigate through this? I feel for the elders and the young ones. There are people affected, and we have to make sure they're going to be okay.”

Therefore, Two Dragons Martial Arts has resumed classes temporarily at Tom Sawyer Camp in Pasadena, “because it is needed.”

“We have to be a community. We have to stay as a community, and if we don't hold that community together, what's left after everything's gone? For most people, everything's gone, so what's left is the power of the community. You unite, and you stay together, and you take care of each other.”

As she continues to mentally and physically recover from the trauma provoked by the Eaton Fire, Shelene is putting into practice the fabric of martial arts on her journey forward.

“Two Dragons Martial Arts will continue to exist on different levels. We're just recreating what that looks like however long it takes because it's a journey,” she says. “We've been down, but the most important part of going down is getting up. Every time you go down, you get up. It is my perspective that this is my lesson, and I'm going to learn from it. We've been put under the pressure, but what's going to come out on the other side of that pressure is some beautiful and sparkling.”

To help Two Dragons Martial Arts rebuild, check out their GoFundMe.