From Employee to Firefighter

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Elvis Santiago moved to Los Angeles from Mexico in 2001 when he was 21 and after two years was able to start his landscaping business. He was able to branch out his business to Pacific Palisades where he has worked ever since.

Elvis Santiago
Elvis Santiago.

Unfortunately, due to the impacts caused by the fires, work for Santiago has had setbacks. Finding jobs elsewhere and working through the impacts on his community, Santiago has not returned to Pacific Palisades since due to the emotional impact of seeing the destruction. 

“There are blocks and blocks burnt,” Santiago said. “All the areas are the same. It looks like a desolate city. I can’t explain how this all happened in one day.”

After working for his employers for so many years, Santiago and his employees developed a connection with their families. When the fires first began, a housekeeper he knew called him saying that the owners were not at home and that the fires were approaching. Santiago and his employees rushed over to the house to help combat the fire. Successfully, they were able to save the home by hosing down the house using the water pump from the pool. 

“It’s sad, the owners lost everything, and we feel it as family,” Santiago said. 

Since living in Los Angeles, Santiago is worried about what the destruction of the fires means for the Latino community in Los Angeles. When he first moved to Los Angeles, there were a lot of gangs of young people but as the years went on more and more of those young people were pursuing a career and focusing on their education causing the gangs to slowly fade out over time. A lot of housekeepers were able to use their money to get their children through college but now due to the loss of jobs, loss of homes, and loss of schools, the students are not able to get their education. 

“We want more Latinos with careers,” Santiago said. “We are Latinos, we need to focus on our population.” 

This story is part of a semester-long investigative reporting project into the 2025 California wildfires. It was created by an advanced reporting class in the Journalism, Advertising, and Media Studies program at UW-Milwaukee. Other stories from the project are available here.

This work was made possible through the support of MPC Endowment Ltd., the philanthropic affiliate of the Milwaukee Press Club.