As Eaton Fire roared, Pasadena bus drivers headed to nursing homes to help: 'I looked to my left and it's like hell'

When bus driver Garrett Wright clocked in for work well before sunrise Jan. 8, his community was on fire.

His usual route through Pasadena was canceled.

But supervisors gave him a choice: go home or drive toward the flames.

“It wasn’t a thought,” Wright said. “Let’s go. I got the license, and I got the bus. I didn’t come here just to go back home.”

He joined a convoy of Pasadena Transit buses and first responders, barreling through thick smoke toward the MonteCedro retirement community in Altadena, where 200 residents needed help.

Overnight, the Eaton Fire had exploded into a 10,000-acre inferno, triggering evacuations from thousands of homes — and from dozens of nursing homes and assisted living facilities.

Eleven Pasadena bus drivers stepped up to ferry hundreds of residents away f