The pain exploded first in her shoulders when 87-year-old Niobe Recasens fell down the stairs of her Altadena apartment the night of the Eaton fire.

“The pain was so severe I thought I broke my spine into parts,” she said.

Then she hit her head, watching as her wheelchair sailed over her and others scrambling in the dark to get down from their apartments. It was a little past 3 a.m. Jan. 8 and residents of El Mirador Apartments on Lincoln Avenue in Altadena had just gotten cellphone orders to evacuate.

“I can’t explain how, but somehow I grab the two handles of the stairway, so I could lift up my body, and I went down the stairs one step at a time and I was begging people, ‘Don’t leave me,’” the Argentine-born retired real estate broker said.

A man did stay with her down four flights of stairs, emerging outside to dodge a tornado of trash and embers. They were evacuated to the Pasadena Convention Center, where Recasens stayed for 14 days.

“I’m so emotional inside, this is one of the first times I can speak about it without crying,” she said, crying.

Recasens was one of three residents of El Mirador who on Tuesday, April 29, demanded better treatment from their landlord and property managers. They were joined by leaders and workers from NDLON, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, as well as the Altadena and Pasadena Tenant Unions, and the new mutual-aid nonprofit Fire Poppy Project.

Brandon Lamar, president of the Pasadena NAACP, and Heavenly Hughes, founder of My TRIBE Rise mutual aid organization, also declared their solidarity with the seniors.

Residents said that aside from being abandoned the night of the Eaton fire, and firing the one employee who drove from his Rancho Cucamonga home to help evacuate them, management allowed them to return to a complex where units remained unsafe.

Across from the complex, the scorched remains of several homes remain, as well as a lot that contained old cars, its rusted, burnt-out shells still visible among the rubble.

Jose Madera, director of the Pasadena Community Job Center where NDLON is based, said residents have no choice to remain in the complex because it is what they can afford.

“No esta sola,” Madera told Recasens. “You are not alone. We are here and we will be here. Altadena is all of us.”

From her apartment window, Julie Esnard, 67, watched the fire grow across the mountains.

“I watched trees bending in half, the wind blowing like crazy, we had no electricity, no elevators and I couldn’t walk down three flights of chairs,” Esnard said.

After being told at 11 p.m. on Jan. 7 that she couldn’t be rescued because her home was not in a mandatory evacuation zone, Esnard said members of the San Dimas Mountain Rescue Team came to save her and her two puppies at 1 a.m.

Calling that night “equal to the night I found my husband dead,” Esnard said the treatment she and her fellow seniors have received from CONAM Management and Affirmed Housing is just as nightmarish.

She returned to an un-remediated unit in a complex with an HVAC system that hasn’t yet been replaced, “the walls were still gray, the joints between the walls and ceiling dark, I could still smell smoke.”

Only the lobby had been remediated when residents returned, she said.

A manager told Esnard cleaning was her responsibility.

“I said, ‘We’re old, how do you expect us to clean all that ash and soot and smoke?’ and she said, ‘You can leave.’”

The residents have formed the El Mirador Alliance to demand changes, including immediate remediation of units with proof of work done, testing to show apartments are safe, round the clock security and refund for rents paid in January through April.

Esnard said her unit was remediated by Fire Poppy Project two weeks ago, but that 68 apartments still need to be professionally cleaned.

“We are asking for treatment that befits the elderly, befits a human being. We deserve more than we’re getting,” she added.

Altadena Town Councilmember Darlene Greene, chair of the board’s renters’ protection committee, said El Mirador’s CONAM Management, nor its owners, Affirmed Housing, have not responded to her or Katie Clark of the Pasadena Tenants Union, with whom she works.

CONAM Management did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

“Renters don’t have a lot of recourse and I don’t feel they’re being treated fairly,” Greene said. “Some apartment owners don’t know what to do, some don’t care and that’s unfortunate. Without the light being turned on, that’s the only way things will get done and things will not be pushed under the rug.”

Clark, whose apartment burned in the fire, said the elderly residents’ plight is a story being lived out many times over across Altadena.

“People have been abandoned they have been left behind, left to their own devices, and told, ‘Good luck, figure it out,’” Clark said. “Well, we say that’s not a response.”

Brenda Lopez-Ardon, 25, brought residents from the apartment complex at 403 Figueroa Drive, about 300 feet away from the Mirador. Lopez-Ardon was born and raised at “403,” where after the Eaton Fire, she helped found the 403 Tenant Committee to work for better living conditions there.

For months, residents said they lived without gas and some without electricity. She said their requests were met with threats to call ICE or veiled suggestions such as “I wouldn’t stay here if I were you.”

“But we didn’t have anywhere else to go,” Lopez-Ardon said. “This is our home.”

With help from NDLON, Lopez-Ardon said some changes which management said would take years, were done in three months, including getting hot water in the units. She cried when that happened.

“This basic necessity, this simple human right, was something we had to fight for, and we had finally achieved it,” she said. “We are here today to support our neighbors, El Mirador, and we are here to say that we have lost our fear, and there’s a saying in Spanish that says, ‘Hoy, por ti, mañana, por me,’ and it’s today for me, tomorrow for you. You are not alone and from this day forward your fight is our fight because you too have the right to fight and most importantly you too have the right to stay.”

Pablo Alvarado, co-executive director at NDLON, played guitar with Los Jornaleros del Norte, often called the house band for the immigrant rights and labor movement. The cumbia tunes and dancing that ended the rally is part of the mission to bring about parity and equality to the reconstruction of Altadena, and maintain the nature of what the town has always been, he said.

“When the government doesn’t comply with its responsibilities, it is our duty to demand they do,” Alvarado said, inviting Supervisor Kathryn Barger to meet with El Mirador’s elders.