To Steve Lamb, it felt like a snub. His home was reduced to ash. His cars were charred wrecks. And on Friday, his president — Donald J. Trump, for whom Mr. Lamb voted in November — was far from his fire-ravaged community of Altadena.
Mr. Trump was in the region, about 40 miles away touring destroyed homes in Pacific Palisades. But it wasn’t close enough for Mr. Lamb.
“If I was the president, this is where I would go,” Mr. Lamb, 67, said of Altadena.
He sat at a table in what used to be his backyard, staring mournfully at a scorched stack of ceramic cups and bowls he and his wife collected over the years. A residential designer, he had rescued them from the rubble of his home, a more than century-old Craftsman that was made by famed architect Louis B. Easton. Nearby, his prized 1941 Lincoln Continental, one of fewer than 2,000 ever built, slumped on blackened rims, two of its tires faded to dust.
As part of the president’s trip to Southern California, Mr. Trump visited Pacific Palisades, a coastal neighborhood of Los Angeles known for its affluence and celebrity figures and where the median sale price of a home is about $3.1 million. The Palisades fire, which destroyed more than 6,700 structures, had left much of the area a desolate wasteland. His agenda included a briefing at a fire station before heading back to the airport by early evening.
Altadena, a more middle-class hillside community tucked up against the San Gabriel Mountains, had also been devastated by flames. The Eaton fire broke out on the same day as the Palisades fire, burning more than 9,400 structures and devastating a historic Black haven. The median sale price of a home there is about $1.3 million.
But in the days since the fires started on Jan. 7, many Altadena residents have expressed frustration that their town and their losses have been overshadowed by those affected by the Palisades fire. Although it was unclear why Mr. Trump chose to only visit Pacific Palisades, it felt personal to several residents.
“I would come and look at all these Democrats and constituents who are African American,” Mr. Lamb said. “And I’d be saying, ‘Look, I know you didn’t vote for me, but I have your back.’ It’s very disappointing that he’s not going to do that.”
Mr. Lamb served on the Altadena town council for nearly two decades. After years voting as a Democrat, he said he had been turned off by the party and ended up supporting Mr. Trump in the recent election. “Probably the majority of Altadena didn’t vote for him,” he said. “It just so happens I did. And I’m really disappointed.”
Just around the corner on a cul-de-sac, Alana Lewis, 58, was assessing the condition of her house, which had been spared from the flames. It had significant smoke damage and the utilities were still out. She has been unable to use her home to operate her child-care business, cutting off her source of income.
“Altadena has generations of people who lived here, and we are affected by the fires as well,” Ms. Lewis said. “There’s a lot of damage here, a lot of misplaced families, a lot of misplaced children. Children lost their schools, their homes. It’s really bad here, and he needs to come.”
Mr. Trump has criticized the state’s Democratic leaders, accusing them of mismanaging the response to the fire. Several of those Democrats have visited both the Palisades and Altadena, including Gov. Gavin Newsom of California.
Kamala Harris, whose home in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Brentwood was in an evacuation zone during the Palisades fire, visited Altadena on Monday after Mr. Trump’s inauguration. Appearing with her husband, Douglas Emhoff, she met with firefighters and residents and said she planned to help restore and rebuild the community.
Selina Sanders, an Altadena resident and small business owner, said she has been disappointed in how Mr. Trump and Mr. Newsom have seemingly used the fires to point fingers at each other.
“Based on what I know, it’s just all like a political game,” Ms. Sanders, 42, said. “It’s always like, what he thinks of Newsom and what Newsom thinks about him. It’s all calculated on their end.”
Ms. Sanders, whose home sustained significant smoke damage, said Mr. Trump should have made the time to visit her town. “I feel like we’re just going to be forgotten,” she said.
Mr. Trump has threatened to withhold disaster recovery aid from California unless the state changed environmental policies that he claimed had prevented enough water from going to Southern California. Water experts have said the problems fighting the fires had nothing to do with water transfers from the north and that the president has misrepresented complex water dynamics.
Still, Mr. Trump made clear that his trip was about securing two things: “Voter ID so that people have a chance to vote, and I want to see the water be released and come down to Los Angeles and throughout the state.”
Some Altadena residents appreciated that Mr. Trump was visiting a burn area, even if it was not in their own backyard.
“It’s fabulous,” said Adina Catalanotti, a retired dancer whose home was one of just a few still standing on her block.
Ms. Catalanotti, 64, said she was not surprised the president was sticking to Pacific Palisades. The destruction there was terrible, too, she said, adding that he likely had a limited schedule. “We can only just move on and pray,” she said.
And then she continued on the quest she had been on: looking for a neighborhood cat named Tux. She held a bag of cat food in one hand, a cane in the other.
Tux has been spotted just once since the fires started.
Zolan Kanno-Youngs contributed reporting.