An Altadena neighborhood was on alert Tuesday after a 550-pound bear returned to a neighborhood and was sighted in a home’s crawlspace.
The owners of a home on Minoru Drive reported seeing the bear in the crawlspace of their home Monday, and said the bear had settled in and was showing no signs of leaving.
They began monitoring the crawlspace through security cameras and attempted to scare the bear off their property by playing loud music and banging on the floor over the crawlspace, NBC4 reported.
After failed attempts to scare the bear off, including with a leaf blower, the bear left anyway and the homeowners quickly sealed off the crawlspace.
Steve Clark, whose relatives live in the home where the bear had been residing, told the station that he believes the animal has been roaming the neighborhood because much of the bear’s habitat was destroyed in the Eaton Fire in 2025.
The bear, tagged and identified at Yellow 2120, has not returned to the house since, but is believed to be in the area.
Yellow 2120 is well known in Altadena for having spent about a month in a different home’s crawlspace around Thanksgiving 2025 before leaving and taking up space under two other homes in the area.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife was alerted to the presence of the bear.
“The (CDFW) has received 3 crawl space related reports in Altadena involving Yellow 2120 throughout September,” the agency said in a statement provided to City News Service on Tuesday. “In these incidents, residents reported damage to screens covering crawl space access points. CDFW has noted a small but noticeable increase in crawl space related reports across the San Gabriel Valley, particularly during periods of multiple days of cooler temperatures. This is common during this time of year and underscores the importance of checking and securing access points to crawl spaces under your home with substantial materials, such as wood or metal. It is also advisable that residents secure areas underneath decks on their property if possible.
“Yellow 2120 is a known bear to the department and has shown a pattern of attempting to utilize crawlspaces underneath homes as sources of shelter but has not displayed behaviors that would be considered aggressive towards people and has not been determined to be a threat to public safety,” the CDFW continued. “Yellow 2120 is an adult male bear, estimated to be approximately 9 years old and to weigh nearly 500 lbs.”
Residents were urged to call police or sheriff’s officials if they spot the bear.