In Los Angeles, as Palisades Fire burns, resilience begins to take hold
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Ali Martin Staff writer
| Los Angeles
Members of the Anir family fled their Malibu home as the Palisades wildfire raced toward it, giving them too little time to gather everything that mattered.
But they were not leaving Coco, their house goat, behind.
Why We Wrote This
A story focused onNatural disasters can destroy places but reveal the strength of people who live there. At a shelter near the Palisades Fire in Los Angeles, resilience begins to bloom even as the flames burn on.
Some shelters wouldn’t take Coco. But El Camino Real Charter High School in Woodland Hills did, and the family finally found refuge.
They were joined by others forced from their homes and by volunteers. Their lives intersected amid devastation and fear. But resilience and hope bloomed, too.
Eddie Včelíková, grieving her destroyed hometown, showed up to help.
Kate Delos Reyes’ mental health residential program in Malibu was canceled. Instead of heading home, she drove to El Camino to volunteer.
Leslie Walsh and her daughter Megan arrived from San Diego – where wildfires threatened their home more than 20 years ago – with pet supplies to donate.
Just then, another fire nearby forced the shelter itself to evacuate. The Walshes couldn’t drop anything off, but they took a lonely young woman to the next shelter.
Jason Camp, an administrator at the school, marveled at the human spirit. It’s refreshing, he said, that “Not everything’s in total chaos.
“The heart is still there. And I think that that was kind of a blessing.”
Coco the goat is nestled in a soft bed between two cars in the parking lot of El Camino Real Charter High School on the western edge of Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley. Other wildfire evacuation shelters wouldn’t allow the 10-year-old house goat to stay with her family – the animal shelters board pets on their own, in kennels – but breaking up wasn’t an option for her owner, Maji Anir.
“She’s been with us for so long that she’s not really used to being alone and she’s too cold,” he says. “So we decided this is better to be next to us.”
Small pets like cats and dogs are easily accommodated at the shelter, but Coco is in a gray area. She is quietly out of the way, is no bother, and offers a drop of levity in a sea of stress – most people who take notice stop to pet her, spirits lifted. Workers are letting her stay.
Why We Wrote This
A story focused onNatural disasters can destroy places but reveal the strength of people who live there. At a shelter near the Palisades Fire in Los Angeles, resilience begins to bloom even as the flames burn on.
Mr. Anir and his family had just two hours to evacuate as the fire approached their home in Malibu – not enough time to get everything they needed.
They pulled away Tuesday evening as the sun was setting. By morning the house was gone, along with all of their neighbors’.
Since then, a half dozen wildfires have eaten away at densely packed neighborhoods across a county of 10 million people. Search teams have found 24 people dead, and expect to find more as recovery efforts continue. Thousands have lost their homes. At least 150,000 are displaced – many, like the Anir family, fled to one of the county’s seven evacuation shelters for people. Some schools are still closed, and work is on hold. Ashen rubble and scorched, teetering walls are all that remain of once-vibrant residential streets. It is a scale of ruin once unimaginable in a place built on imagination.
Yet even in this besieged region, ruin is bending toward resilience. And from the staff to random visitors and those sheltering, a common theme is kindness – helpful acts that can counter the pervasive sense of loss and disruption.
El Camino is a well-appointed charter school. Its large rectangular beige-and-gray buildings are edged with neatly kept green lawn and lush trees blending into a surround of single-family homes sprawling up into the West Hills that overlook it. Inside, small groups of students are rehearsing for their school plays or practicing other extracurricular activities. Otherwise, campus is quiet – except for the first responders gathering here to rest.
Classes for the school’s 3,500 students were scheduled to start back up in mid-January. Now, with the Palisades Fire burning out of control on the other side of a mountain ridge, the campus is a gathering place for those needing refuge – and the people volunteering to help.
Kate Delos Reyes was supposed to be in a residential program for mental health treatment. The program in Santa Monica was canceled as fires swept through the nearby Pacific Palisades.
She’s seen fires before, when she worked at a rehab center in another Southern California mountain range. Remembering that stress, she drove to the evacuation center at El Camino to lend whatever help they might need.
“I have the time,” she says. “I like to say, ‘Kindness is free, you know.’”
Even as they try to help others, many at the shelter are processing what feels like devastating losses not just of personal property but also of community foundations.
Eddie Včelíková is fielding a stream of texts from her friends while she scrolls through social media. She is taking in photos of her childhood home in Altadena; St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, which she attended every Sunday; her schools – all of it destroyed.
Altadena, an unincorporated town in northern LA County, welcomed Black homebuyers in the mid-1900s, when redlining kept them out of other neighborhoods. As the area developed along the southwestern base of the San Gabriel Mountains, so did the diversity of its middle-class bedrock. Last week, the Eaton fire, which is still burning, swept through much of the small community and leveled entire blocks.
When she saw video of the burned-out park where she played every weekend as a child, Ms. Včelíková says she broke. She found her way to the shelter. “I’m just out here volunteering to stay busy because it’s the only thing I think that’ll keep me from going insane.”
The loss is “incomprehensible,” she says. “It’s surreal to see that, like, my entire childhood is just gone.”
The unemployed film worker now lives with her parents in Canoga Park, just a few miles from the shelter at El Camino. She’s tried to get back into her old neighborhood, but National Guard troops are blocking every route – protecting vacant homes from looting. On Sunday, she attended a virtual church service hosted by St. Mark’s. The church may be gone, but its spirit is not.
“I used to say I’m from Altadena, and nobody knew where that was. Now I say I’m from Altadena, and they give me their sympathies,” she says.
At midday Thursday, a small parking lot where the Red Cross set up camp holds about a dozen people looking for direction. The Anir family is here with Coco. Others are following evacuation orders in their threatened neighborhoods. The evening rush has yet to begin, when another fire erupts within view.
Not even the shelter itself is safe.
The Kenneth Fire has broken out in late afternoon on a ridge overlooking this edge of the San Fernando Valley. Cellphones honk obnoxiously with the now-familiar alerts – the evacuation warning has been issued for Woodland Hills and adjacent neighborhoods, which includes the shelter. This refuge is shutting down. Most of the evacuees are heading 20 miles east to another shelter at the Westwood Recreation Center.
Leslie and Megan Walsh are making space in their packed trunk for a small suitcase. They’ve just met a young woman who needs a ride to Westwood, and they’ve offered to take her.
They’re from San Diego; they know what LA is going through. In 2003, fires swept through parts of their city, and they had to flee. Their neighborhood lost 300 homes. Now, with Megan living in LA, the family wanted to help however they could.
Leslie and her daughter drove to LA with a car full of animal supplies – pet food and beds, mostly – to donate. But their first stop, a shelter in Agoura Hills, was evacuated, so they came here. Now this one’s evacuating.
“It’s so new and so scary, and the fires just keep growing,” says Leslie. “There’s always a new fire.”
The Walshes headed back to San Diego with their supplies. Over the next couple of days, Megan ran a donation drive among their San Diego neighbors. She and her parents returned to LA Sunday with a U-Haul truck and two more cars filled with clothing, toiletries, pet food, sleeping bags, air mattresses, and more. This time, she coordinated with a friend in LA who organized a grassroots distribution center with a group of young professionals working in the entertainment industry.
“She’s just a good soul,” says Leslie about her daughter.
Megan, who is taking online classes through Arizona State University, dropped this quarter so she can focus on the relief efforts.
And the young woman they took to the shelter in Westwood? When they arrived, the evacuee told them she was too scared to stay there alone, so the Walshes set her up in a hotel room. For one night, at least, she was secure.
Back at El Camino high school on Thursday, in the hours before the Kenneth Fire erupted, first responders had pulled into a corner parking lot to take a break and grab a meal. The shelter was overflowing with food donations, so school administrators redirected the potluck to feed firefighters and police officers.
Administrative Director Jason Camp says the support for first responders was driven by an outpouring in the community.
He’s watched as a steady stream of Angelenos stop by to drop off supplies and volunteers show up to find out how they can help. He notes the number of people – emergency responders, volunteers, local officials – who are managing their own fears and losses from the widespread devastation. Nobody is untouched.
Some people who are displaced or lost their homes want to be part of the solution and “to help somebody through the pain and maybe together they can get through it,” he says. “It’s refreshing to see that not everything’s in total chaos. The heart is still there.”
