Her Calabasas home is wedged between two major fires that have devastated Los Angeles County, and from her window she can see helicopters pouring water. Even the slightest change in the wind can have life-changing results.
But when the registered nurse woke up Friday, she drove through haze and smoke to Pasadena to help people evacuated from another fire, the deadly Eaton Fire.
“Why would you sit at home when you can help?” said the nurse, who just wanted to be called Annette. It wasn’t important to draw attention to myself. “If I hadn’t come here, what kind of nurse would I have been?”
Cynthia Cisneros (right) and Rosie Antonio hand out food prepared for fire victims and first responders in Pasadena.
(Kevin Baxter/Los Angeles Times)
She was standing outside the Pasadena Convention Center. The convention center is currently a shelter for more than 1,200 people who were evacuated by the fire. And she wasn’t alone. She was joined by three other volunteer nurses wearing pastel-colored scrubs, ready to help people being seen by other medical staff inside the convention center.
A few dozen steps away, in the middle of the center’s courtyard, Miguel Alcala and Francisco Arizpe are making the more than 100 pieces they spent most of the morning making at their East Los Angeles restaurant Tacos El Mas Cabron. We handed out burritos and tortas. Next to them, Cynthia Cisneros and Rosie Antonio served soft drinks, bottled water and home-cooked food in Glendora.
“We want to help. We want to share with the homeless,” Cisneros said in Spanish, as Antonio waved a paper plate in the air and shouted, “Free lunch, everyone!” . In English. “Food is free!”
Several people quickly accepted her offer, hurried to carry a small folding table that Cisneros and Antonio had placed on the sidewalk, and thanked the two women profusely.
Across Southland, thousands of people who saw the heartbreaking footage of devastated neighborhoods had a similar reaction, donating food, money, clothing or even just their time to the fire victims.
“Volunteers are great,” says City of Pasadena spokeswoman Lisa Derderian. “This is an unprecedented event and people just wanted to do something to help.
“People come up and I’m like, ‘I don’t have anything to donate.’ I just want to give them a hug.”
Derderian said most of the city’s more than 2,000 employees have been redeployed and are working around the clock on wildfire relief.
“Everything is full steam ahead,” she said. “One of the firefighters I talked to earlier lost his home, but he’s here helping with relief efforts when he just lost everything.”
Jada Thompson, who works in Pasadena’s mental health services, brought hugs and dozens of board games to the convention center. There, fire victims found their world suddenly reduced to cots and bright white Red Cross blankets.
Former Lakers player and coach Michael Cooper, left, greets volunteers and others as people drop off items at a large donation site outside the Rose Bowl.
(Allen J. Scherben/Los Angeles Times)
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like this before. It’s mostly shock,” Thompson said of how people are coping. “A lot of kids don’t know what’s going on. They don’t know what happened to their friends, they don’t know what happened to school.”
Board games can distract your mind from unanswered questions, at least for a moment. When that doesn’t work, you can always give a hug or just listen to someone who has a story to share.
Outside the convention center, Lamar Hurkas stood near the front of the line that snaked down Arroyo Parkway, holding out his cell phone and playing some nondescript recorded music.
“I’m in contact with FEMA online right now,” he explained. But he also had a story he wanted to share.
Hurkas, who has been living at the shelter since Wednesday morning, said he was lucky to be alive. He was asleep when the fire approached his home in Altadena, but his uncle managed to wake him up by banging on the door. Ten minutes later, that door and the rest of the house were gone.
Like others in line, Hurkas was waiting for a $250 prepaid credit card from the Cal Fire Foundation to help with small expenses such as food, gas and toiletries.
“We’re helping people in the worst situations,” said Mike Lopez, a former firefighter and the foundation’s executive director and treasurer. “But my entire career, put together, doesn’t compare to the stories I’ve heard and the stories of families who lost everything in massive fires.”
So some of the most important donations are the personal donations that people make.
“It’s not just a material and financial issue,” Derderian said. “They’re like, ‘We want to support.’ People are bringing dogs in like comfort animals.”
Volunteers help load donated items Saturday at the Pasadena Humane Society.
(Wally Scully/Los Angeles Times)
Half a mile away, the dogs needed comfort. The Pasadena Humane Society had 177 animals at the scene when the fire broke out on Monday, and took in more than 400 more in the next 48 hours. There were also stray dogs, many of them sick or injured. But most of them were pets of families whose homes had been burned down and who needed to temporarily surrender their animals while they figured out what to do next.
“Our staff and volunteers have responded absolutely heroically to the influx of special needs animals,” said Dia Duvernay, president and CEO of the Humane Society. He spoke over a chorus of barking dogs. “You’ve seen this complete outpouring of support from the support community.”
The center’s parking lot was filled with volunteers organizing donated bags of dog and cat food, boxes and cages, stuffed animals and other pet supplies. Nearby, other volunteers struggled to direct a long line of donors blocking traffic on Raymond Street.
By mid-afternoon, the center had received so many donations that it was turning people away and demanding cash instead.
“I was walking through the parking lot and thought, ‘Who are these people?'” Kevin McManus, the association’s communications manager, said of the dozens of people who offered to help. One of them was Mac McCloskey, who arrived with about 15 other volunteers wearing bright yellow T-shirts and jackets emblazoned with the Church of Scientology logo.
“We could sit at home, but that’s not what people need,” McCloskey said.
Another group of about 40 volunteers was buried with donations outside an adult center run by Union Station Homeless Services, about a quarter-mile south of Raymond.
“Sorry, it’s been a hell of a day,” one worker yelled into his cell phone as he raced past drivers unloading pallets of donated food from Latin American food and dairy services company Clemi Mex.
“We are always amazed by the generosity of our community, but once we told them of our urgent need, they were incredibly proactive,” Union Station said. Chief Operating Officer Amanda Green said. Behind her, volunteers were collecting donations of sports drinks, bottled water, blankets, hygiene products, food and more, sorting them into 30-gallon containers and distributing them to people who would soon be heading to the center.
“We’ve had companies that we’ve never had a relationship with reach out to us to see how we can work together. It’s just been overwhelming.”
Los Angeles County Firefighter Scott Takeguma is working to extinguish a fire at a home north of Altadena.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)
Thousands of families across the county were left homeless. Greene said many people who never thought they had shelter will soon be turning to places like Union Station, already overwhelmed by the weight of the nation’s second-largest homeless population. He said this would put pressure on existing support systems.
“There are so many people who have never been in the system before and are falling into homelessness,” she said. “We want to be here for them and help them get through it.”
Over the past five days, thousands of people across Southland appear to have taken the same vow, from nurses living in fire zones to firefighters who have lost their homes.
A firefighter prepares to rest in a sleeping bag outside the Pasadena Rose Bowl on Friday.
(Wally Scully/Los Angeles Times)
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