Los Angeles Wildfires Disaster Relief
January 25 and 26:
Community and Healing in West Los Angeles
Written By Ida Eva Zielinska
Published #76 | Spring 2025 Issue
Jenny Hsu comforts a Palisades Fire survivor. Photo/Jaime Puerta
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At the West Los Angeles Service Center’s third and fourth disaster relief distributions for Palisades Fire survivors on the weekend of January 25 and 26, hugs were just as present, and all the volunteers were eager to help. “So many people lost their homes,” Tzu Chi volunteer Jenny Hsu said. While she was grateful to be there, her availability was associated with sorrow. “For 15 years, I had to stay home because my husband was sick. On September 25, he passed away. That’s why I… Right now, I have time to come, yeah,” she explained.
They need people to know them, to comfort them, to help them, to love them so they feel more relief.
Each care recipient benefited from support as they tried to process what had happened and figure out what to do next. “You can see their face, so sad. We all really feel we have this opportunity to help,” Emily Chu, another volunteer that day, shared. Throughout the weekend, they heard one alarming story after another and did their utmost to ease people’s sadness and distress while offering immediate financial aid through cash cards.
“Our home was in the El Medio neighborhood of Pacific Palisades. It was our home for over 20 years until it was lost on the evening of January 7. It was a complete loss, as well as my entire street. We have really nothing. So we just came to get some help,” Daniel Coleman recounted. Immensely appreciative of the assistance, he pointed out, “It’s just love, I mean, there’s nothing that I’ve gotten here that hasn’t been, like, making me tear up.”
Karen Norton, another care recipient, had lived in a condo she can’t return to. “It’s not in a livable condition. It’s like a cemetery. And people describe that as a war zone. And… It is like that,” she described. “I’m so grateful for people like you guys who are able to extend kindness when we are overwhelmed. I think I’m kind of speechless. It’s just so nice.”
Palisades Fire survivors with children, while deeply relieved that everyone is safe, shared the difficulties they’ve faced since losing their family home.
“Currently, we are staying in a hotel. It’s definitely challenging as we don’t have a way to prepare food. We don’t have enough space for the kids to do their homework,” Joanna Curtis told the volunteers. “I will use the funds to buy beds and pillows for my kids. My whole focus since our house burned down has been creating as much normalcy for my children as possible.”
Marjan Rejabi, a single mom who works two jobs, has been staying at her sister’s place since her home burned to the ground. To make matters worse, the wildfire flames weren’t the only danger they had to face during the Palisades Fire catastrophe; looters also threatened their safety. “We had to sleep with weapons to protect ourselves,” Rejabi divulged. She plans to use the financial aid from Tzu Chi to “buy clothes and housewares, everything that was lost,” hoping to gradually regain some stability after this crushing disruption.
“I don’t know what’s there. I don’t know what’s not there. I do know I don’t have a home anymore,” Megan Earsley said while vividly recalling her narrow escape from the fire zone. “I had to race across town. We could see the flames right across the street, up in the hills. There were miracles every step of the way, and we got out.” Earsley also discovered what felt like a miracle unfolding at the distribution, as many care recipients recognized a welcome sense of solidarity developing between them, strangers becoming friends.
There's something really special about what is happening here, and unexpected. It's bringing ‘community’ together. I can connect with my neighbors, people I didn't even know. In this building, all the kindness just really got into my core. A lot of people created ‘family’ here. And there is a deep need to heal this community because the wound is deep.
Perhaps Claire Rexon, who also lost her home in the Palisades Fire, summed up the distribution experience best: “I’m 80 years old, and I have done a lot of volunteer work myself. I received the kindest welcome and met the most caring individuals. I’m overwhelmed and wordless at this group. All I can say is I wish the whole world were made of people like this.”
In the week ahead, many would learn about Tzu Chi and benefit from its disaster relief activities at the Wildfires Resource Hub, which opened the following day.
