‘We Are All Fire Survivors’: Southern California Friends Support Each Other Through Loss, Trauma

After nearly a month of blazes, firefighters contained the Eaton and Palisades fires in Los Angeles County, Calif., as of Friday, January 31, The New York Times reported. At least 29 people died in the infernos, which charred about 58 square miles of land according to USA Today. The Eaton Fire consumed more than 9,000 structures, according to USA Today. The Palisades Fire destroyed more than 6,000 structures, The New York Times reported. Most of the structures lost were homes. Both fires began burning on January 7 and are under investigation, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

Several Quakers in the area lost their homes and possessions. Other Friends did not suffer material losses but found themselves emotionally shaken by the wildfires. Quakers have offered each other practical and spiritual support in the wake of the fires.

Dan Strickland, a member of Orange Grove Meeting in Pasadena, Calif., stayed with his wife in the library of the meetinghouse after their home burned down. A parent of a student at Friends Western School (FWS), an elementary school in Pasadena, offered to let the couple rent a furnished apartment attached to the parent’s house for as long as needed.

“This was a real life-saver for us,” Strickland said of the offer of housing.

FWS staff and others organized a clothing distribution to benefit people who had lost homes and belongings in the fire, according to Strickland. Friends from the meeting tended the clothing racks.

Mayan dancers who were friends and relatives of a staff member at FWS performed at the clothing distribution to increase the event’s public visibility, according to Strickland. Many people in the fire zone as well as neighbors of the meetinghouse are from traditional Mayan areas.

To determine whether meeting members and attenders were safe, Orange Grove Meeting’s Pastoral Care Committee clerk Gary Bagwell used email, text, and Facebook to contact Friends who got in touch with others from the meeting. Bagwell also received a reassuring call from meeting Friends in Bombay, India, where they were traveling. One person whose house was in the center of the fire zone, and who does not use a cell phone, was initially unaccounted for.

“I actually went down to a refugee center looking for her,” Bagwell said.

A new attender of the meeting found a Facebook post by the woman’s children and Bagwell learned that she was 47 miles away from the fire area staying with relatives.

One of the people whose house burned down came to the meetinghouse kitchen after the fire and asked to reclaim mugs they had donated. The person explained that the mugs were a link to the past after losing all their possessions, according to Bagwell.

Friends from outside the meeting offered to convene meetings for healing but members and attenders were not prepared to participate in such meetings for at least the first week after the calamity, according to Bagwell. The meeting established a fund to share money with Friends directly impacted by the fire.

One member and one attender from Santa Monica (Calif.) Meeting also lost homes in the fire, according to Kate Watkins, clerk of the meeting’s Pastoral Care Committee. Some homes remained undamaged even though the dwellings all around them were burned down. One person who lost their home stayed with meeting members before renting an apartment. Everyone in the meeting has experienced trauma whether or not they have also lost homes or possessions.

“We are all fire survivors,” Watkins said.

Santa Monica Meeting’s Pastoral Care Committee and Worship and Ministry Committee met to review opportunities for Friends to donate and volunteer to assist people impacted by the wildfires. In the weeks since the fires, members and attenders have reached out to the meeting to request practical help.

The Pastoral Care Committee has primarily focused on addressing members’ and attenders’ spiritual needs, Watkins explained. People are frightened and shaken. The first Sunday after the fire, the meeting canceled meeting for worship with attention to business so Friends could meet for a longer period of worship. The meeting for worship lasted about an hour and a half. During the long period for sharing joys and sorrows, Friends spoke about fire-related trauma. The gathered worshipers sang the spiritual “There Is a Balm in Gilead.” Friends also convened indoors that day for a shared meal with the tables placed close together.

The first meeting for worship at Orange Grove Meeting in Pasadena after the fire was filled with Friends’ stories of the trauma of living through a natural disaster, Bagwell noted. One person was trapped in their house as it burned and they had to escape on foot.

“The pain of loss is huge,” Bagwell said.

Watkins searched for advices on responding to natural disasters but found none. She did find some advices on community to which she referred. Friends would benefit from Quaker-led workshops on responding to mass trauma as well as from advices about promoting spiritual support among survivors of calamity, Watkins noted.

Pastoral care involves ongoing mutual support, according to Watkins. Lack of such support can dramatically magnify suffering.

“God works through us so if ‘us’ isn’t there, I think it can be terrible,” Watkins said. “We are the Divine’s hands.”

Bagwell consistently relies on his belief in the oneness of God to sustain him and continued this reliance when responding to fire survivors. Natural disasters do not impact Bagwell’s relationship to the Divine. Such occurrences as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions stem from magma moving under the earth’s crust and do not have a supernatural cause, Bagwell noted. Bagwell does not believe in a vengeful God.

“I don’t have a sense of the divine personality,” Bagwell said.