The grass withers and the flowers fade

George Crandell was about 3 years old in the 1940s when his parents and grandparents built their family home in the then-sleepy California neighborhood of Pacific Palisades. Crandell’s daughter, Keena Gannage, described growing up in the cozy family home alongside her grandparents and great-grandparents. Crandell said his stepmother, Yvonne, was the last to live in the house before it burned to the ground last week. The Palisades fire is one of the two largest active fires in a crisis that claimed two dozen lives in Los Angeles County over the last week.

A week later the fires continued burning. Winds threatened to spread flames or cause flare-ups in areas already scorched by the flames, according to firefighters. But Christians in Los Angeles County were already processing their losses and thinking about how to help others.

At least three southern California wildfires continued to spread earlier this week. As of Monday evening, the fires had burned over 40,000 acres and destroyed more than 12,000 buildings since they sparked last Tuesday, according to the fire incident dashboard. The Palisades and Eaton fires continue to burn after destroying over 3,000 structures and damaging hundreds more, according to Monday evening updates from California emergency officials. The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner reported at least 24 fire-related deaths in a Sunday update, with over a dozen more missing. Fires also ravaged the Hollywood Hills last week and destroyed miles of the iconic Sunset Boulevard.

Crandell said the fire caught the community completely off guard. Jan. 7 marked his stepmother’s fifth wildfire evacuation. She packed her bag as usual and left family photos and valuables behind, expecting to return in a few days. Crandell insisted that no one expected what he characterized as a blast furnace to come through and flatten everything. Most of the Pacific Palisades neighborhood was gone, and everything he knew was just flattened, he said.

Crandell expected a difficult recovery and a slow rebuilding process. Because Los Angeles is so urbanized, building codes are strict, and people don't have the tight-knit community support common in smaller areas, he said. He thinks the fires could trigger a mass exodus from California. A lot of people have already been thinking about leaving the state and this fire will seal that decision for them, he believes.

Crandell’s daughter agreed. It’s not like their house was flooded, Gannage said. Everything is gone, and there’s nothing left to repair, so all they can do is bulldoze the property and completely rebuild, she said.

The fires have hit celebrities alongside many others in Los Angeles County. Hollywood actors like Mel Gibson, Billy Crystal, and Cary Elwes reportedly lost homes to fire. Meanwhile, the Eaton fire burned north of the Interstate 210 highway in Pasadena and Altadena—destroying less affluent homes than some of the beachside residences in Palisades.

Steven Crawford serves as senior pastor of The Chapel at Pasadena and said his 100-member church is working to gather recovery funds and resources—for members of the congregation who lost homes, but also those outside of it. The chapel is one of several churches in the area setting up funds for immediate relief for families, he said.

Crawford emphasizes the importance of showing Christian compassion to all victims, regardless of their economic situation. Some high-profile victims have been met with ridicule, Crawford said. He questioned whether an individual’s tax bracket should determine whether or not they are shown Christian empathy.

Even though it’s early in the recovery process, the church should already be serving the community, he added. But despite responding to the material needs of victims, the church also needs to show them there's a place they can store their treasures where fires never destroy, he said.