Months after the devastating Palisades and Eaton fires, Pali Strong and the Altadena Coalition united survivors at the Santa Monica Pier on Tuesday for a healing night of entertainment and reconnection.
“It's been the worst experience of my life that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy,” a man whose family was displaced told KNX News’ Nataly Tavidian. “If you try to think about all the problems you have to solve, they're first of all not solvable, but even if they were, just insurmountable and hard to think about.”
But he said people he hasn’t heard from in years have been reaching out to support them in their time of need.
“They're like, if you don't tell me what you need, you're getting stuff that you may not want, so make both of our lives easier and tell me what you like,” he said.
Jeanie Tom brought a small item she shifted out of the ashes of her burned house to place in a time capsule.
“I brought a little home that survived the fire, and I wrote my address on it, and then I wrote on the bottom of it, ‘This home will rise again,’ which is the theme of this event,” she said.
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Meanwhile, local artists painted a community wall to celebrate the fire survivors.
“We've constructed this freestanding mural so that we're going to make a collection of handprints that are painted on vines that represent, like, a garden of the people of the Palisades all coming back together and like flowering to life and growing strong,” one of the artists said.
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