Fires in Los Angeles | Volunteers clean streets littered with charred debris

(Pacific Palisades) The fires are still raging in Los Angeles, but Chuck Hart and his construction team have been working as volunteers for several days to clean up the charred debris littering the streets of the Pacific Palisades neighborhood and try to rebuild their broken community.

“We never left,” says the local contractor before stopping briefly and issuing instructions to his army of workers who are picking up burned debris from roads and sidewalks before tossing it into pickup trucks and trailers giants.

“We’re going to do everything we can to get this place back up and running as quickly as possible,” Chuck said.

At least eight people died in the upscale Pacific Palisades neighborhood out of 25 counted across Los Angeles.

The fire engulfed entire blocks of houses, leaving in its devastating wake other homes as if frozen in a landscape of ashes, mud and collapsed structures.

Hart and his team are neither paid nor hired by the authorities to carry out this cleanup work.

In fact, technically, they’re not even supposed to be there.

« Rock and roll »

Due to roadblocks prohibiting entry into Pacific Palisades, they cannot get out because they would not be able to re-enter, and they “must sneak in equipment and supplies” to carry out their task.

“We are staying at my house. We sleep on the floor, on my jiu-jitsu mats, my couches, my beds […] no hot water, cold showers, 31 guys – it’s terrible,” he says.

When the fire broke out, Chuck Hart and his crew were working on a construction site in the neighborhood.

Learning that his mother’s house was threatened by flames, Chuck Hart told his crew to “stop their work” and mobilized them to protect the property with garden hoses. It was “rock and roll” for the team.

“We were fighting fires. And then we went around all the houses…cleaning up the debris in the streets.” “We haven’t stopped since. »

“Like a family”

No one else, he said, has started cleaning up Pacific Palisades. For now, his team has not touched any private property, focusing on roads and sidewalks.

He appears, however, to have the tacit approval of police and firefighters who regularly scour the streets looking for hot spots or looters.

A local fire station even shared meals with its employees.

For the first few days, he paid his team out of his own pocket, but he has since launched a GoFundMe, which has raised $170,000.

Convincing his team to stay, he says, has never been a problem because they “are like family” and have worked with him for 25 years.

“I stayed to protect the area where I work and also to save the company, because that’s where my employer’s house is,” explains one of these employees, Paul López Acosta.

Even if wealthy Pacific Palisades residents might “have the money” to rebuild, “there’s a lot of stuff besides rebuilding – a lot of memories […] of people who have lived here for two or three generations,” he says.

With no access to landfills to dump the mountains of debris, Hart and his team “diverted” a neighbor’s land which had already been completely destroyed by the fire.

He was unable to contact the owner to ask for authorization, but plans to remove the rubble as soon as the roads open.

Chuck Hart is adamant that the Pacific Palisades neighborhood — where his great-grandparents settled — will be rebuilt.

He believes many fellow citizens are eager to come back and help, but are currently being slowed down by bureaucracy.

Authorities have warned that the area could burn again, also pointing out that power lines are faulty, and that there is no drinking water or electricity.

Jackie Irwin, who represents Pacific Palisades in the California state assembly, said Tuesday that the official debris cleanup was going to be “done as quickly as possible.”

But Chuck Hart doesn’t want to wait. “I’m in a unique position to provide maximum service to my community, and I’m going to do it,” he said. “I have all the trucks. I have all the equipment. I have the guys. »