By New York Post (U.S.) | Created at 2025-01-10 12:06:07 | Updated at 2025-01-10 16:05:53
4 hours ago
As thousands fled the devastating wildfires that raced through Los Angeles this week, a few good Samaritans stayed back to help the most vulnerable.
When Eddie de Ferrari and his brother-in-law, Ray Moore, saw a senior center in need of evacuation on Tuesday night, they didn’t think twice.
“There were roughly 90 patients trapped there,” said de Ferrari of the facility in the Pacific Palisades. “Everyone was either in wheelchairs or gurneys.”
A team of able-bodied men assembled, de Ferrari and Moore began bringing patients — many of them well into their 90s — to a nearby 7-Eleven parking lot where they could be picked up by ambulances or buses to transport them to safety.
It wasn’t an easy job.
“The winds were very strong and debris was flying around us,” de Ferrari said, noting that some of the patients had to be carried to safety. “The air was very smoky; most of the workers and the patients had a lot of problems breathing.”
“Some of the patients were silent,” said de Ferrari. “Others were voicing their fears and their anger. But everyone who was helping held our composure. Between my brother-in-law and me, I felt we could handle anything.”
In the end, all 90 residents were taken to the Pasadena Convention Center, where they have received medical treatment and food. The senior center — and all the surrounding buildings — burned to the ground overnight.
In Altameda, resident Dawn Cafaro began her evacuation on Wednesday when she was struck with a sickening thought about her 82-year-old neighbor, Dorothy Mudge.
“I thought, ‘I wonder if anyone went to get Dottie?'” Cafaro told The Post.
Turning her car around, Cafaro, an administrative assistant, found Mudge sitting in her living room watching the news.
“I told her, ‘Hey, we’ve got to go,'” said Cafaro, who emptied some personal belongings out of her car to make room for the older woman.
“I can replace my stuff, but we can’t replace Dottie.”
Down in Rustic Canyon near the Pacific Palisades, Aras Baskauskas evacuated his family before returning to his neighborhood to help his neighbors protect their homes.
On Thursday, Baskauskas, 43, kept an eye on his currently undamaged home while putting out fires in his neighbor’s house.
“We’re tending to the land and fighting the small fires so that they don’t grow big,” he said. “We’re putting out the flames when we can.”
While Baskauskas hopes that someone will come help protect his neighborhood, he acknowledges that that’s unlikely.
“The fire department is spread so thin,” he said, “so it really takes a community effort to keep our homes safe.”
“This is a hellscape in LA right now,” he added. “It’s nuts.”
