Now that more fires are contained and many of the evacuees of the California wildfires are able to return to their neighborhoods, thousands of volunteers from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are reaching out to those who have lost their homes or sustained property damage.
“It is amazing to see all these people who are hungry to volunteer, especially the youth,” said Gary Sabin, a local Church leader in the Poway area. “It’s as if one is affected, all are affected, and they can’t wait to roll up their sleeves and provide the needed help to those afflicted in their own congregations, to their neighbors and to those they have never met before.”
In both Poway and Ramona, Church members helped people arriving at various local assistance centers fill out work orders, specifying what they needed help with to clean up their properties. Over 600 Church volunteers, all wearing yellow Mormon Helping Hands shirts, went out to the neighborhoods with the work orders in hand.
“We were able to provide more than 4,000 man-hours on Saturday alone, and we expect to have thousands of volunteers out there until the job is done,” said Sabin.
Two hotlines were established for those who could not go to the nearest local assistance center. In addition, teams went from house to house distributing thousands of Church-donated cleaning buckets filled with needed cleaning supplies and hundreds of sifting boxes made by Church members that could be used to find possessions amongst the ashes.
To date, the Church has delivered five truckloads of supplies to evacuees in the San Diego area. Blankets and hygiene kits were given to evacuees in the Lake Arrowhead/Running Springs area. Some 13 chapels have been used as temporary shelters over the last week. Nine semi trucks filled with 16,000 cleaning kits were sent from Salt Lake City to Southern California.