Local native volunteering in wake of California fires

Footage of fire-ravaged Southern California on the nightly news has seared images of horrific loss here in Nebraska, but for local native Brian Kremer the devastation hits very close to home.
The 1986 AHS graduate spent 22 years as an engineer/paramedic for Ventura City Fire not far from Los Angeles, driving a ladder truck and working on both the urban search and rescue and hazmat teams. He retired in 2023, but remains active in an organization called Firefighters for Christ, which sent a team of volunteers not far from where he lives to provide relief for what is already being called one of the largest natural disasters in American history.
“What Firefighters for Christ does is to encourage firefighters to live their lives for Christ, as Christians, and so we have monthly breakfast meetings and that sort of thing,” he explained. “But we are men of action and we like to do things, so today we’re partnering with another organization called Samaritan’s Purse to help provide disaster relief.”
Kremer called his hometown newspaper to share his experiences from near the front lines of the LA fires, which he said has created devastation that’s simply hard to describe.
“It’s just hard, seeing a whole community like that where 75 percent of the structures are just gone,” he said from a church in Westwood where Samaritan’s Purse was coordinating relief efforts on Thursday. “It’s just heartbreaking to see people’s family homes where they grew up just gone. It’s not easy for anybody.”
The organization’s North American Ministries staff and Billy Graham Rapid Response Team chaplains have set up base camps at two California churches to serve the victims of the Eaton and Palisades fires. Those blazes and others in the LA County area have claimed dozens of lives in recent days and burned more than 12,000 structures. As the infernos have already tragically consumed tens of thousands of acres, many homes, schools, and livelihoods have been reduced to ashes.
Kremer and his fellow volunteers are all retired, though some had worked recently in Pacific Palisades, a city of 23,000 located at ground zero of the LA-area inferno.
“I worked for LA City Fire for 32 years and I was assigned to the Palisades my last two years,” said retired Cape. David Cohen, who was volunteering alongside Kremer last week. “When I was a little kid my grandparents lived in the trailer park in the Palisades and that whole trailer park, except for one, burned to the ground. I remember going there as a little kid and then I became a captain and you get to know the community and everything. That community there was just so supportive so this is just heartbreaking to see everything destroyed.”
Cohen described the Palisades as a diverse community, especially from an economic perspective.
“There are obviously some of the wealthiest people in the entire world living there,” he said. “But there’s also people who were just school teachers and nurses and whatever that bought a house back in the ‘50s or ‘60s for $25,000 and you know it just happens to be a $3.5 million house now.”
Cohen shared an example of family friends who spent their whole lives in the ministry and now have lost their valuable home.
“They were missionaries, so they have zero savings,” he said. “Their savings was their house and they were hoping to pass the house on to the kids, and that’s all they had. I don’t know what their insurance situation was, but yeah, it’s devastating. But you know, they just worked and live there and it’s a really tight-knit community. They do a lot of activities so people know each other and have a nice community, and it’s been destroyed.”
“Some of these people are house rich and cash poor,” Kremer observed. “A lot of these folks are either underinsured or they don’t have any insurance, so I think that’s an important message to get out, too.”
“As a firefighter you kind of get to know the community,” Cohen continued, noting that Fire Station 23 where he served as a captain not long ago survived the fire. “You get to know the people and it’s like your second home. It was just a really nice place to be, and now it’s just been destroyed.”
Called in to help a few miles from the fires that were still raging as of Thursday, volunteers with Samaritan’s Purse provide disaster relief in various ways, Kremer reported.
“Right now we’re at a church parking lot where they’ll bring in 50 or 60 volunteers and then people from the fire will come to the base camp and say, ‘Hey, can you guys help me recover some of my personal items,’” he said. “So they’ll send sifting teams out to help recover those items because the government doesn’t like to have people sifting through the ash.
“Say somebody’s got a diamond ring laying under the rubble,” he described. “They’ll say it was in a bedroom, where a wall came down, so Samaritan’s Purse will set up sifting teams with screens to try to get back jewelry, personal items and that kind of thing.”
Helping out in that way, through an established relief organization, is rewarding, Kremer said, especially for a former firefighter who knows the area well. 
“As a retired firefighter from Ventura City, I’m also a chaplain with Firefighters for Christ so this week some guys went on a really critical call involving a child,” he said. “They just needed some grief counseling, so I went with a therapist and talked to the crew that went on that call.”
It’s also heartwarming, he added, to know that people from all over the country are volunteering to help in similar ways in the wake of the LA fires.
“In fact, if anybody from Aurora or anywhere wants to volunteer, they could sign up with a church group or come out by themselves and help out with any of these disasters,” he said. “Samaritan’s Purse will house them, feed them and provide all the logistics, even the sleeping quarters, so all they would have to do is get a plane ticket out here and then they could serve for, you know, one week, as a church group, individually or whatever. I even met the guy who invented the Zamboni on one of these trips, so you just never know who you’re going to meet. You’re working with people from all over the United States, not just California people.”

About Samaritan’s Purse
Samaritan’s Purse is an evangelical Christian humanitarian aid organization that provides aid to people in physical need as a key part of its Christian missionary work. The organization’s president is Franklin Graham, son of Christian evangelist Billy Graham. The name of the organization is derived from the New Testament Parable of the Good Samaritan. With international headquarters in Boone, N.C., the organization also maintains warehouse and aviation facilities in nearby North Wilkesboro and Greensboro.
For more information about Samaritan’s Purse, Kremer encouraged anyone interested to go to www.samaritanspurse.org.