A former pastor from Winnipeg, Greg Janz, and his family are currently facing the threat of the Palisades Fire.
Janz, who formerly led Winnipeg's Evangel Chapel (now called New Beginnings Church), is visiting his daughter, son-in-law, and their children in California during the Christmas holidays.
He confirmed that his family is safe, but they are packed and prepared to leave, as wildfires have already claimed at least 10 lives and destroyed more than 10,000 homes and structures in the past week.
On Tuesday, they were evacuated and spent the night at his daughter's coworker's home. They returned home on Wednesday and Thursday, but by Friday, the fire had moved closer to their area.
"This morning (Friday) we got an evacuation again because two blocks away from my daughter's home, there was a big fire that came over the hill. And what's stirring up these fires is the wind," Janz said in an interview.
"In our area, the wind is like 55-60 miles an hour and it's just been constantly blowing. And so, once a fire starts, you really have no chance of getting it out unless you get on it right at that second. It spread so quickly."
With that bags were quickly packed, and the car was ready to go, only to be given the ok to come back for the time being.
"We are just sitting tight waiting for the next order to evacuate. But it's very devastating for families that have lost everything. Very sad. People are really tense. You can just see the tension in people's faces in our community."
With plans to head home on the weekend, Janz said when the word came out on Tuesday of the wildfires in LA, they didn't take it too seriously at first.
"We thought, 'Well, it's just a little fire in Los Angeles. There's always big news in Los Angeles, right? A fire here or a giant catastrophe because it's such a big city.' But when you saw the magnitude of the fire and just the chaos, you realize that this was something bigger than a headache that L.A. would have."
He described how fast the fires moved
"Tuesday night, when I broke out my son and I, we went on our bicycles, and we just drove up to where the power lines are and it's a really good view. We could just see the glow over the city of LA. If you looked at how big that was, it felt like we were looking at a 40-mile spanse of red glowing skies. There was this huge glow across the panorama. We left that spot to find a better view. An hour later, where we were standing under those power lines, that was all consumed with fire."
He said it was moving very quickly, "I'm not a person who uses the word, but it feels like an apocalypse if you're close to it when it's happening."
As they were packing up to leave on Friday for the evacuation order, Janz said, "I kind of took a quick survey of everything around the house, thinking. 'Well, I hope this is all here when we get back."
What do you pack when you're being evacuated?
"We packed basically our important papers, our medicine, maybe something for overnight, and our chargers in your laptop. And my daughter some extra clothes and snacks for the little people in our family. You travel light and you're ready to go."
Like everyone else, Janz said they are seeing the fires like everyone else on the news and social media, as they are 10 miles away from the fires and no one, for obvious reasons, is allowed near the area. He added his daughter's good friend's home burned to the ground in Aldina on Wednesday.
"People are heartbroken for this family that lost their home. The church that we attend here in Los Angeles, the pastor posted several people that had lost their homes in LA that attended their church. It's quite devastating. You don't have to go very far to find somebody who's been touched by this fire."
Everyone that has time is encouraged to video tape their home as a reminder of the contents and valuables because it could perish very quickly, within minutes. The concern for flying embers across the miles is very real.
The future is uncertain.
When thinking about what recovery for L.A. looks like, Janz admitted he didn’t know.
"There's a lot of cleanup, and then there's a lot of technicalities with the city because they're probably going to have to redesign some of the structures. If you look at Palisades, all those power lines are not underground, everything was built above ground. The high winds would knock the power lines down and that would create a spark. I think how all these fires started. There are neighbourhoods right where we are that have no power to them, and there's no fueling stations open because if you spill some fuel on the ground, I guess they're worried about a spark. So, there are literally neighborhoods in north LA where we are that have no power, no traffic lights are working and everything is just on hold because of these high, high winds that are here."
Praise for the Emergency Crews
On Tuesday at the Palisades, traffic was severely congested as people evacuated their homes. Janz noted that now, when evacuation orders are issued, the police have everything well organized in his daughter's neighbourhood.
"They did a great job. But now everything shut down and they're waiting for the winds to die down. The winds aren't supposed to die down till Monday."
He remarked on how nice it was to see people helping one another and looking out for each other, adding that neighbors are truly watching out for one another in these unfortunate circumstances.
When describing the devastation from this force of nature between the wind and fire, Janz described it as, "It looks like one hundred tornadoes went through there and just ruined everything."
An outpouring of love and support
Although Janz and his family moved to B.C. a few years ago, he is feeling the love from their Manitoba community.
"We have so many good friends in Manitoba and in Winnipeg and we loved all of our years there. It's great that even people from Winnipeg see it and are concerned. Thank you for your prayers. I'm getting lots of text messages that people are praying and believing and hoping. Thank you that God's people are praying for us and other people that are affected by this."
He encourages those praying to extend their prayers to those who have lost everything.
"Pray for rich and poor who have lost their homes. You know, the wealthy people that lost all these amazing mansions, it still affects them and it's still their belongings. They're not immune to this tragedy and it's the other people that are displaced that don't have Plan B. If there's no insurance, where are they really going to go? That's what you hear a lot about in the media. So, pray for these people that are now homeless."
He stated there's a lot of people who are going to need help and hopes the churches and the people of God open their homes and help out in this time of need.
As he and his family sat in their car in the parking lot, he said to one of them, "For people sitting here that have nowhere to go. They say it to themselves, 'Let's go home.’ There's no home. There's no house, but there's no home. There's no comfort. There's no safety. There's no, ‘close the door and leave your problems behind.’ It's them and their vehicle in the parking lot."
Community centers, schools, auditoriums, churches, and animal shelters have all opened their doors to people to find shelter with requests for water, food supplies and meals to be brought there to help those displaced with nowhere to go.
Reminiscent of Manitoba flooding
While it is business as usual in areas not affected by the fire, he equated the overlaying feeling of stress to the years of flooding he remembered in Manitoba.
"In the city, it wasn't that nerve-wracking, but people that were on the outskirts that were sandbagging, it was just a stressful time those years, we had terrible floods there in Manitoba. It kind of feels like that now, you're like, 'Are we ready to go? What are we going to take? And where are we going when we leave the house?' Those are the questions we ask ourselves and we've done it a few times."
As a Canadian, he was proud to hear on the news the Canadian Water Bombers were helping to fight the fires. With his voice perking up, he cheered, "Go Canada!"
Janz and his wife will be heading home this weekend, feeling nervous and with a backup plan in place for his daughter and her family.