The Burn and the Rebuild

Clouds of smoke from the 2016 Sand Fire blew into the suburbs of Los Angeles, making it look like an apocalyptic landscape.

“Place is a character in the stories we tell in our magazine.” When asked what I consider distinctive about LMU Magazine, that sentence describes a characteristic that’s among those I most value.

The Society of Jesus began work in Los Angeles in 1911 at a time of explosive growth. In 1890, the city’s population was only some 50,000. By 1910, it had grown to more than 300,000, and continued growth was certain. The Jesuits wanted to build a university and parishes in Southern California. The Society had already established two universities in the Golden State’s Bay Area, the first hub of California. But in Los Angeles they saw a place with need. A commitment to minister is a commitment to place, as well as to people.

When the Jesuits came to Southern California, Los Angeles was in the midst of a process of becoming. Cities are always changing, of course, and we should remember that this basin that contains L.A. was once native land, once Mexican land. For better and for worse, change has transformed this place where we live. By now, in 2025, after more than a century of growth — and immigration — this place has an identity, if not several. 

Perhaps like each of us who live and work here, I have a mental map of this place we call Los Angeles. The sites on my map vary from time to time, and they include prime locations like the Getty Center, Dodger Stadium, and Disney Hall. My map also has permanent pins, so to speak, in Alvarado St., Our Lady Queen of Angels Catholic Church (“La Placita”), the Chinese American Museum, Huntington Gardens, the former Blue Whale jazz club in Little Tokyo, Pershing Square, Union Station, and Sullivan Field. These locations, where people make things, build things, create things, and pray about things, help define this place.

With the wildfires of early January of this year, Los Angeles suffered a severe blow to its sense of place. Entire neighborhoods and large portions of communities were obliterated, leveled, burned down to the ground. Blocks and blocks were reduced to rocks upon rubble. Restaurants, churches, coffee shops, music stores, schools, and even open parks were destroyed. Severe is a massive understatement to describe the damage done. Fernando Guerra, director of LMU’s Thomas and Dorothy Leavey Center for the Study of Los Angeles, describes the wildfires as the “costliest natural disaster in Los Angeles history.”

Friends of mine who lived in Altadena lost their house, a home that was like a refuge to me. I remember a statue of St. Francis in standing in their back yard. It’s the only thing that was left standing.

I not only loved my friends’ home, however. I loved driving up Lake Ave. to visit them. I inevitably found their house not by the names of streets I needed to turn onto but by visual markers I’d see along the way: this church, that coffee shop, a familiar gas station. None of them are standing, and I feel now as if Altadena is nowhere.

At the turn of the 20^th century, the building of Los Angeles took vision, determination, resourcefulness, commitment and sacrifice. They’ll all be needed now in the building of something new. Lives were lost. Homes, and more, are gone in Altadena, Pacific Palisades, Pasadena and Sierra Madre. There is tragedy and catastrophe enough. For now, the immaterial yet necessary sense community also seems to be gone. We’ll need more determination, resourcefulness, commitment, and sacrifice. Community usually takes years to build. Rebuilding it will take just as long.