NPR reports that as neighborhoods in the Los Angeles metropolitan area faced destruction due to a series of historic and deadly wildfires, immigrants gathered buckets and hoses to help try to stop the devastation from spreading. Housekeeper Maria Garcia, who is undocumented, said she doesn’t even live in the neighborhood where an NPR reporter took a picture of her hosing down the rubble. She just couldn’t stop thinking about what was happening and felt like she had to do something:
She couldn’t sleep Tuesday night knowing houses there were burning. So she got out of bed early Wednesday and said to her children: “Let’s go help, if we can.”
She called her brothers and some friends and they all gathered buckets and hoses and drove into a part of the Altadena community where houses were ablaze. Then they got to work putting out fires.
“Our values and our principles come first, that’s what our parents taught us,” Garcia said. “They always used to say, help others without concern for who they are or why they need help.”
“You don’t need to have legal papers or be a U.S. citizen to help others,” Juan Carlos Pascual Tolentino, another immigrant helper, told NPR. “When you support someone, you strengthen your union with them. When you stop and ask if they could use a hand, they’ll remember that.” In other parts of L.A., immigrants are also helping clear downed trees and marshal support for community members in need. Hundreds of volunteers at the Pasadena Community Job Center, which has been serving as an emergency center for the day laborer community, have been collecting donations and delivering water and food, Capital & Main reports. “We have to love each other and help each other,” said volunteer Bernardo Pedro. “That’s the main thing we have to do in these disasters.” See a great video of the efforts from the Associated Press here.
Immigrants are fighting our fires. They serve in our military. They died with us on 9/11. They contribute to our economy. They care for our elderly. They power so many essential industries.We should be grateful. I am. www.npr.org/2025/01/10/n…
— Ruth Zakarin (@ruthz.bsky.social) 2025-01-11T15:34:47.351Z
But amid the mutual aid efforts, José Madera, director of the job center, told the outlet that he worries about undocumented and mixed-status families and the difficulty they could have as they help others recover. Capital & Main:
The fire burned a supermarket in Altadena, where Madera said undocumented people worked. “They’re out of work now. …And undocumented people don’t receive any unemployment benefits,” he said. “How are they going to provide for their families? How are they going to pay rent? How are they going to buy food?”
Families who lost everything have turned to the job center, Madera said. Earlier on Thursday, a mother, father and their two kids arrived looking for help. Their home was destroyed by the fire and they were sleeping in their car.
[…]
But Madera emphasized the importance of outreach efforts tailored to the community. “At the job center, something we always say is, ‘Solo el pueblo salva al pueblo’ — only the community saves the community — because we strongly believe the community knows the community,” Madera said.
These mutual aid and community-led recovery efforts are inspiring – and not at all surprising. We know from past disasters that immigrants have been critical to recovery efforts. In fact, immigrant workers have been so essential to disaster recovery, that a statue in New Orleans honors the Latino workers who helped rebuild the city following Hurricane Katrina. It will be a similar story in California. “The full scale of the devastation will be hard to tally for some time,” León Krauze writes at The Washington Post. “One thing, however, is certain: the rebuilding of Los Angeles will rely heavily on immigrants”:
Immigrant construction workers are not just vital in emergencies. In California alone, immigrants make up 40 percent of the state’s overall construction workforce. The entire U.S. construction industry depends on their labor year-round. According to the National Association of Home Builders, 31 percent of workers in construction trades nationwide are foreign born. Most plasterers, ceiling tile professionals and most roofers are immigrants. About 23 percent of those workers are undocumented. Almost 40 percent of drywall installers, for example, lacks a permanent legal status in the country.
Immigrants will be the ones bringing Los Angeles back from the ashes. Without them, the city will struggle to recover.
But even as immigrants, including those without legal immigration status, will be asked to help L.A. recover, they will be providing their critical and essential skill sets under the cloud of mass deportation. “As during the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States is asking its immigrant workforce to perform essential tasks,” Krauze concludes. “The least it can do in return is to grant them peace and security instead of subjecting them to persecution and discrimination.”