By Chad Terhune
PASADENA, California (Reuters) – Thousands of jubilant fans packed Southern California’s Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day for a college football playoff game.
Nine days later, hundreds of firefighters and other emergency workers were streaming in for a grim task and making this Pasadena landmark their temporary home for the foreseeable future.
Dozens of firefighters were sleeping on Friday morning in small tents outside the stadium, exhausted from battling the nearby Eaton fire overnight.
Fire trucks from Sacramento, Lake Tahoe and other areas drove in and joined the sprawling base camp. Workers hustled to raise tents to serve meals and police directed traffic.
A.J. Lester, a spokesperson for the L.A. County Fire Department, said about 1,600 fire personnel were already assigned to the nearby Eaton fire plaguing Altadena and Pasadena and the number of firefighters is “only going to grow.”
That need for more space sparked confusion and chaos on Friday morning across the street, in another Rose Bowl parking lot. A makeshift donation and aid center had sprung up there and hundreds of people flocked to the site early on Friday.
Residents who lost their homes and had to abruptly evacuate filled garbage bags with clothes, snacks, diapers and bottled water strewn across the pavement in giant piles. Others lined up for free breakfast burritos or bent down to pet a therapy dog named Rigby.
Then by mid-morning as the crowd grew ever larger, Pasadena motorcycle police officers told volunteers and residents the aid station had to move immediately to make way for more “fire resources.”
Volunteers scrambled to box up clothes and food and carry them to cars and trucks nearby. Police said the aid center had to relocate to a nearby office building parking lot.
“Stop looking and start packing,” aid worker Damita Goodall yelled to the crowd. “Who’s in charge of those pants and blankets?”
Another volunteer scanned the scene, hands on his hips, saying “There’s more stuff to do than bodies to do it.”
An hour later, most of the area had been cleared but people continued to drive in wanting to donate household goods, clogging the main entry road needed for fire trucks and other heavy equipment.
Earlier on Friday, Denise Doss, 63, was waiting in line for food at the Rose Bowl parking lot and said she was anxious to return to her destroyed home in Altadena to see if anything was salvageable.
She tried returning on Thursday and again on Friday morning but police turned her away at a checkpoint. They told her the area was still unsafe due to embers burning and the potential for ruptured gas lines.
“I want to see if anything is there,” Doss said. “At least to say goodbye until we can rebuild. I will let God lead me.”
Doss lost the Altadena home she shared with her 86-year-old father as well as her home business selling cakes.
Everett Wilson, 78, was also trying to get back into his house in Altadena on Friday after picking up shirts and pants from the donation pile. His home escaped the flames but he worries about looters breaking in.
“I just don’t want someone to take my stuff,” Wilson said under hazy blue skies. He didn’t want to lose his marathon trophies and African American art.
(Reporting by Chad Terhune; Editing by Mary Milliken and Sandra Maler)
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