Nonprofit created by former wildfire survivors helps support Palisades, Eaton survivors through recovery process

CBS News

07-03-2025

A shared experience is helping to heal the hearts and minds of some of those who lost their homes to the wildfires, and it's also giving them the tools to rebuild.
The nonprofit organization, After the Fire USA, connects fire victims to those who have walked this extremely hard path before them. It was born out of the destructive wildfires in the Bay Area back in 2017.
Jennifer Gray Thompson, the founder, believes that the best people to help what she calls "fire survivors" begin to heal and rebuild is those who know exactly what it feels like to lose everything.
"What we do is that we are a fire survivor-based organization. We look at all recovery through the lens of fire survivors," Thompson said. "We advocate for them, we educate along with them, and we convene with them to share best practices from previous fires."
This is After the Fire's second delegation to LA since the fires destroyed thousands of homes. At a meeting, fire survivors from the Palisades Fire sat down with people who lost their homes in fires across the U.S. Reina Pomeroy lost her home in a wildfire in Colorado in 2021. She met with After the Fire survivors in the weeks after the fire.
"They shared their stories and gave us the first glimmer of hope amongst the rubble and told us, you too will get through this," Pomeroy said.
Earlier in the week, the organization also met with survivors from the Eaton Fire.
"This is really a double disaster. These fires are sisters, they are not twins, and what they need is sort of a shared destiny together," Thompson said. "We believe that when that is done you will have the strongest bond between two communities possibly in the U.S."
After the Fire has helped residents from both fire areas mobilize and form what they call "block captains."
"This is a system that actually empowers fire survivors and communities to really drive their recovery, drive the narrative," Thompson said. "It also really helps public policy makers because it flattens the space between what survivors need and want and what policies need to change to remove barriers or make the process better."
Emily Kane Miller is a block captain of her street that was wiped out by the Palisades Fire.
"I am from an area called Las Casas Loop," Kane Miller said. "One hundred and eighty-six homes were on my loop before the fire and all but six burned down, total loss."
As block captain, Kane Miller serves as a point person and an aggregator of information.
"There are folks who have a lot of questions in our neighborhood and our goal is to receive all the info from government and nonprofits and other resources to disseminate that to all our community members who may have questions," Kane Miller said.
One of the most common questions asked by survivors is how long it will take to get back to normal.
"We lost our home in December of 2021, and we got home December of 2023," Pomeroy said. "So just shy of our two-year anniversary."
After the Fire is still recruiting block captains from the Palisades and Eaton fire areas and fire survivors who want to join its megafire response collective.