02-05-2025
'This will be led by the community': Local groups look to help Borel Fire victims
Mattresses, food, financial support, a disabled access ramp for a home, a new house — those are just some of the diverse needs of families impacted by the Borel Fire that local groups are left to figure out how to provide.
Meeting at the Kern County Emergency Operations Center on Panorama Drive, several local government and nonprofit groups came together Thursday to discuss how to move forward with guiding recovery for victims of last summer's devastating inferno.
"Their lives have been changed by the fire," Kern County Emergency Services manager Georgiana Armstrong said. "Now it's a matter of can they get some help to get back on their feet to restart their lives?"
It was the first meeting of local organizations since the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced it would not issue a disaster declaration for the Borel Fire.
The Borel Fire started off Highway 178 in the Kern River Canyon last July and quickly grew to be the county's largest fire in history at 60,000 acres.
Yet despite the size of Borel, the fire didn't affect enough people to meet FEMA's threshold for a major disaster declaration, which means it'll fall to local groups to help residents recover.
The agency announced last month it had denied the state's appeal for a declaration.
Gathered for Thursday's meeting were representatives of the American Red Cross; United Way of Eastern Central California; Catholic Charities of Bakersfield; Kern County and the California Office of Emergency Services, or CalOES; and others.
The groups and government representatives came together with the goal of coordinating and combining their resources to provide some kind of relief.
"This will not be a government-led process," Armstrong said. "Kern County is involved only in this part for the coordination, to support the process, but this will be led by the community, it will be led by non-government entities."
Several groups have already been working with impacted families to provide what resources they can, but non-government groups were holding off on any potential rebuilding efforts until FEMA made its determination.
Now with the FEMA question answered, the groups are coming together to identify what kind of help they can provide, and who they can provide it to.
Catholic Charities of Bakersfield has been working with 30 families since the outbreak of the fire, according to Genesis Gonzalez, the group's disaster case manager.
The families have varying needs, Gonzalez said. Some only experienced minor damage to their homes, while others lost everything.
"Seventeen of those 30 families have challenging cases," Gonzalez said. "A lot of them have taken out loans, a lot of them don't have vehicles, and we do have some renters that lost the home that they were in."
Of the families she's been working with, Gonzalez said, five families total decided to move out of the area completely and another 10 families are still deciding whether to rebuild or move away. Many of them had no insurance.
"The majority of them are living with their relatives, with friends," Gonzalez said. "We have one family that purchased a mobile home, which is in really bad condition."
The various groups present at Thursday's meeting brought different issues to the table; the mission now is to coordinate their respective resources.
"Once we get all the players to the table, we will probably develop a very small group, maybe just a few people, that would have more specific information to make some comparisons," said Charlene Sargent, chairwoman of Kern County Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster, or VOAD.
"So that if we do have some organizations that are willing to help with repairs or rebuilding, that we can prioritize and help them identify who they need to help the most," she said.
Another meeting of the group is scheduled for early June and in the meantime, groups were asked to tap into their own networks to try to bring additional partners to the table, particularly those that could provide financial support.
The groups would also work to form a committee to help share specific information about the families being helped, and which needs were the greatest.
Participants also discussed holding a public outreach campaign in the coming months, particularly with the one-year anniversary of the fire approaching in July, with specific needs identified for impacted families.
"Unfortunately, we can't commit to making all of these families whole again, but we can certainly try to do whatever we can," Sargent said.
