As the Getty fire raged and the sound of sirens echoed around them Monday morning, dozens of women gathered in the community room at Carondelet Center, a nursing home in Brentwood, where the Sisters of St. Joseph live.
But Monday was not a typical day of prayer at the place nearly 80 retired Roman Catholic nuns call home.
The fire, fueled by winds, heat and dry weather, was burning and destroying homes, threatening thousands more, including theirs.
When Los Angeles Fire Department Capt. Miguel Escobedo walked into the room to give a quick update about the fire, they met him with long applause.
It had been a tense morning, to say the least.
Escobedo arrived to access the area around 2 a.m. Monday and he saw roughly 20 retired nuns walking down the hill in ash-filled smoke, trying to escape the areas as the wind-driven fire — which broke out earlier in the morning — quickly approached their three-story building.
“It was very chaotic,” he said.
Many residents there are in their late 70s and 80s. Eight of them are bedridden. Power lines were down on several streets and the hot spots continued burning. It would have taken multiple vans, buses, ambulances, and dozens of staff, to evacuate the nuns, Escobedo said.
“They would be stuck,” he said.
So, officials decided to keep the residents in the nursing homes’ community room while battling the blaze on the surrounding hillsides, which had forced communities to flee their homes near Getty Center Drive and the 405 Freeway. Within hours, the blaze charred roughly 600 acres and destroyed several homes.
The nuns were allowed to return to their rooms, but later in the day it was still unclear if they would be allowed to leave the facility any time soon.
“We’re trying to keep them informed,” Escobedo said after meeting the women. “They’re extremely at peace.”
And after — and during — all that, the prayers kept coming, for others.
On their Facebook page, the sisters, who support schools across the region from St. Joseph High School in Lakewood to St. Mary’s Academy in Inglewood, said they continued praying for those affected by the fire.
“May God keep everyone safe and bring an end to this very volatile and dangerous situation,” their post sai
Full story at Los Angeles Daily News.
I see the sign “Associates of Peace” how about Associates of Jesus? Of course not, Peace and Justice nuns all in their 80’s and 90’s such a shame what Vatican II did to these once great orders, all of them dying out and fading into Novus Ordo history.
Romulus,
The Second Vatican Council didn’t do it to them. They did it to themselves.
If we don’t identify the true cause, the solution will be erroneous.
Amen, Romulus Augustus, Amen. “Associates of Peace,” indeed. “Associates of Jesus”? Not in OUR lifetime. We have lived to witness the destruction of the Church and the abandonment into the Catacombs of the few remaining faithful. A sad time, indeed, to be alive.