The Westwood Recreation Center was one of the first places to open up for people displaced by the Palisades Fire, the largest of the devastating wildfires tearing through Los Angeles.
Inside the center, cots with Red Cross blankets are lined up in the gym for about 120 people. The Red Cross says three quarters of them are seniors.
It's not full yet, but it's getting there.
Volunteers say older Angelenos are especially vulnerable to last week's wildfires. In some places, older people had to be evacuated from assisted living facilities and nursing homes, at times chaotically. Early on, equipment and qualified personnel were in short supply. Others evacuated from their homes and packed into shelters like this one.
Phil Brock, 71, and Kathy Boole, 75, came here to help serve lunch.
They were able to evacuate to a hotel. So far their houses are OK. Brock used to be the mayor of Santa Monica, just south of Pacific Palisades.
He says older people already struggling with their health and mental health will struggle more. And the ones who lived in their homes for the longest stand to lose the most.
" I was talking to a couple inside who lost their house" Brock says. "And as I leaned over to touch the mother's shoulder, I said, 'It's almost like you've lost the museum of your life.'"
Brock says it's also hard for people who didn't own their homes. He spoke to one senior who rented his home for decades, and, now that the home has burned down, he doesn't know how to find a new rental.
What's more, Brock says, many older people struggle to find basic information.
"One lady said, 'I don't know if the evacuation order has been lifted. How do I find out?," Brock says.
Sarah James, 76, was staying with friends when the Palisades Fire started. The friends evacuated. Sarah slept in her car. She saw the fire coming over the hill. Then the ash and smoke filled the air.
When I ask James when she got to the shelter, it takes a minute for her to answer.
"Because I'm not sleeping," she says. "I close my eyes and think that I'll go to sleep, instead they pop open in 20 minutes and I'm wide awake."
James didn't have permanent housing before the fires. She stayed with people from her church, or in hotels. She says this is why she's not as attached to her stuff as other people at the shelter.
Francoise Mira, James' cotmate, lived in her house in Pacific Palisades since she was 4. She's 64 now.
Mira says a friend told her when the fire started. At first she wasn't worried.
"I might've taken a little bit of a nap," she says. "But then, you know, about four o'clock, the fire had moved way east, and I could see it in the little space I have between the McMansions. And it was coming down the hill, and I'd never seen fire there before."
So Mira left and came to the shelter. A few days later her neighbor's son sent her a picture of the empty space where the neighbor's house used to be. Mira thinks that must mean her house is gone, too.
"I am 98 percent sure," she says.
Now, she says she doesn't know where to start. She has her phone but she can't log into any of her accounts. She wrote down all her passwords in a book.
"My password book is in ashes at home," she says. "My password book was like two inches thick."
For now, Mira says she is focused on the things she can get done. Make sure she can keep her service dog, Puff. Others were separated from their pets. Refill the 15 medications she takes every day. Get oxygen at night to treat her COPD. Take a shower. Find a comb.
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