As the tales of kindness and camaraderie shined through amid loss and devastation from the Los Angeles wildfires, an off-duty volunteer firefighter has reunited with a Pacific Palisades family whose home he tried to save from the inferno.
Alejandro Silva, a National Guardsman and firefighter in San Diego, said he was attending EMT training at UCLA when the Palisades Fire broke out. The off-duty firefighter was taking pictures of the raging Palisades Fire when he saw the Kedeshain family fighting for their home.
“I remember we started doing pretty much the suppression,” Silva recalled. “Then I asked (the family) if they had a chainsaw or something to cut the trees, because what can we do? I was like, ‘Well, you have a lot of vegetation, so we can cut it off.’”
The strangers stood side by side, fighting the flames, until it became clear they were no match for the unrelenting flames.
“I said to my mom, ‘There’s no more water,’” Kim Kedeshian recalled.
The family and Silva left the home, unsure what would happen next.
Silva said he returned to the area the next morning and witnessed the devastation first hand.
“I was like, ‘Maybe their house made it.’ But once I made that corner, I saw pretty much everything just flat,” Silva recalled. “That’s when the heartbreak came in.”
After losing her home and her business, Kay Bakery, in the fire, Kedeshian said she’s found peace in her current circumstances.
“I have an electric car now, so I just plug it in. Super easy. I have one set of dishes. Super easy,” Kedeshian, who now lives in Playa Vista, said while laughing.
“I do feel like the people we’ve come in contact with have showered us with (kindness), really.”