From Angelus News in Los Angeles:
As he drove frantically past charred buildings along the smoky streets of Altadena in his SUV early Wednesday morning, Deacon José Luis Díaz had one prayer on his mind: God, please spare my church.
A few hours earlier, Díaz and his family had been roused from their beds by a cellphone alert ordering them to evacuate as fierce, dry Santa Ana winds pushed the Eaton Fire into their Altadena neighborhood. They packed up a few belongings and went to the Pasadena Convention Center nearby, one of several public shelters set up for local evacuees.
Shortly after falling asleep in a cot, he was awakened again — this time by his wife.
“José Luis, they’re saying the church is on fire!” his wife, Maria Esther, told him.
If it weren’t for those two fateful wake-up calls — and quick thinking by Díaz a few moments later — Sacred Heart Church in Altadena would not have survived.
By the time Díaz pulled up to Sacred Heart with his son-in-law around 7:30 Wednesday morning, he found two other parishioners trying to put out a patch of flames burning the wooden roof near the church’s boiler room.
“There were houses next door, in front, and behind the church that were already on fire,” said Díaz, who’s served at Sacred Heart since he was ordained a permanent deacon for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles in 2015.
Díaz quickly unlocked a maintenance room and pulled out a ladder and an iron pipe. Then the team got to work: Two of them propped up the ladder so that Diaz could use the pipe to break shingle tiles on a side roof of the church, while another poured water from a garden hose on the flames.
“We almost didn’t have water pressure in the hose,” said Díaz. “So we had to do everything we could to put it out.”
Their efforts kept the roof fire, which had been sparked by embers flying from burning homes down the street, from spreading to the rest of the church. The four men stayed on the scene for most of the morning, breaking tiles and finally extinguishing the last of the stubborn flames. When Diaz opened the church to look for any damage inside, he was relieved to find the sanctuary in good condition, besides some heat damage to a church door, and likely smoke damage throughout.
