Float Honoring Wildfire Survivors Wins Rose Parade® Award
The phoenix stood tall in fiery colors, as it set off atop a float in the famous Rose Parade® on New Year’s Day – symbolically conveying to a worldwide audience that survivors of the devastating Eaton and Palisades fires are rising up together.
That vision to create a tribute to wildfire survivors moved the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Association to award the float the Fantasy Award for “most outstanding display of fantasy and imagination.” Created from the collective hands and hearts of hundreds of volunteers as a tribute to the courage, resilience and unity of survivors, the float is rich with symbolism: a phoenix rising from the ashes. Sunflowers to remember 31 residents who perished in the Jan. 7 fires that devastated Altadena, Pasadena, Pacific Palisades and Malibu. A monarch butterfly with fluttering wings to symbolize rebirth and transformation.
“The community is reimagining a better future for themselves,” said California Community Foundation President and CEO Miguel A. Santana, whose organization co-sponsored the float with the Black Freedom Fund. “It’s very clear that the community is not forgetting survivors. It is really a representation of the love that survivors are building for each other and that the community has for them.”
Marc Philpart, president and CEO of the Black Freedom Fund, said the award affirmed the community’s vision for recovery. “It really cements the hard work that so many survivors have put into building the float and ensuring that the world was aware of their need and the opportunity to continue to support their efforts as they seek to rebuild,” he said.
The float, “Rising Together,” carried eight riders – all of them wildfire survivors – who waved to the crowds during the journey down Orange Grove and Colorado Boulevards in Pasadena. Nestled among the float’s flowers were peach-hued roses bearing the names of those who perished and messages to them from their loved ones.
Zaire Calvin walked alongside the float to honor his sister, Evelyn, and others lost to the flames. He said it was particularly meaningful that his sister’s advice – make time to stop and smell the roses – was memorialized in a message to her that he placed among the float’s 70,000 orchids, mums, carnations and other natural materials.
Ruben Rodriguez, bundled up against the morning rain, said he was humbled by the honor to represent other survivors as a float rider. The retired carpenter lost his home to flames and faces a huge gap between his rebuilding costs and what his insurance company has paid out. But he feels blessed by his float experiences.
“Yes, we lost our houses, but something that I learned, that sometimes we forget, is that many good people are willing to help,” he said, noting that neighbors he never knew dropped off Christmas gifts.
Survivors, however, continue to struggle – a message the float aims to convey to the parade’s global audience. More than 13,000 people lost their homes – 70% of them still displaced and many experiencing financial instability, depression and stress.
Survivors shared stories, tears, smiles and hugs during 10 days of decorating the float together and bonding at social events and a memorial breakfast to honor those taken by the fires.
“It is our intention that if even for one day, as you see the float, go down a very familiar route for us as Angelenos, that you know that you are not alone, that we all stand with you and that we’re here to support you through this very painful journey,” Santana told survivors at the memorial breakfast at the Rosemont Pavilion in Pasadena, where volunteers decorated the float. “It is a small way to demonstrate our shared love for each other, for our community. We thank you for your courage and your resilience and for your insistence that we not forget.”
Lisa Kohlenberger, whose Altadena house remains gutted and uninhabitable, squirted glue onto eucalyptus leaves that would cover the tail feathers of the phoenix. She said decorating the float has been “therapeutic” for her, as she connects with other survivors and trades information about where they lived, which businesses are still standing, which friends they have in common.
The camaraderie helped ease her stress from the constant fights with her insurance company over remediation and the tension still triggered by the sound of alarms and smell of smoke. “It felt important for me to be here,” she said. “This has been my life for the last year.”
Myra Burg, an artist whose Malibu home burned to the ground, was joyful as she climbed up scaffolding to place black beans around the lavender mums that encircled the phoenix’s eye. Burg said she has turned a corner on her grief, no longer feeling damaged but inspired by the creative energy around the float experience.
“I get a little goosebumpy,” said Burg, one of the float riders. “Look at what a group of people can do in a short time.”
Christian Allen lives in the Hollywood area and was not directly hit by the fires, but the resilience of the survivors has touched him so much he has volunteered to help decorate the float every day. As he glued coconut onto the wings of a monarch butterfly – which leads the float as a symbol of transformation – he said he was “giddy” at the chance to work with them to create a float for a parade he used to watch every year as a boy growing up in Detroit.
“It’s such a community,” he said. “I’m volunteering with people who lost their homes but still have a smile on their face every day.”
The float began to take shape in mid-December, as Artistic Entertainment Services began building the chassis and welding together the phoenix and other structures with pencil steel. After covering the shapes with wire mesh and spraying it with a paintable substance, the decorating began on Dec. 21.
The 45-foot float features orchids, mums, carnations, roses and strawflowers. Rice, orange lentils, red cranberry seeds, macaroon coconut, walnuts, pine cones, lemon leaves.
So many volunteers helped with the float that the work was finished ahead of schedule. They included Johanna Schor, who became a CCF donor two months ago to support her passions around social justice, immigration reform, child care, health and welfare. She volunteered so she could participate firsthand in CCF work, which she said was particularly meaningful for her since so many of her friends lost their homes in the fires.
David Wheeler Newman, CCF Board of Directors chair, lost his Palisades home to wildfire while he and his wife were out of town. When Santana brought the board the proposal to sponsor the float – which uses no wildfire relief funds for survivors – Newman said he had one question: When can I help decorate?
A lifelong Angeleno, he had seen the Rose Parade@ many times but never before decorated a float. On this day, he placed red carnations onto the body of the phoenix and reflected on the many struggles still facing survivors in this cataclysmic year.
Still, he felt the call of the phoenix: hope.
“It’s super exciting to be here, and super meaningful for it to be this year and for CCF to be celebrating the resilience of our region and play a role in enabling people to have some hope and pathways to begin to rebuild their lives,” he said.
– Teresa Watanabe
Photos by Wally Skalij.