Healing After the Blaze Brings Hope and Support to Boyle Heights
For 78-year-old Boyle Heights resident Vealicia Rivera, the June fire at the giant Lineage cold storage warehouse near her home has turned daily life into a struggle. The blaze and its aftermath released noxious fumes from rotting food into the wider East Los Angeles community. Since then, Rivera has been to the emergency room several times for bronchitis and still sometimes feels “the raspiness and that my throat is clogging up.”
But Rivera, a retired house cleaner, said she has found respite at the community garden of Adventist Health White Memorial medical center in her neighborhood. There, she joins the weekly Fire Relief Workshops designed to help community members cope with the physical and emotional effects of one of the most troubling public health disasters in recent Los Angeles history. Those sessions, offered by the hospital’s Community Well Being Center under the guidance of mental health professionals, operate as a kind of outdoor group therapy program; they also provide connections to other needed services and emergency supplies.
The workshops “help us stay strong. We can forget a little bit about the stuff that is going on around us,” Rivera said in Spanish, translated by a hospital staffer.
Those Monday morning sessions, Rivera said, have boosted her spirits as she and others share personal stories about the challenges from the Lineage food warehouse blaze. They talked about living with closed windows in brutal summer heat and making sure their blood pressure and diabetes don’t worsen. Workshop attendees often receive free fruits and vegetables grown in the urban garden. They worked together on art projects to tap creativity and relieve stress.
Adventist Health White Memorial started the “Fire Relief Workshops” as a pilot program in response to the blaze and the subsequent plagues of odors, rats and flies. Support from the California Community Foundation has helped expand those efforts and provide essential resources, including 2,500 N95 masks, many air purifiers and pantry food for affected families as the massive cleanup at Lineage drags on.
Part of the national chain of hospitals affiliated with the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, Adventist Health White Memorial began as a small Boyle Heights clinic east of downtown Los Angeles in 1913 and is now a 350-bed neighborhood landmark. Since the warehouse fire began, the hospital has seen substantial increases in the number of patients seeking care for respiratory problems, eye irritations, rashes, headaches and dizziness, officials report. In addition, more area residents sought emotional support and food supply assistance.Many residents continue to feel anxious about the fire’s effects, said Mauricio Ramos-Aviles,
Philanthropy and Community Development Manager for the Adventist Health White Memorial Charitable Foundation. For some, the experience has also brought back bad memories of the January 2025 Eaton wildfirein Altadena which sent smoke into East Angeles.
“The emotional support provided through these workshops makes a big difference,” Ramos-Aviles said. The program reflects Adventist Health’s whole-person approach to care, addressing physical, emotional and spiritual needs, he added.
On a recent Monday morning, about 14 participants plus several staff members came to the Community Well-Being Center garden for a session devoted to creativity. The group was comprised mainly of senior Latino immigrant women who spoke in Spanish during the class, reflecting the overwhelmingly Latino flavor of Boyle Heights.
After an inclusive prayer offered by the center’s chaplain Edgar Urbina, work began at long picnic tables under a shade structure. Art teacher Martha Navarro guided the enthusiastic group to use chalk and watercolors to draw and paint images of a tree in the style of French Impressionist artist Claude Monet.
The garden setting is a wonderful surprise to newcomers amid the otherwise crowded streets and adjacent freeways. Its lush half-acre contains apple trees, a potato patch, tomato rows, corn stalks, vegetable boxes, sunflowers and a chicken coop with egg-dropping tenants. Its entrance on Bridge Street near the Boyle Street Elementary School is marked by a sculptural gate and a sign proclaims: “Welcome. This is a garden for everybody. Take care of it. Enjoy it. Respect it.” The hospital runs hands-on classes there on urban farming and healthy diets, with veggies and fruit taken home. The pungent odors have recently stopped reaching the hospital area, which is located four miles from the warehouse fire.
Among the younger participants was Althana Avalos, 33, who brought two of her three children: Andrew, eight-months-old and in a stroller, and Angel, who is nine. They live half a mile from the contaminated warehouse and had to evacuate into a shelter for a while. The family has suffered resulting health problems including asthma, headaches, rashes and nosebleeds and depression. They are back in their house now, with windows closed, “like a prison” and welcomed the chance to join the outdoor art lesson and also talk to hospital representatives about referrals for medical and psychological care.
Both she and Angel happily created colorful tree paintings as Navarro circulated around the table, shouting encouragement.
“This helped me forget about what we are going through at least for a couple of minutes. It helped me emotionally,” Avalos said. She started out the day with back pain but the art project, she said, “relieved the pain.”
The workshops are offered in partnership with Wellnest, a Los Angeles-based organization specializing in mental health services for children and families. Angela Perez, a Wellnest program manager and licensed therapist, explained that the sessions she facilitates have started with discussion of the putrid pollution and then extended into personal challenges such “as the loss of a family member.” Other topics have included coping skills and healthy eating.
The workshops create “a camaraderie” and shows participants that “a lot of people are going through the same thing,” Perez explained. And the setting helps because “it’s nature, it’s relaxing, it’s out in the open. That in itself is therapeutic.”
For more information about Adventist Health White Memorial’s community resources and programs: adventisthealth.org/white-memorial/giving/about-us/signature-programs/
– Larry Gordon
