Wildfire Survivors – People and Animals – Heal Each Other at Big Heart Ranch
The boy was overwhelmed by stress after terrifying wildfires raced down the hills of Pacific Palisades and Malibu, incinerating homes and closing his school for weeks 14 months ago.
But on a sunny March day, David found healing and comfort with another group of wildfire survivors: pigs, bunnies, goats, alpacas and other animals rescued by Big Heart Ranch in Malibu. As he cradled a black chicken in his arms, he was able to let go of the stress triggered by the shutdown of his Malibu Middle School last year, which made it “a lot harder to manage homework and grades and connecting with friends.”
Instead, he focused on the moment, feeling the bird’s soft feathers, warm body, calm energy.
“I feel really, really happy,” David said. “The happiest I’ve felt in a long time.”
More than 50 other survivors and volunteers who helped with fire recovery efforts also attended the daylong healing event offered by the ranch, a wellness center and animal sanctuary, and the Boys and Girls Club of Malibu. The California Community Foundation supported the event – which featured animal interactions, an outdoor sound bath and a communal lunch – as part of a grant program aimed at healing and recovery more than a year after wildfires devastated Altadena, Malibu, Pacific Palisades and Pasadena.
The event helped survivors experience the comforting powers of animals – whose ability to lower blood pressure, heart rate and stress responses are documented in scientific studies. Corey Cardenas, the ranch’s animal specialist who has offered equine therapy since 2011, said animals compel people to be in the present in order to connect with them and feel safe.
“This is the special part: Our animals that are healing, that are finding a forever home, get to heal us,” Cardenas said during the event’s opening.
One survivor, Maggie, said she was heartbroken to see the “jewel box” of her home she had lovingly designed and built burn down in a flash. But the day at the ranch with her husband, Tyler, and their young son, Cooper, was the highlight of this year, she said. After the fires turned their lives upside down, the extreme stress and uncertainty, the lasting feelings of instability and worry, have continued more than a year later, she said.
But at the ranch, they were able to surround themselves with animals, open space and the kindness of others. Watching Cooper touch and study goats, pigs, bunnies and donkeys, his curiosity ablaze, was “magical,” she said. Her own moment of healing came with the horses, animals she grew up with, who comforted her with their large, calm presence.
Later, she said, the family enjoyed lunch sitting together on bales of hay as Cooper happily devoured cookies and snacks with dirt on his hands and frosting on his face.
“It felt wonderfully ordinary in the best possible way,” Maggie said. “In the middle of such a stressful period for our community, that feeling of normal family joy was incredibly healing. Big Heart Ranch created a space where families like ours could reconnect with nature, animals and each other. The kindness and care that went into creating that experience was deeply felt, and it meant more to our family than we can adequately express.”
For Marta and Estele, the Palisades fire wiped out jobs for themselves and their families, throwing them into financial distress. Marta became homeless and had to live in her car for six months when the home she was caring for burned down. She has found another job as a live-in caregiver, but the pay is much lower than what she previously earned, she said, so she tries to pick up cleaning gigs. Construction jobs for Estele’s husband have dried up so he’s trying to make ends meet as a handyman while Estele cleans houses.
The women said, however, that the number of such jobs has plunged because so many people have left the area after the fires and the federal immigration raids have driven down demand for immigrant workers like them. They have survived with the help of Suigen Constanza, the Boys and Girls Club director of community engagement who has helped them secure resources, including Marta’s first request – a shower.
“Everyone is under a lot of stress and worry about how we are going to make it through the day,” said Estele, who is already wondering how she can afford college for her son, a high school senior. “But today feels like a self-care day, a day for myself.”
Another Palisades fire survivor was traumatized by losing her home – and daily life with her family, who moved to an apartment during the rebuilding process without her. That’s because the survivor, Miss Piggy, is a 200-pound black and bristle-backed pig, which no landlord would allow to move in.
Miss Piggy fell into a deep depression after being brought to the ranch and separated from her family, displaying the emotional sensitivity, social memory and high intelligence pigs are known for, said Denise deGarmo, the ranch’s executive director. Miss Piggy became listless and withdrawn, rarely leaving her hut; she endured bullying by a pair of goats and ignored the friendly overtures of Ruby the baby pig, deGarmo said. Her family visits regularly, as does a ranch volunteer who provides massages and music, but it’s not the same as home.
During the healing event, however, Miss Piggy had a watershed moment. For the first time ever, she responded when deGarmo called out greetings by climbing out of her hut, trotting over and dropping to her side for a belly rub. Little Ruby, who was abandoned by her first family, then brought to the ranch by a Good Samaritan to save her from predators, approached as always – and this time, Miss Piggy accepted her nuzzling and licking.
“I almost cried,” deGarmo said. “In that moment it was a breakthrough healing for these two animals. That’s what I love about Big Heart Ranch – it provides the place for that to happen.”
The ranch property, just off Pacific Coast Highway and Trancas Canyon Road, evolved from a plant nursery to a sober living facility to today’s sanctuary. The approximately 85 rescued animals include chickens from factory farms, mini donkeys from hoarders, undersized horses from a carnival, draft horses from another sanctuary, sheep surrendered by a girl who raised them for a 4-H livestock project and wanted to protect them from possible slaughter. The bunnies were found in the Palisades’ fire rubble. Piggles the pot-bellied pig was left in a shoebox at the ranch entrance after the Woolsey fire. Luke the alpaca and Mack and Cain, two goats, are Ojai fire survivors.
But the cost of caring for the animals and repairing the ranch from one natural disaster after another is steep. The CCF grant was a lifesaver, deGarmo said, adding that she hoped to bring in many more supporters to keep the ranch going, the animals safe and the healing alive.
By day’s end, testimonies about the ranch experience filled a giant outdoor blackboard, written by guests asked to describe how they felt after their day there.
David’s words: Connected. Safe.
– Teresa Watanabe
