“And now, O Lord, for what do I wait? My hope is in you.” —Psalm 39:7, ESV
As Jeff Naber rode through Calaveras County, California, Wednesday afternoon, he could tell he was getting close to the edge of the fire damage.
“We came around the corner and everything was burned to the ground. Everything,” Naber said. “Every sign of vegetation gone. Just like a desert of black on both sides of the road.”
Naber, the manager of chaplain development and ministry with the Billy Graham Rapid Response Team, arrived in California early Tuesday morning and traveled towards the Butte Fire, blamed for the deaths of at least two people and the destruction of hundreds of homes.
With most of the area evacuated, it was the silence that struck Naber as he surveyed the damage.
“When the wind blows and there are trees and brush, you can hear the wind,” he said. “When it’s just that black nothing, it’s so quiet.”
From time to time he’d spot a chimney or the burned remnants of a car—some of the only indications a house had stood in that place.
He met some of the residents who had lived in those houses just days earlier when he visited a casino-turned-shelter on the outskirts of the fire.
“When I walked in, there must’ve been 300 people,” Naber said. “Families. It was just a sea of displaced people.
“Everybody I talked to was crying. I mean everybody. They don’t know if their house is still standing. They don’t know about their pets. They were just run out of the area, evacuated. I was there a few times when the firefighters came up to them to let them know their house was lost.”
Naber talked to one woman who saw the fire coming her way as she evacuated just in time. She hadn’t received any news about her home but believed it was gone.
“She said in her mind she just had that image of her house, and when she goes back she knows it’s going to look totally different,” Naber said. “It was an opportunity for me to just talk to her, pray with her and let her know that God’s here forever for us.”
Naber, who is working side by side with sister ministry Samaritan’s Purse to minister to residents and first responders, will soon be joined by nine other chaplains from California and beyond.
While that group ministers at the Butte Fire, a separate team of 10 chaplains will be serving four hours northwest in Middletown, California, where the Valley Fire has caused massive devastation.
“Right now the grieving process has just begun, and I think it’s still a stage of shock,” Naber said. “People are just kind of bewildered. When they do go back in, you know how that’s going to be emotionally and spiritually—a lot of turmoil. That’s when we can minister by being present with people, by praying and by sharing the Gospel.”
As he stood in the middle of Angels Camp Thursday morning, Naber looked out at the parts of the valley the fire hadn’t touched and saw signs of hope in the beauty of God’s creation.
“There’s a hillside full of firefighters,” he said. “Probably 500 of them here. The sun’s coming up over the mountains, and it’s just beautiful. Like any of the disasters that we go to, there is so much devastation and destruction, but when I look out over this valley it’s just rolling hills, and the sun is rising over the fairgrounds.”
As the fires continue to burn out, Naber is praying for opportunities to share hope with people who have lost everything, and praying for them to sense God’s presence.
“That doesn’t mean that they’re not going to feel the pain and everything that comes when you lose everything you’ve worked for,” Naber said. “But I pray they have peace.”
