CHICAGO (WLS) — Local American Red Cross volunteers from Illinois are now in California, supporting wildfire relief efforts there.

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ABC7 spoke with Vicky Brown, a volunteer from Rockford, on Friday morning. She is leaving for the fire zone on Saturday as many now face an uncertain future.

“Emotionally, you know you’re going to hear a lot of heart-wrenching stories,” Brown said.

Brown, who has 45 years of experience with the Red Cross, spent a month in the northeast, supporting disaster relief after Hurricane Helene. Now, she is heading to California.

“I’ve never quite dealt with this many people. Helene was horrendous, and this one is shaping up to affect so many people that have lost everything,” Brown said.

Before the swanky streets of Pacific Palisades were fully emblazoned, Tuesday afternoon Danielle Ryan startled awake to a desperate call from family in Chicago.

“My sister was calling, calling and right when I looked out my window, I could see all the smoke and then all my neighbors were just evacuating,” Ryan said.

Ryan only took one photo took as she fled her new apartment home. The smoke was already moving in, and the famed Sunset boulevard was already slammed with evacuees just as panicked.

“I’m suppose to start work on Monday,” Ryan said. “I’m texting my landlord like, ‘Is my place still standing?’ They’re like, ‘I don’t know.’ It’s really scary.”

Now, most of her building is burned to the ground, a skeleton of one of the country’s priciest stretches of real estate.

The famed school where the Chicago native was supposed to begin teaching, Pacific Palisades High School, is gone.

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Highland Park native and Smashing Pumpkins singer Billy Corgan was forced to evacuate to escape the Los Angeles wildfires.

Corgan described an apocalyptic situation on social media, saying, “We lost power last night and that was pretty intense, because obviously with the power out, it’s hard to get information and you know you’re almost fearful of going to bed lest you miss an alert or something.”

ABC7’s Liz Nagy was also on the ground in Southern California Thursday evening, speaking with people who fled the Altadena area.

“We just don’t know what to do. We’re at a loss,” said Joelle Fortune, who lost her home in the Altadena wildfire.

One family said the power went out early Thursday morning. They packed up their things and left within five minutes as the flames neared their street.

“The big gust of wind came through and the new fire just went right through our front yard. Our backyard was on fire. Next day, we went up there and everything was gone. Our whole neighborhood was burned. Whole neighborhood burned down,” said Debbie Simmons, who lost her home in the Altadena wildfire.

Red stairs that led to what was their backdoor was the only thing they could recognize of their second-generation family home, which they lived in for 47 years.

It feels like their lives, they said, evaporated in a single moment.

“My kids, they’ve grown up in Altadena. And it’s such a community and such a family. There’s not one family that we don’t know that hasn’t been touched by this,” Fortune said.

Brown is the first of many to be deployed to the fire zone, joining others from around the country.