Just hours before a Christmas toy giveaway and celebration for hundreds of people was to take place there, a decades-old church in Pomona was destroyed in a second-alarm fire early Sunday.
Firefighters described the scene as a “total loss.”
Shortly before 3 a.m. Sunday, firefighters responded to Victory Outreach Pomona at 177 W. Monterey Ave. They knocked down the blaze just past 6 a.m. according to a county fire department dispatcher.
No injuries were reported and the cause of the fire is under investigation.
“It’s a tough morning for us, because today we were getting ready to have our outreach for the whole community. We were going to give gifts; we had 500 people already registered,” Rev. Robert Garcia said in an interview with KTLA.
The church was filled with heavy smoke and fire as firefighters arrived and began to conduct an aggressive attack inside the church, Los Angeles County Fire Capt. Sheila Kelliher Berkoh said on ABC7.
After about 20 minutes, she said, the fire began to expand and the roof started to collapse, leading firefighters to scramble outside and “go into defensive mode and defensive operation.”
Video from the scene after daybreak showed some congregants gathering at the scene of the rubble outside the church, taking in the destruction.
A GoFundMe was set up to help the church. It had raised $5,810 as of 10:30 a.m.