Steve Burns and his son Lucian had a good feeling about the Major League Soccer (MLS) Cup Final on December 7.

It was exactly 10 years to the day that they had sat in the same stadium in Los Angeles to watch their beloved Galaxy team lift the trophy. A decade later, and with Lucian now a young man, the Galaxy triumphed again.

“I don’t necessarily believe in destiny,” he explained to CNN Sport. “It just sort of felt unstoppable this year.”

But as the Burns’ celebrated – along with tens of thousands of other supporters – into the night, they could hardly imagine their lives would be totally upended just a few weeks later.

Burns and his family are some of the thousands of people whose homes burned to the ground in the devastating fir es that swept Southern California early this year. He told CNN he’s grateful that he was able to get his family out of their rustic house before it burned to the ground in the early hours of his wife’s birthday in the Eaton Canyon wildfire.

A few days later, he was able to watch a video clip of CNN’s Anderson Cooper broadcasting outside his home of 24 years. The place where he raised his children was now an inferno; completing the apocalyptic scene was the sound of a vehicle exploding close to his property.

“It’s one of those unpleasant images that you wish you wouldn’t have seen,” he lamented. “It kind of forever sticks with you.”

They had managed to save their pets – three cats, three dogs, some geckos, a snake, a turtle and some fish – but little else. All that was left when they returned to El Molino Avenue in Altadena was a brick chimney stack and a pile of smoldering ash. Virtually everything they owned was gone, including their treasured Los Angeles Galaxy soccer jerseys.

Los Angeles is a famous sports city, and a very successful one.

Their franchises are among the biggest in the country: the Lakers, the Dodgers and the Rams have all won championships since 2020 – and the Galaxy are the most successful team in MLS history.

But it’s a city that also tends to lurch from triumph to tragedy and back again.

LA’s densely populated urban center sits precariously on top of the Puente Hills Fault, which has caused numerous earthquakes including the Northridge quake of 1994. At the time, it was the most expensive natural disaster in US history. The city is often unsettled by racial tensions and rocked by the resulting riots, notably the 1992 carnage in the wake of the controversial Rodney King trial. LA has been a powder keg metaphorically, and now it seems literally, with the ever-present threat of wildfires lurking just over the horizon.

Galaxy President Tom Braun told CNN Sport that you can only truly appreciate the scale of the tragedy if you live in LA.

“It’s hard to gauge if you’re not here,” he explained. “But I can assure you it’s absolutely devastating.”

The Galaxy show up for their fans

By cross-referencing last season’s ticket sales data with zip codes in the disaster areas, Braun estimates that more than 11,000 of their fans who cheered for them on their championship run, and likely many more, have been affected.

The club partnered with parent company AEG and the NHL’s Los Angeles Kings to donate $1 million to the Red Cross, gifted apparel and coordinated a donation drive from Galaxy fans to help the victims. The newly won Philip F. Anschutz trophy has been quietly taken to weary fire houses to lift the spirits of the men and women tackling the blazes and when the Galaxy heard of the Burns’ family tragedy, they partnered with the apparel firm Fanatics and invited them to the stadium.

In recounting the visit, Steve Burns described an almost surreal experience as they were invited into the locker room by the club president, where they mingled with the General Manager Will Kuntz and defender Mauricio Cuevas.

They pulled out a phone to share a personalized recorded message from the Galaxy’s legendary midfielder Cobi Jones and handed over two large duffel bags packed with team shirts, hats, scarves and jackets. But there was one more surprise.

“We came around a corner,” Burns told CNN, “and there was Maya Yoshida, waiting for us, holding the MLS Cup and I was just blown away. This guy had been standing there for however long, and he’s standing there holding the cup!”

The Japanese defender is the Galaxy captain, whose contract had expired and was therefore a free agent. Yoshida handed the trophy over to their guests, pulled out a pen, and asked a simple question.

“He’s like, ‘Should I sign it?’ And I thought, God, he’s already signed a jersey for my son, and I thought, like, should I give him mine to sign? He’s like, ‘Should I go sign it? I’ll go upstairs and sign it right now if you guys want me to!’”

Yoshida was about to sign a two-year contract extension, but he was asking the fans, who’d just lost all their worldly possessions, for permission to proceed.

“We were like, ‘Uh, that’d be great. Of course!’ We walked back to the car, kind of stunned.”

Burns and his family were also invited to the team’s season opener against San Diego in February.

“It gives us something to look forward to,” he said. “Like all sports, it’s a nice escape from the realities which sometimes aren’t so pleasant. I really, really appreciated it.”

Trying to do as much as they can

Officials for the Galaxy organization realize that there is only so much they can do to help but say they feel compelled to do as much as they possibly can.

Kuntz vividly remembers his last year of high school in New York City following the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, and how sports teams then rallied to help the community. Speaking of the triggering effect of the burning smell in the Los Angeles air, he recalled volunteering in Lower Manhattan and seeing the impact the New York Giants’ stars Tiki Barber and Amani Toomer had on their community.

“It’s humbling,” he told CNN. “I think it’s been really inspiring to see how some of our guys have responded. It’s still so fresh and new for everybody, but there’s a real call to action among our group.”

The Galaxy players would already have been motivated to defend their title, but Kuntz feels they all now have even more to play for.

“When we have that first game at Dignity Health Sports Park, it’s going to be charged with energy and emotion – reminiscent of Yankee Stadium or those first Knicks games in October and November of 2002. I think that’s when you’ll really see what it means to the players and the fans in the stadium when we all get together again for the first time. It sounds cliché to say we’re a part of the city, but really the city is a part of us,” he said.

“This is (going to be) a years-, if not decades-long recovery effort,” he concluded. “We know that we’re not just doing this for a TV hit or a few social media impressions. This is something that we really need to dig our heels in and be a part of for the future.”

The club is making their facilities available to high school teams who lost their access to playing fields and Kuntz says they’re thinking of ways to honor the first responders who’ve been on the front lines of the fire. But psychologically, the Galaxy and the sports community in LA can also help by providing a sense of normalcy.

With large swathes of the city in complete ruins, the business of sports will continue as usual: in February, the new MLS season kicks off and the Dodgers will start the defense of their World Series title in March. Next year, the FIFA World Cup will kick off in Los Angeles; in 2027, the city will host Super Bowl LXI; and in 2028, the eyes of the world will be on the City of Angels as it hosts the Summer Olympics.

As thousands of residents try to rebuild their shattered lives, not everyone will be cheering, but Steve Burns thinks that the arrival of so many major international sports events could be a plus.

“People are going to come into LA, wondering what these areas look like now. I look forward to all the attention because I think, in some ways, it puts pressure on the city to help rebuild,” he said.

“The ability to disengage with the trauma and provide something uplifting” is not to be underestimated, added Kuntz.

“I do believe that it will be very important for the city to show the world how OK and strong we are. Angelinos have this stereotype of being soft and all about the beach, but there is real strength and pride in this city. And the sequencing of these sports events is a real opportunity to show what we are about and to collectively commit to the restoration of the city.”

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