“Fire Country”'s Diane Farr Was Filming Series When Her L.A. Home Was in Evacuation Zone: 'I Felt Extra Helpless' (Exclusive)

Diane Farr’s onscreen life hit closer to home after she was impacted by the recent Los Angeles fires.

The actress, who stars as fire captain Sharon Leone in CBS’s Fire Country, opened up to PEOPLE about watching Altadena burn after years of calling the city home. Although her house survived, Farr, 55, says the damage to the surrounding area highlights just how much has been lost.

“One time in my 20s, my car was broken into, and I was sitting in a cafe, and I happened to see the person who burglarized my car with my duffel bag walking by,” she says. “And I remember going back to the car and having a not right-sized reaction of wanting to sell the car. I didn't want to get in the car after someone had been in it. And there's a feeling like that about the house. It feels like home, but it also feels a little dangerous without support.”

“I'm looking at my house and my neighborhood and the definition of home a little differently,” she adds.

Related: See the Most Dramatic, Terrifying Photos of the California Wildfire Devastation

The Eaton and Palisades fires began on Tuesday, Jan. 7, when Farr had just gone back to work, leaving friends and family members home after celebrating the holidays. When her partner called asking what she wanted to take during the evacuation, she recalls saying, "Nothing. Just get out of the house."

“I had flown to Canada to start filming after the Christmas break for Fire Country, and two of my girls go to boarding school out of state,” she says. “The night the fires broke out, we put them on a plane a little early, to get them out, and my son went and stayed with his dad in Pasadena. And we had friends still staying here from Christmas, who we then put up around town.”

In the panic, Farr says she returned home during the first break she got during filming to see her entire neighborhood gone.

“It was just terrifying,” she shares. “It just leaves you weepy. I'm crying at the drop of the hat. I don't know if it's the energy of our whole city, or just how unsafe it feels.”

Related: Celebrities Who Have Lost Homes in the Los Angeles Fires, and What They've Said

This is Farr’s third time playing a firefighter on TV, and by now, she has developed a deep understanding and appreciation for first responders. For the show Rescue Me, she visited three different firehouses, where she “trained extensively for structural fires,” and for another role, she even learned how to fly a Cessna aircraft to play a “smoke jumper".

“It's so hard to watch the fires because we feel so helpless,” she says. “I might say that I feel a little extra helpless because I have a limited amount of information. I have a full suit with boots and gloves and a helmet, and yet if I came down and tried to do anything, I would be in the way.”

“There's that old joke about, ‘I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV,’” Farr laughs. “That's how I feel as a firefighter. It gives me just enough information that I think I know what's supposed to happen, but I can't actually help in any way.”

With her platform, she says she hopes to spread the word about the importance of Cal Fire (California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection) in particular, which focuses on tackling wildfires — the source of both the Eaton and Palisades fires before they caught onto structures.

“What Cal Fire is doing is so unthinkable,” she says. “They go to a fire, and they live at it. We talk about firemen working 24-hour shift, or two days on and three days off. The Cal Fire personnel camp at the fire line, and they don't leave until the fire's out.”

“Once the fire is out, those firefighters stay to do the cleanup, which is some of the hardest, least thankful work," she adds. "So, in some ways, filming right now feels a little bit more humbling to me because I feel like so many more people are aware of what Cal Fire is, and for the very first time, folks are aware that the incarcerated are the only way we can handle these fires.”

Related: 'The Perfect Neighbor,' a Surfer and a Blues Brothers Extra: What We Know About the Los Angeles Fire Victims

Despite the challenging times, she has found the silver lining in all of it: the kindness of loved ones and strangers alike.

“I think, as Angelenos, the beautiful part is we're all looking at each other,” she shares. “Like, how do we support each other? I have never received so many text messages and calls and emails. And even in the aftermath, I feel like everyone knows three to 10 people who lost their home. It's just been an unbelievable push to help one another, which I really hope lasts because we're going to need this.”

In her community, Farr says people have stepped up to help teachers who lost their homes and the schools where they worked.

“It's unfathomable,” she says. “Because we were a public school, they ask for a donation every year. It seems like a large amount of money, but it's per family instead of per kid, so it's $3,000 per family per year. And it's an ask. It's not required. And this year, they have allowed us to donate it specifically to the teachers instead of the school, and still it's tax-deductible and it goes towards your contribution. They've raised a lot of money for the families, which I think is spectacular because we need to have a long-term goal.”

Being on Fire Country, Farr aims to use the show to continue raising awareness about the impact the fires are having on hundreds of thousands of people.

“Even if I play a firefighter on TV, maybe in six months we'll be able to talk about a secondary line of help, which would probably include therapy, and haircuts, and oil changes, and the small things that people are going to need to keep their mental health going,” she explains. “Maybe it will be free gym memberships, maybe it'll be hiking clubs when the air quality is better. Just things to allow people to let their nervous system calm down once the framework of how they're going to move forward is in place.”

She adds: “What is the point of a platform if you don't use it to be of service?”

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Fire Country airs Fridays at 9 p.m. ET on CBS.

Click here to learn more about how to help the victims of the L.A. fires.

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