MAGALIA, Butte County — A crowd of people gathered on a recent morning outside the wooden, one-room church in this town that was once home to more than 11,000 residents. A cold breeze pushed against their coats as they waited.

“Let me know when you’re ready!” Pastor Kevin Lindstrom, just inside the church’s front door, shouted over his shoulder to volunteer Doreen Fogle.

“I just need a couple more minutes,” Fogle responded.

She was seated at a folding table decorated with stuffed snowmen, signing paperwork. Fogle, a former IBM software specialist, didn’t have a title, but she analyzed data on the families who came to the church seeking help, applied for grants and checked people into the church’s recovery center.

More than 14 months after much of this town was wiped out by the Camp Fire of Nov. 8, 2018, which killed 85 people and destroyed almost 14,000 homes, the Magalia Community Church has become a refuge for fire victims who can’t find help elsewhere — and a symbol of how difficult it has been and will be for Butte County to heal and rebuild. By the end of last year, more than 2,000 families had become reliant on the church for food, clothing and other aid.

Magalia lost more than 2,150 homes, but its misfortune has gained less attention than that of Paradise, its larger neighbor to the south. Church leaders entered into a catastrophe mode that is not likely to end soon. In many ways, the need here, the desperation, is deepening.

Last fall, as short-term federal aid dissipated and grants dried up in Butte County, Fogle, 59, noted an unexpected jump in the number of households needing help from the church’s recovery center. The biggest increase, she said, was in people who had secure housing but were struggling nonetheless.

“The number of people you can look in the eye and just tell they’re suffering ...” Her voice trailed off. “The level of need has not dropped. If anything, it has increased. And the rebuilding process is barely getting started.”

The church seemed to be facing its own demise before the fire, with only 15 parishioners and little money. And as flames swept through, it was nearly lost — until a local man helped save it. But last month, the church won a $100,000 grant from a local nonprofit, enough to pay its seven staff members for another six months. As Lindstrom looked out the front door, he knew that the people needed more than spiritual care.

At 11 a.m., the doors opened.

“OK, Kevin, I’m ready,” Fogle shouted. “Let them in.”

Those lined up shuffled indoors to the sound of holiday music and clattering pans. They were allowed to shop at the recovery center once a week. Fogle studied their driver’s licenses and checked their names on a list, then stamped their hands. It happened only rarely, but people had tried to cheat the system before.

A volunteer welcomed Beatriz Rivera, 35, and escorted her in. Rivera pushed a wheelchair that served as a shopping cart. The small auditorium was stuffed with food and many other items. There was a table of purses, red ones and black ones and striped ones. Cardboard boxes of squash. Aunt Jemima syrup and sweet relish. Brussels sprouts in containers of ice.

All the goods were labeled: batteries (one handful), decor (take what you need), spools of ribbon (one), blankets (also one). “Papaya is good for the skin,” the volunteer offered, so Rivera placed one of the bulbous fruits into her wheelchair. She was careful to take only what she needed for her husband and two children, ages 9 and 13.

Their small green home, tucked beneath a thicket of pine on Pentz Road, had been one of the first to burn as the Camp Fire surged out of the Feather River Canyon. Rivera and her husband, who had worked at the Calico Kitchen and the Cozy Diner, which both burned, had both lost their jobs after the conflagration. With their insurance payment, they’d been able to pay off only what remained of their mortgage, with little money left over.

They had to move into a cramped apartment in Chico with Rivera’s parents.

“So many years of working to make my dream come true, and it disappeared in a few hours,” Rivera said. “I think about the fire every day. I remember it every day. I don’t know what comes next for us.”

Rivera, her family members and other Camp Fire victims were among 1.2 million people across the United States displaced by natural disasters in 2018, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, a nonprofit in Geneva that studies what drives people from their homes.

Residents of Paradise, Magalia, Concow and the other communities ravaged by the Camp Fire have scattered, landing in every state so far except Maine and North Dakota.

More than 10,400 people — about 5% of the population — have moved out of Butte County, according to the state’s Department of Finance. Six bordering counties saw their tax base increase. Meanwhile, homelessness in Butte County is up 16% since 2017, according to the point-in-time survey released in June by the county’s Homeless Continuum of Care.

More than 420 families across the county remain in trailers provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. They live at the Silver Dollar Fairgrounds in Chico and at more than a dozen other sites. The temporary housing support will end in May. FEMA is considering a plan to sell the units at a cost of $5,906 to $22,630, but buyers would have to move them.

The compounding of costs have led more and more people to Magalia Community Church. Lindstrom lets about a dozen people park trailers in the lot, as long as they volunteer in the distribution center.

On this morning, he walked around the recovery center, his long blond hair swishing across his back. His blue hoodie read: “Be careful or you could end up in my sermon.”

“Since it’s been more than a year, the media is gone and there have been other disasters,” said Lindstrom, who used to work in the movie industry. “It’s not getting better. You have so many that are in unfinished houses or in trailers. There are people camping in tents and cars. The homes aren’t coming back yet, and people are discouraged. It’s really tough.”

As soon as the line cleared, more people arrived. The recovery center opens four days a week — Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.

Fogle checked in a muscled man wearing leather work boots, an elderly woman lost in her oversize parka and a couple carrying a baby. A man near the back drew detailed portraits of his fellow victims, wanting to give them something while he was receiving something.

“I don’t know what I would do without you guys,” Kirsten Williams, 38, told Fogle, stepping up to the folding table.

She had once lived on Foster Road, a block from her 88-year-old grandmother. Her children had gone to Paradise Elementary, the school she once attended. The first six months after the Camp Fire, she said, felt like the longest in her life. She lived in a tent in her sister’s backyard. It was so cold and damp that she sent her three children to live with distant relatives.

Now, Williams and her boyfriend were living in a donated trailer on a neighbor’s property in Paradise. They nailed cardboard up for walls and slept under donated Red Cross blankets. Things had improved, slightly, when he had been hired to work on a five-man landscaping crew.

The area’s job market remains bleak. Last year, Feather River Hospital in Paradise, which survived the fire but sustained serious damage, laid off more than 1,330 employees, though it has plans to open as a stand-alone emergency room.

In early January, the local Rite Aid closed. It survived the flames but not the loss of customers on a largely deserted ridge. A quarter of Paradise’s 1,200 companies have reopened, but most are small businesses with few employees.

Inside the church, Williams exchanged a ticket for a rain-proof tarp. Continuing down the aisle, she spotted a can of Tresemmé hairspray, an indulgence that had become unaffordable. She picked it up, read the description on the back and, with a small sigh, placed it in her cart, one small happy thing nestled among necessities.

Lizzie Johnson is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: ljohnson@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @LizzieJohnsonnn