In Los Angeles, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is opening assistance centers on Tuesday to help those impacted by the fires. That help includes cash to buy clothes and other essential items. But many people have not been waiting: They are already fundraising online and have raised millions of dollars.
People affected by the LA fires have had the ability to apply for FEMA financial aid online.
Nonprofits have kicked into action on the ground but “those types of relief systems and support systems, they just take a little bit more time,” said Leigh Lehman, a spokesperson with GoFundMe.
While people are filling out forms and nonprofits are helping with things such as temporary shelter, GoFundMe has seen thousands of campaigns pop up over the last week to get money in the hands of those affected.
Those campaigns have raised at least $100 million, Lehman said. “And that number continues to increase, and we anticipate that to grow as damages are assessed, as folks get back into communities”
One of those communities is Altadena — a historically Black neighborhood partially destroyed by the fires. The nearby nonprofit Pasadena Community Foundation is now pivoting its work to disaster relief.
But CEO Jennifer DeVoll said it’s taken time to assess how best to disburse money to those in need; their foundation’s goal is to get the first tranche of aid out by Friday.
“The need is unimaginable,” she said, “and the priorities for those needs are, you know, temporary shelter, food, emergency child care.”
So why is so much of the response falling on nonprofits and individual donors? It’s by design, explained Eric Stern, who teaches at the College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity at the University at Albany.
“Our country has gravitated towards an approach called ‘whole community emergency response,'” he explained.
In that approach, neighbors helping neighbors is the first line of defense. “In an era of social media, our communities, our neighbors are not necessarily just the folks who live next to us,” he added.
In fact, GoFundMe says donations to LA fire victims have poured in from all 50 states and more than 140 countries.
