California Wildfires

Disaster Relief
Jan 25, 2021
2 min read

JANUARY 16, 2021 - Flames continue to engulf Southern California as unusual activity triggers wildfires. The city of Santa Ana was the victim of fires due to the unbelievably hot and arid weather this year brought little rainfall. Around 1 A.M., the fire erupted and eventually spread across the Santa Ana area leaving devastating impacts. The continued efforts to extinguish fires are still happening, but the problem was further agitated by the breakout of multiple more fires on Tuesday the 19th. The fires were contained by firefighters, but not before it rose to burn miles of vegetation, which aggravated them further. Firefighters are still fighting these fires as they ravage the Golden State.

Impact

Before 2021, California had been struggling with chaotic fires throughout the summer of 2020 and many times before that. The Golden State is currently in a crisis, as droughts and fires are spread throughout the state. It is reported that around 95% of California is either in extreme, severe, moderate, or exceptional drought. This poses a problem to the extremely large population and major cities. As a result of the events in the past few days, there have been numerous evacuations and outages. More than thousands of people are without power due to downed trees, powerlines, and the preventive shutdown of utilities. Numerous areas in Southern California are paying the disastrous consequences and the worst is not over yet.

Here are some organizations and ways to help!

Direct Relief

Humanitarian aid organization active in the US and 80 other countries, the goal is to improve the health and lives of people affected by poverty or emergencies.
Nongovernmental, nonsectarian, not-for-profit.
Has Assistance Programs which focus on prevention and preparedness.
https://www.directrelief.org/emergency/california-wildfires/
Very detailed context of situation on website.

Americares

Saves lives and improves health for over 164 countries including the USA. Has raised over 18 billion dollars in funds. I doubt we can get direct contact, but they will make great use of any money we donate to them.
https://www.americares.org/emergency-program/ep-california-wildfires/

Good360

Organization that connects other organizations together. Has created a network of over 80,000 nonprofits and distributed 9 billion dollars to those in need.
Global Leader in product philanthropy.
https://good360.org/disaster/california-wildfires/2018/

Save The Children

Organization that focuses on helping children in need build their futures. Works to give children a healthy start in life, and helps them when a crisis occurs.
https://www.savethechildren.org/us/charity-stories/california-wildfires-how-to-help-facts-faq
Speaks a lot about the wildfires, doesn’t just want to help adolescents but help suppress the fires as well.

American Red Cross