<
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/los-angeles-fires-volunteers-community/>
"Within 48 hours of her high school burning down and her family’s evacuation
from Pasadena, 14-year-old Avery Colvert began building an impromptu “shopping
center.”
In a large white warehouse, she started stocking clothes for the teenage
survivors of the Eaton Fire that scorched her neighborhood. Colvert and her
stepdad, Matt Chait, quickly created an online platform, Altadena Girls, to
solicit clothing donations. Soon, dozens of people were showing up with bags of
shirts and shoes. Fueled by posts from Paris Hilton and Charli XCX, her
warehouse is now a bustling community center where displaced teenage fire
victims replace the clothes they’ve lost, free of charge.
“No money, no nothing,” she advises her followers, because as a minor, she
can’t legally take cash donations. Chic donations arrive from designers and
boutiques. Dozens of people show up every day to help. “I had never met these
people in my life,” Colvert told
Time. “It’s great.” After posting on
Instagram that she needed clothing racks and boxes, “within 30 to 35 minutes,
people are coming in with all the things we need. It’s insane.”
To a tourist, Los Angeles might look like a giant metropolis sprawling with
interchangeable concrete spaces. But L.A. neighborhoods are communities. We
know each other. We greet our neighbors. We watch each other’s pooches. And
since the first fires began to ignite last Tuesday, the vital importance of
those informal, community networks has become increasingly clear.
Within hours of the Palisades fire hitting the news last Tuesday, the first
text messages pinged in: “Are you okay?“ My family had just moved out of the
Los Angeles area on New Year’s Eve, eight days before the fires would decimate
my former neighborhood. Our two-bedroom rental apartment is now occupied by a
neighbor whose house burned down with all his possessions inside.
I sent my own flurry of messages to friends in the evacuation zones: “How can I
help? Do you need a place to crash?”
We know 19 families who lost their homes, plus two still waiting to hear if
their houses withstood the assault. At least 24 people have died in the
infernos that have blazed through 40,000 acres of Los Angeles County. It’s the
worst catastrophe to hit California in decades and likely the costliest ever.
But for Californians, the cost is measured not just in lives lost and houses
charred. Every time a piece of our beloved city burns, it takes an emotional
and mental toll that cannot be quantified in trauma yards and grief dollars."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
