Six Months After the L.A. Wildfires, Here’s Who’s Still Picking Up the Pieces

Like many Angelenos, Mark Duplass felt a desperate desire to help friends and neighbors displaced by January’s Los Angeles wildfires and sprang into action, distributing gift cards and fulfilling fire victims’ Amazon wish lists through his nonprofit, The Soul Points Fund.

Six months after the fires, the Morning Show star is surprised to find how much need remains in the city, even as news cameras have moved on and donations have waned.

“There are still so many people sleeping in tents on their burn sites or bopping around to hotels,” says Duplass, who co-founded The Soul Points Fund with his wife, actor/filmmaker Katie Aselton. “I thought at the six-month point we’d be much further along at helping people move into their permanent homes.”

Nonprofit organizations say they experienced a surge of generosity in the immediate aftermath of the wildfires that killed 30 people, displaced 150,000 and destroyed more than 16,000 homes and other structures in L.A., with donations pouring in from corporations, foundations and individuals. On Jan. 7, the first day of the Palisades and Eaton fires, Liz Lin, president of the LAFD Foundation, an organization that supplements the fire department’s budget, got a call from the Wasserman and Annenberg foundations. “They said, ‘How bad is it?’ ” recalls Lin. Six hours later, they called back with donations of $500,000 each.

That $1 million was immediately used to buy emergency shelters, hydration backpacks and brush-clearing tools for the firefighters who were battling the blazes, Lin says, and the announcement of the donation helped inspire more giving. “What was unusual was the outpouring of support,” Lin says. “Emotions were high. And we were there to say, ‘Help us help them.’ ”

But when the fires were finally fully contained after 24 days, the city’s needs were only just beginning. Rents spiked despite anti-gouging laws, insurance companies were slow to pay out claims, and even people whose homes hadn’t been completely destroyed were often coping with costly and dangerous damage from smoke and toxic chemicals that required them to relocate for months. Meanwhile, the House of Representatives has yet to act on a request from California Gov. Gavin Newsom in February for $40 billion in additional federal aid for rebuilding schools, churches, homes and hospitals.

So, philanthropic organizations have been trying to fill the widening gap between what fire-affected communities still need and what the government and insurers are providing. A Sense of Home, for instance — an organization independent film producer Georgie Smith founded in 2015 to help young people transitioning out of foster care furnish their first apartments — reinvented itself as a disaster relief organization in the first 48 hours of the wildfires. Smith and her team filled a donated warehouse space with furniture and home goods, supplying displaced people with up to 330 items, from beds and dining tables to forks and shower curtain rods, all in one place, helping to alleviate some of the emotional overwhelm of home loss. “There are obstacles with FEMA, there are obstacles with insurance,” Smith says. “Not only is there the financial obstacle, but there is just so much to do in order to reorganize their lives.”

After months of couch surfing with family and friends or living in Airbnbs and hotels, many fire victims are only just now getting into longer-term housing, Smith says, and A Sense of Home is currently furnishing about 20 homes a week, with a long waiting list. Much of the organization’s inventory comes from large companies like Living Spaces, Ruggable and Sit ‘n Sleep that donate showroom models and unsold merchandise. Because of the uncertainty created by President Trump’s tariff policies, some companies are holding on to their inventories longer, meaning there is less merchandise available just when families need it most. Some critical items, like bed frames, have become hard to get.

Baby2Baby, an L.A.-based nonprofit that provides diapers, formula and clothing for children in need, saw 20,000 new donors pour in from across the country during the fires and received $52 million in donated goods from hundreds of companies. They’ve since distributed 20 million items and now see fire-affected families’ needs shifting.

“In the earliest days, the families we were serving had lost everything, so they were showing up at our distributions in robes and slippers,” say Kelly Sawyer Patricof and Norah Weinstein, co-CEOs of Baby2Baby, via email. “As the months passed, families are catching up but are still in need of basic items for their children like diapers and food. But they are also struggling to replace items like backpacks, school supplies and clothing. Once they find permanent housing, they need the bigger and more expensive items to start rebuilding, like new cribs and strollers.”

Often, what nonprofits have been able to give fire victims hasn’t been just practical, but personal. Aselton, of The Soul Points Fund, learned of one household that had lost an heirloom, a very specific lampshade. She was able to locate a similar one in another country on eBay, bought it and flew it in for them. For another family, Soul Points helped replace a beloved record collection.

“On some days, I feel really good about what we’re able to do,” says Duplass. “And on other days, I feel like, ‘Are we actually able to put a dent in this massive crisis?’ The thing we want is to let people know we still see them. We want to provide them at least half a brick to stand on.”

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