With The Fires Still Burning, An L.A. Mom Looks For The Helpers

It would be a beautiful day if it weren’t for the ash. It’s everywhere, even in my neighborhood in Venice — settling over the streets, falling from the sky. Even with the doors and windows shut and air purifiers running throughout the house, you can smell it. I’ve had a headache for days and the shrill shriek of rescue vehicles and their siren songs are so constant that they’ve faded into the background.

This is Los Angeles in the first weeks of 2025, as wildfires rage across the city, destroying entire neighborhoods, thousands of homes, and charring 39,000 acres of land and counting. As the disaster reaches new heights — and with evacuation orders ever-expanding — the people of Los Angeles are turning to mutual aid and community organizing to combat both the effects of the fire and their despair about their city burning down around them.

The mood in my neighborhood is eerie and quiet and panicked. On Instagram, people post links to GoFundMes or directions to shelters that are looking for donations. In a seemingly exhaustive spreadsheet detailing local businesses providing mutual aid — where community members band together to help each other without the help of official organizations — I find Fiorelli Pizza, a restaurant on the famous Abbot Kinney Boulevard in Venice. When I get there, co-owners Liz Gutierrez and Michael Fiorelli are setting up for the day, getting ready to make countless pizzas which will be delivered to emergency workers and people affected by the fires.

“We’ve been in hospitality our whole lives,” Gutierrez tells me as she packages cookies and seals the packages shut with stickers. “So when something like this happens, we can only do what we can do and that’s feed people.”

They made the decision on Tuesday, as the wildfires consumed the city: They would deliver pizzas to local fire stations and feed anyone who showed up looking for a meal. Neighbors have donated ingredients and volunteered to run deliveries.

It’s easy to get jaded in the day-to-day, Gutierrez tells me, but seeing how people have stepped up for those affected has been heartwarming. “You think of how you can help, you make a list of things you can do,” Fiorelli says. “Our list is a very short list. We can do very little. We make pizza. So that’s what we do.”

“This is the same thing I would do in a refugee camp, except I’m doing it at my mother-in-law’s house.”

There’s something to be said for this kind of direct action in the face of such despair. “Human connection is what’s left when all else is gone. Provide that connection to someone you know,” writes Dr. Cara Natterson, a pediatrician who lives in Los Angeles, in her newsletter. “As the shock of the catastrophe wears off, the need to act replaces it.”

My sister, Chessa Latifi, who has lived in LA for 14 years, is no stranger to disaster. As the deputy director of emergency response and preparedness at Project HOPE, the lead of the Los Angeles Emergency Response Team, and someone who has spent her entire working life in disaster relief, it’s become second nature to her — but this is the first time she’s responded to a disaster in her own city. In addition to the work she’s doing for Project HOPE, she’s been trying to help her community in the most direct ways she can. Her mother-in-law is out of town, so she offered her house as a refuge to a family from my niece and nephew’s school community, one of many families there who lost their house and everything in it. Before they arrived, Chessa stocked the fridge with basics like milk and eggs (and beer and wine) and bought toys and stuffed animals for the kids.

In large-scale disasters like the ones she’s worked in previously, my sister tells me there’s a focus not only on providing basic necessities like food and clothing but something that aid workers call “protection.”

“Within protection, you want to provide children with safe spaces,” she says. “And what’s in those safe spaces? Toys, art materials, books, a place where a kid can be a kid and have those activities that give them an outlet and a distraction. This is the same thing I would do in a refugee camp, except I’m doing it at my mother-in-law’s house.”

Down Venice Boulevard, at Saba Surf, a surf shop and café has been transformed into a place for community members to gather donations. Laura Quintana, one of the co-owners of Saba, posted on Instagram that they were accepting donations, and clothes, food, and hygiene products poured in. Quintana didn’t know how they would transport all of it to donation centers, but after another post on Instagram, volunteers showed up to do it for them.

“Everything was gone within 20 minutes,” Quintana says. “It’s really cool how everybody’s showing up.”

Now Saba is looking to launch a drive where people can donate children’s wetsuits, leashes, and fins. Consider it “protection” for surfer kids.

“I want to use my own hands to help someone. And so that sense of empowerment helps us all deal better with the anxiety of this catastrophe. But it also aids people in a more immediate way.”

A 2022 study published through the University of Chicago found that one of the leading values of people who participate in mutual aid is that of understanding their act as one based on shared humanity. And taking part in mutual aid is beneficial for both parties involved: a 2023 study on the early days of Covid found that mutual aid organizers experienced benefits to their own well-being as a result of being involved in helping others.

“Mutual aid works from a model of solidarity rather than charity,” says Kimberly Bender, a professor of social work at the University of Denver who led the 2023 study. “Solidarity centers our collective relationship and responsibility for caring for one another. Everyone has needs and everyone has something to give. When we share and when we receive, we feel a part of something bigger that will sustain us through multiple crises.”

I saw this working all over the city these past few days.

Down the street at a sprawling coworking space on the corner of Venice Boulevard and Abbot Kinney Boulevard, I find Veronica Velasquez dispensing directions to volunteers. When the fires first started to burn, Velasquez tells me she felt “what everyone was feeling: helpless.” She couldn’t stand just watching anymore, and that’s when she started organizing donations.

“Really, this is just a grassroots effort,” she says with a wave toward the space, which is filled with boxes of diapers and nonperishable food and hygiene products and children’s toys. The toys, specifically, are close to Velasquez’s heart. As a child in Colombia, she was evacuated because of a bomb threat followed by a volcanic eruption. “As a kid, I dealt with sitting in a gym with your backpack for hours, not knowing what’s going to happen and what you’re going to do next,” she says, her eyes filling with tears. “So for me it was really important to have a little kids area where there are toys and books and things for them to do and read.”

“Everyone has needs and everyone has something to give. When we share and when we receive, we feel a part of something bigger that will sustain us through multiple crises.”

As the coworking space buzzes with the energy of volunteers eager to help their community, Velasquez explains why she chose mutual aid and direct organizing over donating to organizations. “I want to use my own hands to help someone. And so that sense of empowerment helps us all deal better with the anxiety of this catastrophe,” she says. “But it also aids people in a more immediate way.” Even if you’re not here, you only have to open up social media to see the ways Angelenos are doing this for each other

After I finish speaking to Velasquez, I tuck my recorder in my pocket and walk home. When I get there, I search through my daughter’s nursery for things we haven’t opened and pack three boxes full of diapers, baby wipes, manual breast pumps, swaddle blankets, and a diaper bag. As I lug the boxes to my car to bring them to a donation center, I look out at the plumes of smoke floating in the sky. It’s easy to feel enveloped by despair. The news drones on, updating me on how many thousands of houses have been lost and how many people are displaced. But then I think of my sister buying toys for kids who lost their house and scroll through Instagram stories of my friends gathering supplies for donation centers and pack the boxes in my car to bring supplies to babies and mothers who need them. And just for a moment, I feel something else — not hope exactly, but something close to it.

Fortesa Latifi is a journalist who is currently working on a book about family vloggers and child influencers. She has bylines in places like The Washington Post, The New York Times, and Teen Vogue, among others. You can find her anywhere @hifortesa.