Even before the fires in Los Angeles have been extinguished, trackers of philanthropy have noted a raft of new funding initiatives springing up alongside established charities. Some are raising millions of dollars for long-term rebuilding. Others are offering small, emergency no-interest loans to help cover immediate needs.
This bump in local giving reflects an increasingly common response in cities and towns recovering from disasters. Generosity has more than a monetary impact. It often helps communities turn from a sense of loss to possibility.
“More than one official I spoke with said they are grateful and optimistic to see how this crisis is bringing out the altruistic side of residents in the City of Angels,” noted Wendy Paris, a Santa Monica-based journalist, in Inside Philanthropy. In a city of extraordinary economic and social disparity, wrote Sonali Kolhatkar, an author and resident of Pasadena, in the Los Angeles Times Tuesday, the fires are a reminder that “We don’t exist in isolation.”
The increasing frequency of disasters involving nature has deepened a sense of vulnerability arising from climate change. Yet that sense of vulnerability has also led to creativity and resilience in communities rebuilding after disasters.
After a tornado destroyed 95% of Greensburg, Kansas, in 2007, the town saw an opportunity to reinvent itself. City leaders worked with residents and local businesses to embrace energy efficiency “to create a strong community devoted to family, fostering business, working together for future generations,” they declared in a vision statement.
Clearing debris can lead to a renewal of civic ideals. In September 2024, Asheville, North Carolina, sustained severe damage when Hurricane Helene swelled the river that ran through the city center. For a community-based group called Beloved Asheville, the task of rebuilding has created new opportunities for equality and shared gratitude.
The group’s focus echoes a lesson learned from a similar disaster 20 years ago. The editors of the book “Creating Katrina, Rebuilding Resilience: Lessons From New Orleans on Vulnerability and Resiliency” observed that “a human- or community-centered approach focuses on identifying and reducing inequalities in agency.”
In one of the most successful recent examples of disaster recovery, the Missouri city of Joplin rebounded almost entirely in two short years after being struck by a tornado in 2011.
Churches, government agencies, and local civic organizations banded together. “The spirit and the power of this community, with its faith in God, has had amazing effects,” said Jay St. Clair, then a member of the Joplin Area Long Term Recovery Committee, in a 2013 interview with The Wall Street Journal. “It was just a real work of unity and cooperation.”
Last week, as the fires in Los Angeles rapidly grew, Gov. Gavin Newsom suspended some of California’s landmark environmental laws to expedite recovery and mitigate further environmental damage. That work is yet to start and may take years.
But as others have learned, and as Los Angeles is now discovering, resilience needs no delay. It can start with generosity that leads to new ways of thinking about communities and the values that shape them.
“In a lot of ways,” late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel said Monday night from his studio in Hollywood, the city’s crisis has been “a beautiful experience because, once again, we see our fellow men and women coming together to support each other. People who lost their own homes were out volunteering in parking lots helping others who lost theirs.”
