longreads | What to Bring When You Leave Everything Behind + How to Help People in LA *Right Now*

Content note: LA wildfires, 9/11

The wound in the sky isn’t eating up my neighborhood today, or more specifically this hour, this minute. It was three miles from me when I woke up to the Big Bad; three miles is nothing, eight minutes in no traffic in a car and to nature? To nature? All you need is a dry day, a bad wind, and the loss – the loss – the loss – it is endless, it keeps stretching. I don’t think people outside of this place understand it. How can you? If I weren’t here, I couldn’t, and my imagination is always apocalypse.

What to Bring When You Leave Everything Behind by Arabelle Sicardi for You've Got Lipstick on Your Chin

Here is a list of vouched-for fundraisers and offers of help where you can donate or, if you are directly impacted by the LA fires, find resources.

The Los Angeles Fires are terrifying for so many reasons, and on so many levels. There’s a lot to say about the existential climate dread they incite, but right now, I think most of us just need help or want desperately to help.
… Think about how incredibly destabilizing it would be — and how daunting the prospect of finding lodging is right now. What we can help provide is the promise of short-term financial stability.

-How to Help People in LA *Right Now*, by Anne Helen Petersen for Culture Study