By Deb Turcott, ORIANA Solutions, LLC, Guest Blogger for DollarDays
Nowhere to Run
Do you remember when you were a kid and had the math test questions like “If Train A left at 8:00 a.m. and is traveling 40 miles per hour, and Train B left at 7:00 a.m. traveling 30 miles per hour, who would arrive first for a 120-mile trip?” You sharpened your pencil, showed your work, and came up with the answer.
At the peak of rush hour traffic in Los Angeles, any Californian could tell you a 20-mile drive will take more than two hours. With the right winds and conditions, a wildfire traveling in the same direction would beat you to your destination. There’s no time to sharpen your pencil or show your work in the California Wildfires equation. It is difficult to come up with a good answer.
Having responded to many types of disasters in my early career, I do not compare one type of disaster to another. They are all scary, devastating, costly, and, most importantly, for humans and pets amid them, utterly life-changing.
So, what makes wildfire so scary? Speed, smoke, unpredictability, and what I call the “consumption factor.” A fire will consume an entire structure, subtracting those memories, family photos, and cherished belongings. It travels, pushed by winds, consuming anything in its path. When the wind shifts, a new path of consumption can start, leaving little time for people to react.
It’s Always Personal
I have a team member who lives in Claremont, California. It’s a beautiful and quiet town in LA County. I live on the opposite side of the country in hurricane land, a full 2,600 miles from her. This past year, my properties were impacted by all three hurricanes — Milton, Debby, and Helene. In each one, every day, she would text me to see if we were ok. This week, it has been my turn. Each day, I pull up the wildfire map to see how close the “unnamed fire” is to her and send her a text. I wait anxiously for the reply to find out that things have not changed overnight, and she and her family are still ok.
Disaster is personal. Watching the news, it can feel that the emotional magnitude is almost out of reach. If you aren’t there, it is hard to imagine. If you haven’t experienced it, it may be easier to feel shock and awe than empathy. And, as reports come in of the volumes of people, animals, and structures impacted, it can be overwhelming. Inside each of those reports is a person, a family, or a business whose owner poured every penny of their life savings into it. There are no numbers, no math equation, just one person or family trying to survive in the moment. Disasters may not see the faces of those impacted, so it is up to the rest of us to make sure we do.
Champions of Hope
From the ashes, something beautiful rises. Organizations, individuals, companies, families, and total strangers decide to act. They donate, open their homes, adopt an animal, create supply or care kits, and volunteer.
Each one is doing their part to help, and the math equation of adding one rising good to another rising good, to another, and so on, equals an exponential impact for those living through this tragedy. Each one is part of this larger team, unknowingly working together to show compassion and provide a path forward.
The champions of this effort, setting an example for all of us, are the tireless volunteers and employees of responding nonprofit organizations. Some of them you know well, such as the American Red Cross, Greater Good Charities, and Team Rubicon. Others you may have never heard of, such as small local organizations, churches, and civic groups that are compelled by their mission to act for the benefit of others.
They may staff shelters, ship and distribute supplies, or feed mouths, but their most important role is to breed hope. With each good, they replace despair with a smile, hunger with fulfillment, exhaustion with rest — and this is how healing begins.
They change the equation from subtraction and loss to addition and multiplication of good.
To the many workers and volunteers for these nonprofits, first-responding agencies, civic and faith-based groups, and beyond, we see you.
We thank you.
We have your back.