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By Miriam Raftery
September 22, 2015 (San Diego’s East County) – The Valley and Butte fires rank among the most destructive fires in California history, with nearly a thousand homes destroyed and tens of thousands of people evacuated. More than 70,000 acres in California have burned in total this year.
The California Drought Relief Fund is collecting funds for three local organizations that are providing emergency financial assistance to wildfire victims, setting up water tanks for homes that aren’t connected to a municipal water source, and bringing water supplies to communities that have run dry. 100% of your donation will go to fund these crucial relief efforts. Click here to give to the California Drought Relief Fund.
The effort has been organized by 350.org, an organization concerned with climate change, but 100% of donations to the California Drought Relief Fund, not 350.org, solely to help fire survivors.
An e-mail from 350.org states, “Last year, our state sweltered through the hottest summer on record, then through a winter that laid down record low levels of snowpack in the Sierras. Snowpack was at approximately 5% of “normal” this spring…The death and destruction of this week’s fires isn’t a surprise -- we’re living through a historic, climate-change-driven drought, and the state is profoundly dry -- but it is heartbreaking, and it is scary.”
The letter adds, “As the impacts of climate change hit home, we’re going to have to grapple with this sort of thing again and again, taking time to help those in immediate need while we keep fighting for a world where this sort of relief isn’t so constantly necessary…We live in a changed world with a new “normal,” but we don’t have to accept that things will just keep drying up and burning. We can organize. And we can give.”
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