Within the wake of final week’s lethal Palisades wildfire, Melanie Bonhomme discovered hope and help from her neighbors and on-line strangers.
Bonhomme, a single mom to a 4-year-old son, misplaced her residence and belongings within the fireplace that ravaged the world, leaving her household displaced and in want of fast help.
Inside days, a GoFundMe marketing campaign she launched captured the eye of her group and past, surpassing her $50,000 objective.
Current wildfire campaigns have gained traction on the favored fundraising website. Within the days since wildfires tore via Los Angeles communities, greater than $100 million has been raised on GoFundMe to help households, communities and companies affected by the catastrophe, a spokesperson for the net fundraising website mentioned right this moment.
The funds are additionally going towards nonprofits offering reduction efforts on the bottom.
The wildfire fundraising determine so far is near half of what was raised for pure catastrophe restoration efforts all of final 12 months. In 2024, roughly $235 million was raised for catastrophe efforts throughout all GoFundMe campaigns, the spokesperson mentioned.
“It was overwhelming,” Bonhomme mentioned when requested about her personal GoFundMe marketing campaign’s success. “It’s an incredible platform that permits individuals to ask for assist once they want it.”
The wildfire, which erupted amid excessive winds and dry situations, destroyed dozens of properties, leaving numerous households in an analogous predicament. Nevertheless, within the face of adversity, individuals have come collectively to lend help, together with Bonhomme who has been searching for different GoFundMe wildfire campaigns to donate to now that hers has surpassed its objective.
“My marketing campaign acquired plenty of traction, and so I’m simply paying it ahead,” she mentioned.
Final Tuesday, when the Palisades fireplace unfold, Bonhomme raced residence the place her son was together with his nanny. She rapidly packed up his social safety card, different needed paperwork and her family members’ ashes, leaving every thing else, and drove her household away from the fireplace in bumper-to-bumper visitors as flames and black smoke engulfed town.
“I’ve numerous various things that I’ve acquired over the course of my lifetime that had been in that residence that I’ll seemingly not have the ability to get better,” Bonhomme mentioned.
Bonhomme described the Palisades as an ideal, walkable group and mentioned that she loved “each single second residing there,” and “was all the time so grateful to be there and … didn’t ever take it with no consideration.”
As she begins to search for a brand new place to reside, uncertain of the place she’ll be within the weeks to come back, she mentioned she’s grateful for the chance to ask for assist when “generally it’s the toughest factor to do.”
“I’m simply so grateful my GoFundMe has put me in a spot the place I can even assist different individuals in my group,” she mentioned. “[There are] 23 different items in my constructing, people who find themselves struggling, so grateful that I may also help them.”